I enter the trade with risking 1,5% of my acc and with 1:2 R:R.
I close the terminal
Most of the time when I set BE I suffocated my trade. When I closed early, price went to my original TP. As I close my terminal there is no chance for the emotions to change my trade. When I watch the trade the pressure just increasing, increasing and I tend to make stupid things.
I thrust my system. Also, I know with 1:2 to be profitable does not require “holy grail” succes rate. 40% is enough. I believe my system can do that.
I can take time for relax, spending time with family, having fun. No need to sit front of my screen all day after my entry is done. I make a decision and have confidence that my decision is right. When my entry is done I leave it for the market to finish the job.
Yeah! Quantic theory applies here, when you look at it, it behaves one way, but when you turn away it behaves completely different. By the way i am from Bolivia.
If you are a swing/position trader like me, just find a way to fight boredom, that is a serial killer of traders. What i do? I read, i read a lot, i always make sure that i have a lot of material still to read beacuse if it’s weekend and all my books are done, i will die. I read a lot, not only trading material, by now i am reading all Philip K. **** novels, in case it does not sound familiar, have you ever watched Minority Report or Totall Recall? He wrote those.
Yesterday i’ve opened my so waited position of every month regarding BOE interest rate who alwyas makes the pair fall. Well, it did so yesterday, today the position is in -70. It can be cause by anything, i asume it might be because of the highly positive reports this morning. Lately pairs were not reacting to interest rate reports and GBP now follows the tendency. Maybe is just an inverse bubble. Maybe is just Mr. Market. The point is, it crippled me at least for an hour. I must admit it is not easy when you are so patient and market laugh at your face. But wait a minute, if stop loss is activated?, how much will i lose?, just a small percentage of my acc. How can react? It is up to me to chose my reaction. It reaches my maximum quote of loses, no, it is far away to be into the red quote, so i don’t have to worry. Maybe i let myself to cry like a bay for just one single controled loss but my braing and right hand will stick into my system, my emotional will do anything stupid but my brain and body will do whatever trading rules are set. If i lose, i lose, period. Now when it happens, i must evaluate the postlosing scheeme, is the price action indicating a reverse? Were the signals indicating a reversal where my position was still open? Loss can be useful information for your next trade. This is how you can keep motivated upon disaster. It’s not big deal, is just one single loss.
After passing al trading stages and doing it correctly for once and forever you will be facing a very weird stage. Even if you win for 10th consecutive you feel like nothings cheer you up. Well, that is because you are mentally exhausted and bored. And most traders screw thing here up this level.
The solution: do something else, at least for a day. Go to bed early and wake up later. Watch a little tv. Realize the feeling will fade away. Just like your bad luck stage fades away. Loses gets you tired and wins does it too.
The Bottom Line:
This is an exhausting activity too and for worse is the most lonely activity in the world. You must have a second activity as a passtime.
I was reading this thread and a lot of it hit home. I am actually going through my own little psych battle at the moment. Not as severe as some of the stuff here but I know it affects my trading negatively. I cant explain it but trading just didnt feel right, and after reviewing I could blatently see as the outside world stress mounted, my trading account shrunk. I had stop gaps in place sure, but it felt horrible. I keep a psych journal every day as well as a technical journal for my trading. I find it amazing what you can uncover, the fear, the greed, the uncertainty, the attempts to maintain discipline, and then actually falling into a routine that provides you with good trading. Its just an amazing journey to look back and say, yes there is actually a place in my mind that i can trade from, one of balance and focus. Now I just have to find my way back, until then no more live trading for me. Good luck to everyone battling their inner self, the enemy that will never leave you no matter how long you trade. And boy it can really mess you up and spit you out, with out you even noticing.
hey glad I ran across this what is being discussed here is a lot of my experience in poker. if anyone wants to read something really helpful read the poker mindset especially the portion about tilt. knowing that you have developed a strategy that works is just like pushing all in with two overs against almost anything, you know you should get paid off, but dealing with what poker players call variance you wind up shipping a stack to the other guy. if you know you did right you just reload and wait to get all the money. dealing with the market is the same thing, you get in ideal positions leave emotion at the door and whether it takes an hour, day, week, or month you know it will happen
Today i did something very stupid, failed rule numero uno “No impulsive trades”. Last week ago i´ve shorted usdchf for two reasons, the first, it broke tendency line and as a preview of today´s fed interest rate anounce. Well, early this morning afte days of positive pips (160 or so) the pair retracte a little and at the same time i´ve watched gbpjpy breaking 8 months tendency line, closed the first one taking partial gain and opened a buy on gbpjpy. Hours later it was on -30 and usdchf fell like a rock. Ok, closed gbpjpy and reopened usdchf. Anyone is familiar with this behavior? I was acting like a newbie. SO i made a commitment to myself, stay with the last trade even if it loses and remain confident with interests reports. I´ve learned that after years i still can fall in destructive behaviors. BUt instead of falling in “stupid, stupid, i did it again, i knew i should did not do that”, i came out walking tall without losing confidence and taking something positive with it.
