Opinion Piece: By Jonathan Primo Fuego Galicia, CFO
The importance of effective and consistent trading methodologies, along with other factors, and forces can denigrate performance or lead to losses. Even the most profitable trading approach can be rendered useless in the hands of an undisciplined trader. I’ll be honest: Clearly, the weakest link in the trading chain has always been and will always be the trader bias. Twenty-six years ago, my mentor would say, in order, to achieve success, you must be disciplined. I would then ask him, what do you mean by the word discipline? He would always reply; to see the deal clearly, you must learn to acknowledge and write down all your bias, Primo.
You can not be “DISCIPLINED” until you first recognize the behaviors that will cause you to break rank and become undisciplined. Hundreds of articles and at least several dozen books have been written about traders or investors psychology none-the-less “Trader Bias” seem to be ignored. While these books offer solutions to the problems of poor trader discipline, I believe that there is a distinct and straightforward solution that many of us overlook—discipline in the absence of confidence in a hollow objective bias.