I’ve been reflecting on discipline and obsession. I heard an interesting quote which was that discipline isn’t useful for the people at the very top. The most competitive/successful individuals don’t use discipline to wake up and do a long work day. Elite athletes don’t go and do their training because they have good discipline. They have a purpose that they are chasing and that gives them the drive they need to do the training or prep or work for winning the competition or achieving the higher order objective they are pursuing.
For me and the work i’m doing for building my trading ability, I would say it’s the same thing. I don’t have discipline for waking up early and getting out of bed and putting in a long day. I have obsession and a bigger picture motivation.
For my running, I am training to beat a time or complete a goal. And I perceive that faster time or longer distance to be worthy of all the effort and dieting and stretching and pain that goes into it.
I don’t do these things because I’m disciplined.
And once I had these core pursuits in my life (professional+athletic), all the other stuff in my life that I used to put off like making my bed or doing my laundry or grocery shopping or cooking etc, now I do without thinking because I know they need to be done and I’m mentally healthy. I need positive alignment in the rest of my life in order to bring my best competitive self to the starting line. So I do these things that I used to put off because I was undisciplined, simply because they need to be done and I am better off if they are done. Having them done contributes to me getting closer to my goals.
I’m not suddenly now disciplined enough to go walk to the grocery store and to cook my food.
I just do it.
There’s some quote about how if you have a big enough why, you can endure any how.
And I’d say that is at play in my life currently. I am doing everything I am aware of to succeed at trading.
This was written over the weekend^
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Today is Monday, April 6th and I finally got back online. I was upgrading my graphics card to a 5070 and it is making a huge difference. Very glad to not be dealing with blue screens of death and having a stable system.
I’m exploring some new trading group chats, so far with mixed results. It’s very tough to find people that are competent. I talk to a number of people that have been trading for 1 year+ and their study without a mentor or without institutional training is very rough. So it is often difficult to exchange ideas fruitfully and I end up explaining stuff that if they had appropriately studied, they would have learned.
So while I have my core trading pod of my partner and one of his friends who both trade large size, I don’t have anyone else to talk ideas over with effectively, at least so far. I will continue to turn over stones though. Perhaps I should reach out to people on twitter although it would be nice to have more progress on my end first.
On that note, I have learned a great deal in the last couple days and am looking forward to the rest of this trading week. My trading is sharper and more intentional. I have a whole host of leaks that I have identified that I am avoiding.
I was unable to trade $AIXI this morning when it was trading at $0.13. This was my first experience trading a true penny stock under $1. There were a few aspects to the learning curve for queueing up orders at sub penny increments, however I think I got the hang of it. My premarket prep that I still did despite not having a trading system online had identified AIXI as a potential quality long.
By the time that I got online after regular trading hours ended, it was trading around $0.90. What a long that would have been.
These were my executions. I am quite happy with them. While one set of shorts were held offsides a little too far (right before the highs on the chart), I netted 15% of my max position size during this trading when it was all said and done. My short as the prints rolled over towards the end there was on the money and I held it for max length then flipped long for the retrace.
My trading is definitely improving. These executions are a LOT cleaner than what I was doing a month ago, and my approach of a significant number of trades, and within those trades a significant number of executions, each day is definitely bearing fruit.
I will review the commissions I end up paying out on this but am optimistic.
My objectives this week are to:
- Click in and out intentionally, have a game plan that is situationally aware for how I plan on trading this stock. When entering a stock, review its prior trading on that day and check the 10D price action. When you have time, mark out some key levels.
- Logging all of my trades diligently and identifying the strategy I am implementing to avoid emotional or random clicking. Filling out my DRC EOD each day.
- Document and expand my playbook.
- Entering the vast majority of my trades passively through limit orders.
- Avoiding crossing the spread unnecessarily.
- Avoiding trading In-Play stocks that have volume that has died off so they are no longer In-Play.
- Avoiding crossing the consolidation by aggressing a potential breakout and puking when it ranges to the opposite side of the consolidation; entering into positions passively from a price point of initial strength; maintaining being onsides for as much of the trade as possible.
- Entering into early and midday breakouts on low volume pullbacks.
- Aggressing selectively when weak tape presents itself. This happens anecdotally about once every 3-4 trading hours.
- Being quick with my executions; avoiding simple execution errors of using incorrect size or accidentally doubly exiting to get flat and then accidentally re-entering in the opposite direction.
- For longer term trades, trading a core size and scaling in to my size at different stages of confirmation. Allowing myself to hold tiny positions and worrying about process over gross P&L.
- While maintaining a core, looking for opportunities to cashflow around that core while still keeping the overarching purpose of the trade in mind.
- Staying on top of my feeds, making sure I am paying attention to the right stocks at the right time.
- Having a game plan going into the open each day for specific stocks to be monitoring for large moves. Juggling these through the open.
- Avoiding flipping my position when exiting on a loss; I don’t have to reenter immediately. That is a rare tactic that is only applicable in a few situations. If I am doing this, I need to take a breather.
- Being sensitive to share price and trading smaller size in cheaper stocks.
- Cutting trades from running too far offsides.
- Looking for reasons to exit trades when onsides that are not myopically greedy or fear driven, having price and tape tell me when to exit or scale down my position.
- Allowing myself to take as many executions as I want, BUT knowing that precision and quality beats quantity. More precise entries and exits beat sloppy entries with fast pukes. Don’t papercut my P&L to death. Run my timer for longer holds when applicable.
- Studying during quiet midday periods while still monitoring for news.
- Don’t get carried away battling in cheap stocks while in the red trying to get unstuck. Move on and look for good trades in other stocks.
- You don’t have to be stubborn or win in any particular symbol. You can always pick up your chips and move to another table.
Feeling great – Onto The Next!