The bottom line:
Firt you must to learn to not take anything personal with market, then you have to learn to not take anything personal on yourself. THe last one is more difficult, belive me, once you get in the zone you become a sitting duck for overconfidence.
What am i going about to talk about this time is what i call the “Black Swan Effect”, no, not the same as the Character of Natalie Portman wich is kinda hot but crazy. I called that way because it just sounds cool. WHat i am talking about is an unwanted secondary effect that succesful traders (i mean the very few) do not talk about.
This unwanted effect starts right after having the “ah ha, that is what it is supposed to do” response and it begins with a vague sense of happiness but not the irrational tipe, i mean like an altered stated, like getting stoned but without drugs. But as this sensation evolves it turns into selfishness and pride and the recently made proffesional trader does not care about anything anymore, and he or she just find for any excuse to get rid of people, even the closest ones, me for example asked for divorce 100 times but my insisting wife won, yeah, still married. After overcoming that stage the Effect begins, the self fear, the fear of becoming something else. Cause we learned to control and sometimes manipulate ourselves we start to be affraid of it, affraid of trasmutate on something unatural, of losing sense of reality, because we can be realy cold, the process becomes more important than anything else.
Happened to me, happened to a friend who is a succesfull trader. Years before i went into this she was into that stage and told me to get out of her life, me and all her friends were just emotional obstacles. When i was on that stage she called me to be friends again and recommend me to get out of the stage.
Me personally learned that i must not be bound emotionally with money but have some bound with people, not emotionaly because i never was emotionaly bounded to anyone but have some bound.
If you are emotional tipe is ok, you can have it, just with people, not with money.
The Bottom Line:
The fear of stretching out of line haunts me every day, and that is the unwanted effect that i call Black Swan Effect.
There is an old saying: the less you trade the more you make. Well, overtrading can be exhausting even if you are on the green zone.
I was trading for a while with gbpjpy and after careful planning i´ve decided to add usdchf to my portfolio and did well with that pair too. But something unexpected happened, it was hard to keep track usd news and reports, gbp fundies were hard enough to follow. After two weeks i was losing motivation, i was winning big but following another currency was too much for me. I still cannot live from forex and hence i have a day work. So i´ve decided to cut trading with usdchf for now and concentrate just on gbpjpy.
I know, i was shorting usdchf, had my reasons to do so but eurchf is so clos to 1.2 and i just decided tu cut the trade. I´d rather seek a gbpjpy long opportunity because usdjpy low moght cause a boj jawboning.
Today I made a losing trade, and the emotional pain lasted about an hour before I regained emotional balance. How long did it take for you to reduce that length of time to a mere 15 minutes? :33:
For being honest i realy don’t know. It might be caused by the fact that i am used to relinquish to a clock ticking. Maybe it is because i am used to know that emotions will fade eventually.
Something i’ve learned is overconfidence shows up with no warning. I am still falling into that. When the timeline reduces to 15 minutes it is time for a break if not you’ll turn overconfident.
Had a loosing trade today. Was happy about it, because stoploss was tight, and I had trades that benefited going the other way.
I don’t take trades to heart. I will make a loss on many trades, and I accept that. If I have a loss that is caused by the system, then so be it, its not perfect, but it works long term. If the loss is caused by me then I repeat my ‘Flawless Execution’ mantra till I’m over it (about 30 secs).
A quote that worked for me ‘I recognise that my job is to make money, not to be brilliant or creative, or even right. It’s to make money’ Courtney D Smith
Remember the market is always right, even when it is wrong!
I had a loss Today, until i don’t feel better i’ll stay away from market. It is an indication that things will not goe as i expect. So i will not take the trade of tomorrow. Price is in what i call “dangerous bounce/break”. GBP Have been faling for too long anyway, it must climb someday and of course there is the fear of JPY intervention. For now it is too much pressure to deal with. It is a moment for a FX vacation, at least for me.