The seventh commandment of profitable trading is to write your plan. You wouldn’t go headlong into a business without any plan at all. You would have to have a business plan about what you would do, how you would make money, what your processes would be, and what your backup plans were.

Most people go into the markets with no plan: no rules, risk management, and if-this-happens-then-I’ll-do-that. The trouble is the market is about money, and money is emotional. If your emotion goes up, your intelligence goes down fast and a lot. People make dumb financial decisions when they’re stressed.

If you make your decisions in advance when the market is closed, and you’ve got it written down, and it’s a plan, and then you follow your plan, the emotions don’t get in the way. If your plan was “Okay, I’m following this set of rules/this system. I will add money to my account on this date every month until I’ve got this much in my account. I’m not going to withdraw any money until I’ve got that much in my account, and then I’ll only withdraw a certain percentage. I will not open any new trades if there’s any death in the family or any emotionally compromising situation. Every day, at this time, I’m going to check my trades,” and so on.

It’s planned. You know what you are going to do in advance. Thus, when something stressful is happening in life, it doesn’t compromise your trading decisions because you already made the trading decisions. That could reduce the stress levels and reduce the emotional impact.

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Adrian Reid Founder and CEO
Adrian is a full-time private trader based in Australia and also the Founder and Trading Coach at Enlightened Stock Trading, which focuses on educating and supporting traders on their journey to profitable systems trading. Following his successful adoption of systematic trading which generated him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year using just 30 minutes a day to manage his system trading workflow, Adrian made the easy decision to leave his professional work in the corporate world in 2012. Adrian trades long/short across US, Australian and international stock markets and the cryptocurrency markets. His trading systems are now fully automated and have consistently outperformed international share markets with dramatically reduced risk over the past 20+ years. Adrian focuses on building portfolios of profitable, stable and robust long term trading systems to beat market returns with high risk adjusted returns. Adrian teaches traders from all over the world how to get profitable, confident and consistent by trading systematically and backtesting their own trading systems. He helps profitable traders grow and smooth returns by implementing a portfolio of trading systems to make money from different markets and market conditions.