Discipline and patience
Discipline and patience are two sides of the same coin. If a trader does not know what the signals are, he cannot have discipline and patience. You can only talk about discipline and patience if you know what reasonable trading signals are.
Whether a deal makes money is not the deciding factor in whether a deal should be done. I don't stress too much about profitability, because no one can control the outcome of a deal. The only thing I can control is getting in.
I know exactly whether I should make a deal or not. The challenge was how to wait patiently for my opportunity and how to follow the trading discipline. If I'm a baseball player, my biggest problem is always hitting balls I'm not good at. Of course, EVEN if I'm good at it, I may not be able to get a hit. As long as it is done without patience and discipline, the vast majority of orders will end up losing money.
Self analysis and plan analysis
I continue to study and analyze my trading performance, mainly to assess whether my plan is in line with the real market and whether I am in line with my trading plan. The two concepts are very different and both are real challenges.
Trading profitably is not the same as trading correctly. Trading correctly does not necessarily make money; Conversely, trading can be profitable if the plan is not executed correctly.
I may not execute the plan correctly for weeks or months on end, but I end up trading profitably. I might have executed the plan correctly, but ended up losing money. My goal is to execute the plan correctly, because MY belief is that by trading correctly over a long period of time, I can make a net profit through the volatility of my money. I analyze my trades on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.
The first question I ask myself is: is the trading plan aligned with the market? I'm not going to optimize the rules of trading. I don't believe in optimization, it's a fool's game. Modifying trading rules based on historical trends does not guarantee adaptation to future trends.
