【Trading Wisdom】How to Improve Execution in Trading

After you’ve selected a trading model—i.e., defined your goals—the next key step is to improve your trading execution. Enhancing execution isn’t just about empty words; it requires changing the subconscious mind. Altering the subconscious takes time, and the typical process unfolds as follows: from "understanding the logic" to "believing in it," then to "shifting your mindset," and finally to "taking action."

Master the Theory of Your Trading Model

Relying solely on practical experience without theory won’t work—it won’t help you progress in trading or view the market from a higher perspective. Theory serves practical trading and is critical for improving and optimizing your trading system. However, relying solely on theory without practical experience is also ineffective: it easily leads to unrealistic illusions and reduces you to a armchair strategist who only talks the talk.

To "understand the logic," you must adopt a scientific approach and use data to validate your methods. From a statistical standpoint, you need to verify whether your method can achieve relatively stable profits. At the same time, real trading data is essential to analyze and confirm the feasibility of the method—including its core ideas, algorithms, and applications. When learning any trading method, you must first grasp its underlying logic; only then can you move on to "believing in it" and "shifting your mindset."

Common universal theories in trading include Dow Theory, Elliott Wave Theory, and Gann Theory. Different traders, with different personalities, will find different theories suitable for them. The most important thing is to find the one that aligns with you.

"Belief" Is the Premise of "Mindset Shift"

No matter which of the three major theories you learn, to internalize it as your own skill, you must overcome doubts, build unwavering confidence, and fully understand yourself. Your personality and mental state form the foundation for learning others’ methods. "Mindset shapes perception"; all insights come from within. If you don’t start with genuine belief in your heart, no amount of hard work will help you grasp the true essence of trading.

After believing, you must also "uphold and adhere" to the theory. "Uphold" means proactively accepting and recognizing established logic and methods, transforming them into your own ideas during trading, and using them to guide your actions. This requires true acceptance from the heart, not just superficial agreement. "Adhere" means sticking to what you’ve accepted, never abandoning it lightly. After learning, you must be willing to embrace new methods, correct outdated perceptions in a timely manner, and—more importantly—courageously discard old bad trading habits to free yourself from confusion.

If you harbor doubts and refuse to accept new approaches, you’ll always remain the same person you were before, with no real change. In the end, you’ll only continue trading in old patterns, repeatedly facing the pain that trading brings. Here, we can draw inspiration from how Buddhist practitioners uphold precepts: Buddhist precepts may seem like external constraints, but beneath the surface, they reflect a person’s beliefs, self-discipline, and execution. The persistence of Buddhist practitioners boils down to nothing but faith.

Dull, Repetitive Persistence

Once you find a profitable method that suits you, the core is to apply it repeatedly. The long-term process of persistence is inevitably dull, and human nature hates dullness. If you change your trading behavior on a whim, you’ll likely cause unnecessary losses to your account. On the premise of gaining a deeper understanding of the market and yourself, you can make reasonable adjustments to your trading behavior—but these adjustments should be limited to optimizing operational details, not altering the basic theory of your method.

Improving execution and aligning knowledge with action requires upholding your beliefs during learning and trading, truly transforming the method into your own thoughts and actions, and continuously repeating, summarizing, and optimizing. As long as you remain involved in market trading, "execution" will always be a relevant topic—one that requires constant self-reminder and continuous reinforcement along your trading journey.