Business

There are three spokes that make up, what I call the Wheel of Success as it relates to trading. The first spoke is content. Content consists of all the external and internal market information that traders utilize to make their trading decisions. All traders must purchase value-added content that provides utility in making their trading decisions.

The most important type of content is internal market information (IMI). IMI simply is time and price information as disseminated by the exchanges. After all, we all make our trading decisions in the present tense based on time and price. In order to scalp the markets effectively, we must have the most live and up-to-date time and price information seamlessly delivered to our PCs through a reliable execution platform and/or charting package.

Without instantaneous time and price information, we would be trading in the dark.
The second spoke is mechanics. Mechanics is how you access the markets and the methodology that you employ to enter/exit your trades. You must master mechanics before you can enjoy any success as a trader. A simple keystroke error can result in a loss of thousands of dollars. A trader can ruin his entire day with an inadvertent trade entry error.

Once you have mastered order execution, though, it is like riding a bike. The process of entering and exiting trades becomes seamless and mindless. Fast and efficient trade execution, especially if you are trading with a scalping methodology, will enable you to hit a bid or take an offer before your competitors do. Remember, the fastest survive.

The third and most important spoke in the Wheel of Success is discipline. You must
attain discipline if you ever hope to achieve any level of trading success. Trading discipline is practiced 100 percent of the time, every trade, every day. Review the following 25 Rules of Trading Discipline. You must condition yourself to behave with discipline over and over again. Many of my traders and clients read through the rules every day (believe it or not) before the trading session begins. It doesn't take more than three minutes to read through them. Think of the exercise as praying reminding you how to conduct yourself throughout the trading session.(Douglas E. Zalesky)