what do you do when you get trigger happy?
like you want to buy/sell very often
and once your in a trade, do you get the feelings of wanting to close it immediately?
i get these feelings a lot, when i get these feelings,
i sometimes even convince myself that a to enter a trade
i sometimes even convince myself the trade is going to get bad for me so i exit before i hit my stoploss
hence not following my plan that sets up
i tried going for a smoke break but while im looking at the charts, i talk myself into trading when it doesn’t even look favorable…i hate this feeling!
what about you? what do you do?
I’ve even tried trading at lower timeframes but it’s just not moving enough…
I used to have this problem, so what i did was made system to suit my pace. Now, I think i can stumble to the PC, half sleeping, drunk, whatever, and still make a trade, and be confident I will cash in, or hit my SL…
I smoked between trades, but then i was up to 3 packs a day, but I quit, now been 14 days smokeless…
Trading with a group of friends is what I think initially got me past my tendency to over trade. I wasn’t taking secret trades on the side either. Just analyzing charts together and talking about the reasons for entry. The point is there is some accountability and enjoyment besides the actual trades. Maybe you could start a journal here on BP sharing every trade you take (after the fact if you prefer) and your reasons for entering/exiting. Make that part of what you enjoy about trading…not just the thrill of being in a trade.
Or, just look back at your record, see what the results would be if you didn’t make bad decisions, look in the mirror and say WTF!!?
I used to have the same feeling too, that is when I decided maybe I should start out as a swing trader instead of a day trader which would allow me to open a position then shut my computer off for the night (or take a long few hour break) staying confident about my trade until I open up the program the next morning to see the results then I either keep it for a few days or close it depending on the situation. Doing this gives me confidence in my trades compared to sitting at the computer watching and getting all stressed out at the moment while the chart is on a joy ride. Maybe in the future I’ll switch to being a day trader when I can keep my confidence up while watching the results unfold in front of me, but for now I’ll just open the position and then do something else confident i will either make those pips or loose a few thanks to my tight stop loss limit.
Me too, now I spend Sunday evening anyalising directional bias and review post nyc every day, then I trade the bias, I only ever very occasionaly counter the London close. The main issue I found is that I was chasing profits with tight SL or I was closing early sometimes at 30% of my target only to see the trade breach my initial target, on the flip side I was letting bad trades draw my SL’s I found it hard to BE but then swapped to measuring I. Pips and percent… Heres what happened last week I openned at a OTE and in a couple of hours I’m 1% up the 5%(ish) up then I closed at nearly 10% up on my account balance that gave me 5 bad trades or 10 bad trades at 1% risk as it where I turn another 6 trades 2 bad -3% and 4 good +4% overall I came out 11% up at friday close, but I k.ow for sure that I got let the good trades run even when I watched 7% turn to 2% then rally to 9.7 % war h real money move like that is I dam sight harder for me then watching pips… So I’d take a 1% profit here a 1% loss there… Market started to eat me slowly cuz I wasn’t building profits and buffers on the good un’s. I’ll say this cuz I know this myself, if you feel like getting out of a trade as soon as you are in… Two things, you either can’t afford to lose you trade / money or you haven’t done enough homework to have absolute cofidence… Watch the markets, paper trade after you close, and never drop below 15 mins for entry. Also try setti.g up a video game and set a egg timer to review. Goodluck happy pips
one of the most hardest habbits, or should i say things to avoid, but yeah, swing trading is one way to do it, another thing is, put a note infornt of your monitor as reminder that its not gonna help you, set your rules set your TP and SL and stick to it no matter what
i think i will set up a small account to help me trade my impulsive moves trading 1 microlots max
then perhaps even analyze and learn from these impulsive trades
it’s worse than gambling
it’s like having no control on my emotions
and i will try to make a trading journal
If you know you are in a good trend, why not take atleast half of the profit then move your initial SL to BE and let the other half run but atleast you get paid first? Before you let the other half run, you are “anticipating” that the price will hit the next support/resistance if not that day, maybe the next day…
I can understand if you want to bank everything and close your trade in one day just to make sure. For me, my current goal per week is 50 pips consistently. So, even if I only got 20 pips that day I’ll close it and done for that day. However, there are some big news/economic events that will moved the market for about 100-200 pips in one day.If this is the case you can hold on to your winning trades and let it run while you are moving your SL to BE, etc.
Also, when looking for directional bias buy/sell for the week/day, look at the higher time frame such as Weekly, Daily, 4 hr. and 1 hr.chart… lesser than that is just a noise… You will see it clearly where the price is going on the higher time frame not the lower time frame.
[B]EDIT[/B]: If you are in losing trade and you lose say -20 pips, then your done for that day…wait again for other “opportunity”… it will be there as long as you know where and when to look for Practice Discipline…
I moved to trade once a day and that’s it. I prefer action and staying in the market, but I don’t want to push any trades.
I started trading low pip sizes across 20+ pairs. Gives me daily action, keeps me in the market, and the losses don’t even faze me as there’s plenty going on that’s good.
There is a trading way to help with this feeling of having to be in the action.
You have done some sort of anaylsis, you are fairly new to the game, you really feel that you are right and you need to get into it and not in a demo a/c - you need experience of the ride.
Simple - enter with low, low leverage - have only two rules - if you are right and your trade moves in the intended direction then add to it (with a pre-defined signal/setup/scenario) or if you are wrong - then exit.
When you do add look to see can you can in turn lower risk at the same time ( your signal/setup/scenario could dictate a lowering of your SL).
Nah - the more i write the more I realise that you need more than 2 rules, like for example never, ever average down (the no.1 biggest mistake) - the simple answer is self discipline - something that comes with age.
