I call this my personal and unofficial three R's for being successful at making any type of financial type trades for profit. For the most part, they are all a zero-sum game and from having combined risky maneuvers and silly gambles all my life, it's a culmination of having learned to stick to what works best for me and is comfortable.
I think I really prefer to be the less active and more relaxed type, so I have learned to fathom the up and down cycles of the market. It's hard to stay disciplined though from constantly watching the market at first. I mean anything could happen.
Once a profitable trade has been made, the natural thing is to prepare for the next trade ( rinse). The second thing to do is apply the same strategy that made you money in the first place (repeat). The third thing is to improve anything like your timing of entry, better techniques you notice, etc. to improve upon your accuracy of winning (refine).
Applying those three R's is pretty much how you do things in a nutshell. Of course, there are methods you have to find that make you money which is so difficult to do and overcome. I guess you have to be smart enough to finally get there and keep on maintaining the confidence by playing less risky as much as possible until you are sure that you got the hang of it.
