While staying disciplined is key to successful trading, it is also the most difficult to do. From not setting stop losses to entering trades without a plan, these impulsive decisions are frustrating at best and devastating to your account at worst.
Maybe you have a huge quote in front of your monitor that says “STOP LOSS” or maybe you have a jar that you put money in each time you enter trades willy-nilly?
I bite my finger — that’s what it feels like putting Stoic principles into action. Yet, my greatest hack.
If I close a trade at a loss, I stop trading for the rest of the day. I know I have a hard time accepting losses, and if I keep going, I might make impulsive decisions.
I use only two strategies at any one time. My favoured strategies are simple. The chart features I must look for are objective - they either are X or they are not X. I type out the steps involved in finding a set-up, opening a trade, seting the stop-loss and planning what I will do if the trade is profitable. I don’t do or think about anythng else for that trade. I don’t look randomly at charts and try to find an opportunity.
Same here: I don’t really understand how people can try to trade without that level of objectivity.
Well … I understand how they can try, maybe, but I don’t understand how they can achieve much, and I think some of them are probably really trading from a combination of hope and guesses more than they are from a structured approach?
Two “same heres” (and another glass of wine, please …) 
Two glasses a little later, it’s only just gone 4 here.
I take the trading apps off my phone just keep an app like a news app to watch markets but I cant trade on my phone no more!!! I lose too much!!
So do you install the app back when you lose or quit?
Welcome to the community, it’s fun here. Take your time while exploring.
Warm regards,
Ayọ
The best hack is to journal your trades. And also limit the number of positions you trade. 2 pairs per day is good enough to avoid the pitfalls of impulse trading.
Thanks. Your method is great – they either are X, or they are not X. With the way I trade, I always have trouble identifying the exact X. Sometimes it may only be 70% X or 80% X.
For me, I use a notebook to write down things I must stick to every time I sit down to trade. Even though I just write the same things repeatedly, I find that writing them down manually is a good reminder.
I stick to 1 - 2 trades per day.
Let’s just hope that your best potential trade-entry opportunity of the day never turns out to be the third (or fourth or fifth) one, then, as mine so often does. 
It can’t be help sometimes. 
