"Talking about discipline...
Yes it is so fundamental and yet so difficult because some of my best moves were made by breaking the very rules that I tried so desperately to follow.
Create your own system or another man will enslave you."

David Fuller's view Many thanks for adding to the excellent contributions in this series. The first sentence above reflects the value of experience; the second shows great wisdom.

In addition to this week's earlier comments, here are three points regarding trading which I think are important:

1) the learning curve is steep and you have to go through most of this yourself; 2) do not even think about trading unless you have developed some confidence in your price chart reading ability, which should focus on technical facts such as relative performance, trend consistency and commonality; 3) you will also need some luck in the form of trend consistency and especially some big medium-term trends.

Some people understandably want shortcuts in the form of hot tips from well publicised and often self-acknowledged 'experts'. Even if they are right more often than wrong, imitation is unlikely to increase one's perspective. Survey and select what looks best to you, and you will learn more in the process.

A trend is a living entity, just like you and me, although it is created by crowds of other traders and investors. It will have its consistent, reliable phases and also its spasms of uncertainty and therefore inconsistency - again, just like you and me. Trade the consistent periods because we enter markets for profits, not sport. Always remember that a period of sustained consistency will eventually give way to a phase of whipsaw inconsistency, and vice versa.

There is a philosophically healthy saying: we make our own luck. It helps us to take responsibility for our own actions. However we all need to recognise that markets are prone to some big, secular (multiyear) trends. We sometimes get lucky and are in the right place at the right time for these secular moves, although if we do not know our market history we may not recognise when the big trends eventually end, let alone understand why. If we train ourselves to be diligent students of the markets, we will increase our ability to identify and profit from the big secular trends, which are far more important than their lesser brethren.

Would fixed interest specialist Bill Gross of PIMCO have seen his fund become the biggest in the world without the 30-year decline in yields? I do not think so although we should certainly commend him for the vision and persistence to profit handsomely from this secular trend. Would Warren Buffett have the reputation he enjoys today without the bull-run which took the DJIA from 1000 in 1982 to over 11,750 in 1999? I do not think so and here also we should acknowledge that he played it superbly. Closer to home, quite a few veteran subscribers have done extremely well in gold's secular bull market, despite some payback time in 2008 and again in 2H 2011.