The problem was that the trader was placed on a strict risk management regimen. Essentially he had a mandate to make money, but lose very little. This tight regime led him to trade increasingly short term to limit his losses. That short term horizon did not allow him to meaningfully participate in the bigger picture ideas he generated. On the few occasions in which he did try to faithfully follow his research, he drew down before the position ultimately worked out and had to stop out prematurely. That compounded his frustration.
Quite simply, the trader's strength was as a big picture thinker and investor. He was given a mandate to be a trader and that took him out of the zone of his strengths. Journaling and rigidly adhering to a process that did not capture his strengths only served to block and frustrate those strengths. His weakness was a function of strengths that could not find expression.
So it is with many traders. They work and work and work on their "discipline" and "process", when in reality the problem is that their trading method does not capture their true cognitive and personality strengths. If you are finding that the usual psychological approaches are not helping your trading, I encourage you to check out the recent article on how our strengths can create weaknesses. My hope is that the article gets you thinking about your strengths in a new light, so that, instead of working on "problems", you can focus on leveraging the best of your information processing, emotional, and interpersonal assets.
If your trading results aren't what you hoped, even after considerable work, perhaps you are trying to participate in markets in ways that thwart the best of who you are. Working harder at the wrong things can only produce disappointing results. We are best able to figure out markets if we first have figured out ourselves.
Further Reading: How Our Strengths Can Weaken Our Performance
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