Feeling guilty on missing a trade

Actually, you should feel remorse if it means that you didn’t follow your strategy. Discipline is key! When you make it acceptable for you that you skip trades because you thought it would be a losing one, you are killing your system.

Get into the trade when your system tells you so, especially when you think is will be a losing one.

Just don’t get depressed when you MISS one, but be worried when you didn’t enter one that you should have.

http://forums.babypips.com/forextown/79689-great-trading-book-free-internet-real-gem.html

Take a look here if you are looking for a book to cool down.

There are times when our trading strategy may not work the way we want it to be. What is the reason and why we are actually getting the losses is also what we may have to think about …

I see no reason to feel guilty about missing a trade, to be honest. I can’t go back and change that, so it’s better to just analyze what I did wrong and I hope I would do better next time. Guilt, natural as it is, would just cloud my judgement.

Your statement is absolutely perfect and if each and every trader follows this then certainly they can stop putting themselves down and think of moving up in their trading life.

We have to learn doing our trades the right way and that will certainly add up to the profits we are making from our trading business :slight_smile:

I haven’t met such a book but I can advice you to draw your attention to something else after such trades. Something else, maybe reading or watching tv, and some time after, when you calm down, get back to trading? I do it sometimes and it works.

A trader should feel guilty only if he went against MM and TS and the deal turned out lossing. Anything else isn’t the trader’s fault.

Basically you should not feel guilty for a missed trade,just a little will help you learn the pattern so you don’t miss it next time you see it again. You should feel guilty if you didn’t followed your rules, because you jumped out the displine train and let your emotions take over.

It really works and works for me as well , taking time off the screens to do something productive and time consuming ,you get calm and sort of happy with the results of the work you’ve done .

I agree, it’s important to have an activity you can use to relax when you’re not trading, something to help your mind rest so you can look at the charts with fresh eyes when you return to trading.

It’s not really a case of whether you ‘should’ or ‘should not’ feel guilty, emotions arise as they arise, and are not under direct conscious control. What we do with them as they arise is a different story, and we can decide that they’re helpful or not in a certain context and then have a strategy for responding to them. Although that’s not something you can just start doing, it takes time and effort to learn to self regulate and work positively with emotions.

You don’t need to figure out this stuff on your own either, 1000s of years of wisdom is available! You can get that ‘directly’ from approaches in stoicism or buddhism, for example, or, if you prefer, more modern, evidence based approaches, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. Many excellent books available.

I would strongly caution repressing or blocking emotions, the general consensus is that leads to more not less problems the longer term.

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Guilt, as an emotion, is provoked by the sense that you’ve done something wrong. As such it can actually be controlled by convincing yourself you’ve done nothing wrong.

Work on your emotions. Opportunities happen everyday in Forex market. Good luck!

Yeah, or this time can be spent in analyzing mistakes. When I turn on my brain and logic, and start to think about causes and consequences, I notice that unnecessary emotions pass away…

I wouldn’t feel quilty If I missed a trade. I view each trade merely as a series of probabilities. So I don’t have to worry about it since there is always another. But the most important thing is this, Know why you take a trade and what must happen for you to remain in it.

That is my approach as well. I feel a lot guiltier if I do open a trade and then I lose money because of it.

Maybe its a blessing in disguise so we i think there is no need to regret, instead we should plan for our future trading rather than chasing a lost opportunity.

You shouldn’t feel guilty for missing a trade. Usually everything happens for a reason. What you can do in these cases is to calm down and change your point of view. Take a look at your mistakes and learn from them. These missed trades might turn out to be even better opportunities. I am not sure if some books on the matter will help you to get over that aggression but they could point out some common mistakes. Only you can help yourself to become more focused and disciplined. Just follow your strategy and try to not get too emotional.

That is my opinion as well. Even if you miss out on a trade that supposed mistake could lead to an even better trading opportunity. There is no point in stressing out about it beyond analyzing why you missed that trade.