Chris Lori (4× Olympian, World Cup bobsled champion, and Commodity Trading Advisor) and founder of Pro Traders Club argues that trading success is less about market knowledge and more about who you are as a person.
Here are the rules every trader breaks — and why fixing them matters more than any indicator or strategy.

He lays it all out in his infamous document “Face the Trader Within”..

Rules Every Trader Breaks Around Risk and Equity

1. Equity Management is the foundation of everything. Risk only 0.1–1.5% of available equity per trade. Real rewards come from disciplined compounding over 18–24 months, not from swinging for home runs.
2. Don’t Average Down on a losing position. Ask honestly whether adding to a loser fits your equity plan and whether the market has already proven you wrong.
3. Chasing the Market in a leveraged instrument is the fastest way to donate money to the market. Jumping in late and flipping direction out of frustration destroys accounts faster than almost anything else. It’s one of the most common rules traders break under pressure.
4. The Probability Continuum describes how markets shift constantly between high and low probability environments, often subtly. Missing the ideal entry and chasing the move later means more risk for less reward.

Mindset Rules Every Trader Breaks

1. A Fresh View is required before every trade. Winning streaks breed overconfidence and losing streaks breed paralysis. Strip the emotional residue of recent results before analysing anything new.
2. Discipline is built through hard experience, not born overnight. Every successful trader has been beaten by the market before becoming consistently profitable. It’s a pattern Ed Seykota also warns traders about.
3. Denial equals Debit. Traders who refuse to admit their shortcomings keep placing erratic, emotional orders and keep losing. Acknowledging you are not yet equipped is where real progress begins.
4. Who Are You? Trading is the ultimate personality test. If you know the market but not yourself, your success will be random. Self-knowledge is a genuine trading edge. It’s the same trait that separates weak hands from strong hands in volatile markets.

Discipline and Patience: Where Traders Slip Up

1. Patience Pays. Poor setups and choppy markets should simply be left alone. The ability to do nothing is itself a skill and ignoring it is one of the quietest trading rules to break.
2. Overtrade, Underpaid. Over-trading is impatience in disguise. The more you trade without edge, the faster your account shrinks.
3. Use a Filter. Analysts, chat rooms, and trading buddies are noise. Independent thinking grounded in your own tested method is what wins.
4. Dear God, Please Help Me is what happens when ego and poor equity management let a loss spiral beyond control. Prevention is the only cure.

Strategy and Execution Rules

1. Traders versus Academics shows that psychological adaptability beats intellectual analysis every time. Markets do not follow the textbook.
2. Focus on the Task, not the money. Like a bobsled driver at 139 km/h, concentrate entirely on execution and the result takes care of itself. This is a rule every trader breaks the moment emotions creep in.
3. Training Fear begins with sizing positions so a loss feels inconsequential. Then train yourself to act precisely at the moment of maximum fear, when your analysis supports it.
4. Fight for Every Dollar. There are no shortcuts. Small disciplines compound, just as hundredths of a second do in a bobsled race.

Final Rules Every Trader Breaks Before Mastery

1. Winners and Losers look identical at the point of entry. Abandoning a sound method after a losing streak is how traders miss the very next winner.
2. Be Clear in Your Plan. When intensity is high, clarity of plan is your only anchor.
3. What Strategy is for Me? Stop chasing the holy grail. Find what fits your temperament, make it your own, and refine it continuously chasing someone else’s edge is another rule traders break without realizing it.
4. The Cost of Education is paid either upfront through proper learning or far more expensively through losses to the market. Greed bypasses rational thinking in even the most intelligent people.

As Lori concludes: “You Are What You Do. Trade With Discipline.”
Master these, and you’ll break far fewer rules every trader breaks.