Treating a Loss as a Close Friend | Forex Blog: Pipsychology
Interesting article.
Well my aproach is quite simple, i have a systems and rules established that never changes, what changes is the strategy and the ideas before a trade. Remember that most ideas can and will be wrong. Because of the lack of funds i do daytrading but i have a conservative quote of loses and that is two per week. Once i hit a good idea i beg for the position remains open and continue winning and winning, that is it.
From now on and because the lack of ideas to post here, i’ll be suggesting some books and authors to read and time to time provide you the summary and main ideas of each read book. Right now i am reading “Hedge Fund Mastesrs: How Top Edge Fund Traders set Goals, Overcome Barriers and Achieve Peak Performance” by Ari Kiev. Quite Interesting. Once finished i’ll post a comment for it.
Well, it fact it does not. Trading is a chaoutic thing. You have an entry set up and put your trade, and that is it, just accept it can and will turn against you. So you must have a high goal on your trade. Well, this is just not enough.
Maybe it is too much. Try this, and i asume you have written rules for your trading; make a behavior journal too. Each day make an evaluation of the self commitment of each rule. For example, just like me, i have a rule that says “Minimize loses, two max per week”. And today i had one but still not overruling the quote so i give myself an A+ or a 10 or 100 for today, tomorrow i give myself an A+ because i will not trade tomorrow. I have another rules sayin “Mantain Calm” and today i gave mysel a 0. So each day you make an average and your overall average will tell you how disciplined are you. If you concentrate in this notes you will feel the pressure to behave instead to overtrade. Try it.
Regards.
Are you having 10 loses in a row?, well i am having 30 and something. But i am still here becuse i have enough funds to resist 200 more loses. Accept it it is not easy. But the ggod thing about a losing streak is that you learn to get used to it. Just that simple.
Regards.
Well, it is quite obvious, let’s say you are having an unbearable amount of loss. Make yourself this basic quiestion ¿Am I still playing my own rules? If so no problem, keep on going it happens, loses happen but if you sistematicaly are jumping away from the manual even just for a little, well that is a flag for you to get out of trading, at least for one day, I don’t say more because it is difficult at the begining take an fx vacation, it is so dam temptating to trade because we are adicted to.
Another red flag is when you are having outide troubles, yes, it does affect trading and even the most disciplined trader stretches the line out. You become axious, angry and your trading is biased, more emotional than logical. Even on alfa state wich is hard to gain is hard to trade and harder to take loses, in f**** up state emotions take place and loses are much harder to take until we reach the break point and start trading just because.
Trading has its unwanted secondary effects wich most traders don’t speak about. One of these effets ends up in Dispersonalization wich can be described as astrange feeling of “I am not me”, like nothing is real and nothing seems to makes sense. Psiquiatrists argue this is caused by stress and very deep emotional pain. In normal life this feeling is dangerous because the person is unable to move i mean the can but choses not to because nothing makes sense, with a dangerous activity like driving can be fatal.
But in trading can be a good thing but not for trading. Yeah, you have read well. In this state you barely can process information or cannot process it at all. The entiry anatomy becomes alert and self aware and too logical in some cases. Well the point is, if you are experiencing this i suggest you to stay away from the market and try to relax, enjoy it because it does not happen quite often. It can last a couple hour or a couple weeks, just do a reflexion time and wait for it to pass. Once you are back on reality you will be more focused and things will not look like a tragedy.
That is all i can say about it. I think this is caused by denial, when we think we are though enough and we deny what is going on until body explodes and shuts down for selfprotection from you. Just a theory. Normally this feeling happens to profitables traders who are experiencing a drawdown mixed by personal issues.
Regards.
If you can tell what you are going to do tomorrow, trading is not for you, there probably must be something wrong. We are risk takers, trader is a wronlgy used word. We must deal with uncertainty because the only thing we can control is the risk we are taking. If you feel 100% confident or 100% like hell, get yourself another carreer because this is not for you.
No one is telling you not to sleep at night but if you can sleep very well, there is something wrong.
Regards.
If you are experiencing 1 or two, maybe three wins in a row, your first winning season since you’ve begant just don’t ruin it. Don’t think you’ve found the grail. Probably the next trade is a loss. Anyway it is a great feeling and when you finally there realize that even thought it is a good thing to feel that way, it is bad when it last too longer and you get overconfident. After you had your winning season try to mentaly evolve to the next step: “Making uncertainty part of your live” and that is it, i don’t guarantee you make millions or you won’t feel frustration but i can guarantee you that you won’t be bored.
