I need guidance top stop emotions and greed

I once deposited some money on a account years ago and traded with that. After a while I took my deposit out as I made profit, and kept trading the left over money. That was a huge thing to do, why? It is no longer my money! It is free money, so I don’t care a lot when I lose some of it or even a lot. And that freed myself from being too emotionally attached to losses.

I still am impatient, but I don’t care about a loss. Important to me is that I follow my system and found a way to distance myself from the money.

Another trick: I like to start a new account with a small amount and I trade aggresivelly (don’t do it yourselves, I know what I am doing). When a trade is volatile and I feel a bit jibberish (sometimes that happens, even with free money. There is pride involved!) I remind myself that I once started that account with 50 EUR and 0,02 lots so I am only losing 20 cents per pips allthough my broker and screen says differently.

When we plan things on long run then certainly the momentary greediness can be avoided. Think of scaling the capital and making huge gains with it.

  1. Stop caring about other people’s profits.
  2. Start caring about your own big win vs small loss record
  3. Accept that consistency is more important than quick money ALWAYS
  4. Accept that simple is always better
  5. Accept nothing but ideas that make sense

I always tell these to myself and it works for me. Hope it works for you too.

This site called The Forex Guy taught me those five statements. Worth the read. Just discard it if the articles don’t make sense to you.

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I don’t think I’ve ever cared much about other people’s profits, but there was a time when I was too easily influenced by their opinions about when one should open or close a trade. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they weren’t, but one should first and foremost have confidence in their own opinion.

If you’re afraid, then this may not be the right time for you to trade or invest.

Trading and investing can be really mentally and emotionally taxing.

Unless we are able to know the correct timings for doing our trades the trading will not be easy and the chances of getting losses will remain high…

Traders should be aware of their trading currencies such that they can plan their trade along the right market sessions to reap the most of the market moves.

I agree, having a trading plan before you open any positions is the best way to approach trading. It mitigates the risk you are taking and it gives you a ready set of options in case your trade doesn’t go the way you think it would have.

With the use of a good and stable Trading plan we are moving closer towards doing such type of trading that can give us a good income and also help us in earning high profits…

One easy way to decrease the emotional effect of your trades is to lower your leverage, your trade size. Remember, increasing the trade size, will often increase stress levels as traders are allowing each individual trade to carry too great of an impact on their trading account. Another thing I’ll recommend is having a trading plan. An old adage says ‘Failing to plan is planning to fail, This can really be true when it comes to Forex trade. There are many trading strategies that can help traders accomplish their goals. Have one, and you’ll succeed.

Hi George
It’s been 4 years now, how are you faring with greed and some of the other emotional challenges you faced? Have your strategies worked?

I’m interested, let me know…

Do you have a trading plan? If not, start by making one, as it helps you stay organized and focused, which also helps with anxiety.

I think this is self-deception. Successful trades you attribute your calculation, and unsuccessful trades - the lack of control in themselves. It seems to you that you can somehow influence your luck by strengthening your discipline. But it is not. Deep down you realize that you are lucky, but if you continue to trade you may not be lucky. And then failure will destroy all earned profit.

Greed is a sure license to non-debateable failure in forex trading. The moment your ego becomes too big and your emotions overcome your trading principles, it can never go well for you. There are psychology topics in pipsiology classes, make use of them

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I don’t think you can remove your emotions completely, they will always be there. What you can do is learn to keep them under control and not let those emotions take over your trading. Simple when said but might not be so easy to do honestly…

Also… a trading plan, have you thought about making one?

Practice.

Ever done anything scarey? How scarey was it the 100th time? No doubt a lot less frightening.

How scarey was it the 1,000th time?. No doubt it wasn’t frightening at all, plus you already knew in advance everything that could happen from the best outcome to the worst.

Proper risk management is the key to overcoming your greed. You have to be real to yourself and choose between winning small but steady, and losing big. Emotions and trade don’t mix, so you just have to train yourself to control your emotions. No one can make you learn better than yourself

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Hi George,

First of all, it is quiet impressive that you are trying to do two challenging tasks at a time and that on its own should be a source of encouragement, support, and motivation for you to keep your head up and keep moving forward in your direction.

The psychology of trading is tricky and I personally believe that most traders failed due to their lack of psychology management just like some of the other users here have mentioned already.

There isn’t a permanent and a defined single solution in my opinion, because your emotions will continue to change based on various scenarios involving your trading choices and also your personal life events. So think about it as an endless scope of emotions that you will be experiencing, because you will continue to face news events personally and professionally.

How can you manage something that is endless and so unpredictable? What helped me is an exact process that is fixed and used regardless of the scenario.

Design a process that consists of steps and follow these steps every single time regardless of the scenario you are facing. In parallel to setting up a process and exact steps, you can set specific consequences to yourself if you fail to follow or decide to skip one of your pre-defined process and steps. For example, let us assume you come out from Military on a Tuesday which means you get to trade on Wednesday. You are excited, you haven’t been trading for a week, you are filled with enthusiasm and energy to make some money. That rush however must be controlled. So you start the day by following the steps you have designed for yourself. In any given situation, if you skip or fail to follow one of your steps you simply assign a consequence to do that. That consequence could be that you will not be allowed to trade next week and therefore you have nothing else to look forward to “professionally” besides military. You will be more careful next time, because you don’t wanna forbid yourself from trading and so on …

This is just a suggestion from my side which has been working for me very well over the last couple of years. Managing to control and manipulate my own psychological and exact state of mind at any given situation has been the main reason behind my success in trading. Of course I didn’t realize all of this overnight. Just like you I have failed many times, before finally putting together a process that has been proven to be working efficiently and effectively.

All the best of luck with your trading.

#OnwardAndUpward

KeepCalm

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It’s not every other day that a trader confesses to being greedy. In that case, you’ve done well to accept your situation. You can never solve a problem before accepting that it exists in the first place. Take trading psychology lessons, thay can really be of help to you

Try reading “trading in the zone” by mark douglas

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