The Ten Cardinal Rules
- Learn to function in a tense, unstructured, and unpredictable environment.
- Be an independent thinker versus a conventional thinker.
- Work out a way to handle your emotions and maintain objectivity.
- Don’t rely on hope and fear in the conventional sense.
- Work continuously to improve yourself, giving importance to self-examination and recognizing that your personality and way of responding to events are a critical part of the game. This requires continuous coaching.
- Modify your normal responses to certain events.
- Be willing to face problems, understand them, and recognize that they are in some way related to your behavior.
- Know when problems can be resolved and then apply methods to solve them. That may mean giving up some control in order to gain a different control. It may mean changes in your personality, learning self-reliance, or giving up independence and ego to become part of a trading team.
- Understand the larger framework in which trading occurs—how the complexity of the marketplace and your personality both must be taken into account in order to develop the mastery of trading.
- Develop the right mind-set for trading—a willingness to commit to the kinds of changes in personal habits and beliefs that will drastically alter your life. To do this requires a willingness to surrender to the forces of the game. In order to be able to play at a maximum level, you have to let go of your ego and your need to have things your way.