Belief:
Choosing the right stock is not a trading system.
What this means to me:
There are many requirements for a trading system. Stock selection is only one of them.
What this belief gets me into:
A trading system requires rules for entry, exit (for profit and loss), position sizing, and choosing a market.
Whatever the market, I will need rules for the other parts of a trading system.
If I have those other rules, does the stock even matter?
Choosing a stock is still part the system.
How do I choose a stock?
What do I need to know about the fundamentals of the business behind the stock?
What sort of price action do I look for in a stock?
What this belief gets me out of:
Claiming the result was from the stock, not the system or me.
It could get me out of paying attention to important news about a stock:
e.g. If the stock isn’t important, do I need to know about an upcoming merger?
Even having a system could keep me from looking at how I execute it.
Limitations of this belief:
Any belief that focuses only on the stock or the system and neglects the psychology of the person carrying out the trades or constructing the system is incomplete. Beliefs expressed in the negative leave open a wide territory for positive associations. If choosing a stock is not a trading system, what does it mean to choose the right stock? What does it mean to have a trading system?
Utility of this belief:
As with the previous post on choosing a stock, this is an incomplete statement. It points towards a truth that there are more criteria to success than choosing a stock, but otherwise is not very informative.
Conclusions:
This is a belief in need to further refinement. An uncarved block of potential, not to simply be discarded, but rather chiseled and cut until clarity emerges. Some of that clarity comes when statements are equivalency comparisons rather than negative exclusions.