What is more important: a good strategy or trader discipline?

04.09.2025

Education

When a newbie comes to trading, he immediately concentrates on finding a trading strategy. This is natural. Without a positive strategy, trading on the market is like playing catch-up with your eyes blindfolded. It is almost impossible to catch your opponents. They always slip away.

A positive strategy opens your eyes. It shows you the possibilities. But if you try to catch your opponent away from where he is, nothing will come of it. It seems like complete absurdity. No one will do that. However, this is exactly what new traders often do.

When a trading strategy says wait, and the trader cannot resist, he has two options. In one, he makes a loss. Possibly a big one. He worsens his statistics. He gets upset. But he learns the price of discipline. This puts him back on the right track.

In the second option, the trader makes a random profit. He rejoices. And reinforces the wrong behavioral pattern with positive confirmation. Now spontaneous transactions become the norm. If they line up in a profitable series, it becomes almost impossible to give up unsystematic trading. This is the complete absurdity of catch-up. When they try to catch the enemy not where he is.

Why discipline is violated

Violation of discipline in trading occurs for two reasons. Due to ignorance. Everything is clear here. One or two such mistakes are enough for a beginner to learn a lesson. Losing money hurts pride. And therefore quickly teaches to follow a strategy.

The second reason is more complicated. You need to understand its mechanism. A trader has a limited supply of nervous energy. When he is fully charged, trading is easy. You want to expand. There are few mistakes. They are quickly accepted.

But in the process of trading, when holding positions, internal tension arises. It absorbs the resources of the nervous system. Energy is spent. After a month of daily trading, the supply is depleted. The effect of overtrading sets in.

Usually it is characterized by apathy or even disgust for trading. Strong-willed people manage to last longer. But if you don't stop, the result will be the same. An event will happen on the market. It will provoke emotions. And since there is no nervous energy for self-control, the trader will still deviate from the rules of the strategy.

He can try to recoup when there is no entry signal. Increase the volume of the transaction above the planned level. Or remove the stop loss of the unprofitable transaction. A trader in overtrading goes intellectually blind. If you allow this state, it is almost impossible to stop. You need the help of a risk manager. Or a large loss. Severe pain.

Two sides of the same coin

The conclusion suggests itself. A profitable strategy will not help without discipline. And discipline will not help without a profitable strategy. An airplane flies when it has both wings. With one, it will fall into a tailspin and crash.

A trader also needs two wings. It is necessary to carefully monitor the strategy and your internal state. At the first symptoms of overtrading, take a break. Experienced traders have enough energy for 3-4 weeks. Beginners may have less than 2-3 weeks. After that, a week is needed to recover. Until the desire to trade appears again. Only this approach will allow you to systematically follow the rules of the trading strategy over a long distance. If the strategy is positive, then the profit will become stable. If the strategy is unprofitable, discipline will not fix this. But it will help to clearly see that it needs to be improved or another trading pattern needs to be found.

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