Regards.
Hernan Cortez in some point of the campaing set all battleships to fire just to inspire his men, there no turning back. The real facts about it are a little different but is a good story anyway.
My point here, speaking of my last fashion: incertitud and uncertainty. You must make them a part of your life. Evethought you must have a positive vision of your overall trading carrer you must remain uncertain to each trading opportunity. Each trade is unique and you don’t know how it will come up, lost one move to the next one and be aware that you don’t know what is going to happen. The only certain is the maximum risk you are taking nothing more. If you manage to trade, to open MT4 looking things that way, not begging nor regretting, it means you are in the zone.
Relying to incertitude liberates you from the stress of begging to win and regreting the loss. Of course emotions come and go, don’t try to control 'em because it is imposible and you’ll end up falling in denial, accept emotions, own 'em and wait it will just pass in some point.
Regards.
Have you guys noticed that NONE of the contestats has stayed in trading business? /besides the indian or… guy who went into retail and trades on a side/.
It must have been a shock to all of them.
On the other hand, they were made to stay there log hours, and had time to watch their positions going up/dow - and this is something i cannot handle either.
Well, good traders are not the ones who just make money.
When you feel a strange stomach wich lasts two or three days and recurrently it comes and go more often and then it comes with vomit and then escalates to a very intense and focused pain and slowly you are feeling a strange itching on your right leg until you feel it almost paralized. Well, you’ve got apendicitis. Normally the initial pain gives you some alert but if they are continously ignored it can be fatal.
So the same happens with emotional sickness but in a more dangerous fashion. The problem with this one is more serious because the real damage can be permanent. The cause of it is our f**** up system; we are programed to live in denial. Didn’t happened to you when you were little or a teenager you had a problem but your parents fobidened you to face it or deal with it? And you ended up with frustration? Didn’t happened you wanted to express anger but people you deal with think it’s not polite to rise the tone of the voice? Well, we are programed to subdue ourselves and let the crowd walk over us and we have no right to issue a complaint. Well f**** that, if i have something that bores me I face the person or walk away, cannot live with the anoyment and indulgement it’ll only make me explode later. So it is much better to learn self awareness (wich is not easy) and make a self exam all the time and try to detect the initial pain when it is not too late.
Just a thought.
There is strange condition that some traders tend to have but not while trading, it is known as Depersonalization (Depersonalization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and in most cases is an unwanted thing. But in trading is a different thing. I call this traders reboot.
This “thing” is a strange feeling that “i am not myself”, like everything seems unreal, you can hear a person talking perfectly bu you only can understand word by word separatedly but not the whole context, sometimes you feel paralized to do even the easiest rutinary tasks. Well, when you are feeling this just avoid dangerous tasks like driving or jay walking, your self preservation mechanism is deactivated. But for trading is good, i mean, don’t trade whe you are feeling this but instead wait until your whole self reboots and it will be in alpha state with almost no effort. My theory is we train or pretend to train ourself to tolerate pain but finaly pain wins and the brain just cut some wires to force the phisycal body to chill out. Anyway, this thing does not happens to all by the way.
This is how do I migh look right now:
Well the thing starts like this:
From several weeks it was too dam hot and the air was barely breatheable and so last night it rained and it’s still raining right now, the whole city is flooded like i’ve never seen before. Anyway, i went out to try to catch a taxi and i was handling a lot of stuff including the umbrella and a bag with my diary inside and after one hour waiting under a freezing rain i just went back home and dropped everything. So when i finally arrived at my office i’ve notice i neeed to write something and now i am just freaking out. So i get so used to that journal that i cannot dettach from it. Sad.
If you din’t notice i’ve kinda overposting today, well, i have nothing to do today, i am sitting behind my desk in my office, finished all the work i had to do, if i were a freelance i wouldn’t know where to go. I am not trading neither because i decded not to for the rest of september, as i’ve mentioned bfore I a having two consecutive winning months and so i don’t wanna ruin it, does not happen quite often. So I am sitting here doing nothing, enjoying my success and just trying to be a little creative to get out of the notdoinganythingsituation.
If I was writing a blog right now I would type: boring, boring, boring…