Pragmatic And Principled
"Wherever a person can live, there one can also live well; life is also in the demands of court, there too one can live well."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
When we compare today's meditation to trading, being "pragmatic and principled" is exactly what we are trying to achieve when we trade.
It is a case of sticking to the rules/criteria for our strategies and therefore being pragmatic by dealing with our trades sensibly and realistically, based on what we are actually seeing during each trade. This means that we are reacting to what happens in the market and we are able to fully manage every trade that we undertake to completion; regardless of whether the outcome means taking our pre-targeted profit or a pre-arranged controlled loss.
We are taking a principled approach to our trading, by using strategies based on a given set of rules/criteria and we stick to this 100%. They are our principles for trading and are what guide us to becoming consistent and ensuring long term profitability.
By trading this way on a regular basis, we are getting to know our strategies inside out and back to front. This also means that we become more confident, because we know exactly what we need to do, at any point during a trade.
Confidence, breeds consistency and success, but the hard work needs to be applied to make this possible.
We are not relying on luck; we are relying on the historical stats/data that we have available to us and this means that we will be right, many more times than we are wrong. The key element in all this, is to manage any trades that are not going as we expect them to, BEFORE our loss becomes unmanageable!
Practice, practice, practice; because the more that you practice, the more you will improve. You can do it, so stick to the plan!