Kardec Trader explains why pure mechanical trading fails: it forces you to take every signal regardless of market conditions. The better approach is deciding your discretionary filters upfront, so you're screening for the right setups before entering, turning discretion itself into a mechanical process.
Some traders, if there's a sweet spot, some traders are a bit more towards the discretion side, some are a bit more towards the mechanical. As long as you own the process, you don't have to be slap banging them. I'm not sitting here saying this is the most optimum, but after working with so many traders over the years, you realize that I usually see the trader when they've been over here, too much discretion, they go all the way over there and they struggle because they go, I just need a strategy. And then they want something where it's, I'm going to buy above this candle, sell below this candle and stop goes in the middle. And what you don't realize is that might work, but there's a consequence to that and you've got to take every single trade. Whereas with this, you've got this filtering process. And the other issue I see as well, I like to get my discretion out the way at the start. I know that market is in that condition and if the filters are there, which add to price potentially moving further, I make the decision to do that there. The rest is just a wait. And what I found is most traders end up using discretion. So formalize it, do it up front so you can kind of, in a way, making a mechanical process for your discretion. Great way of putting it.
