By trading a complete trading system, you solidify places in your trading where your success can break down. Relying on system-generated trades, you get to focus on high expected value trades and eliminate the sub-optimal trades.
Benefits of a complete trading system:
A good cure for daily set-ups is a systematized set of rules. It takes out all the uncertainty around your decision making process. That can give you a sense of confidence and self-esteem.
You get to trade from a place of personal power. Hard to make money trading long term without confidence.
You won't have to interpret any chart patterns: the price will pick up anything about the instrument that is bullish or bearish. You will therefore be cured of the need to massage charts all day and night, thereby freeing up hours of time each day and the brain power that goes with it.
You can trade any market around the world.
You can blend several trading systems like an asset allocation to smooth out your equity curve. For example, you can put 40% in a breakout system and 60% in a moving average system. Or, you can put 50% in a short to intermediate trend following system, and 50% in a long term trend following system. Possibilities are endless.
You don't need subscriptions, chat rooms, or premium research.
Systems and Emotions
Systems don't remove emotions from your trading although that has been included in many marketing materials. I believe that began by a clever marketer who doesn't trade and wouldn't know if that statement was true or not.
You still have to put on the trades, and if you experience fear around losing money or greed around not making enough, you can hijack the system and blow up.
Ed Seykota set up the Incline Village Trading Tribe for traders to get in touch with their feelings and psychology around trading for this very reason. We never spoke about trades, set-ups, or chart patterns.
It was not only a complete snooze to do so, those don't help a trader become profitable. They do, however, provide fodder for good conversation and for building relationships and bonding I guess, but you can do that without becoming a trader if that's what your real goal is - to bond with people.
Lastly, I think trading a complete trading system can provide you with a great quality of life. It makes no sense to beat the crap out of yourself to make it as a trader.
Martyrs don't get paid and as Jim Morrison sang, "...no time to wallow in the mire..." Build yourself a simple system that takes care of your entries, exits, and position sizing, and in doing so you'll remove the weakest link in your trading: you.
