Emotional AID

Trading Discussion
164

Have you ever recived a BIG bonus or wage? THose that cames once a year? What to do? Trade it all, Hell NO. But i will not lose it, i used SL, well i say again: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Why, well, because you are blinded by the money, you’ve just receive it and you feel so happy that your jusdgement is blured and it is a mix of greed and overconfidence, wich both are bad. Remember, you must trade with money you can afford to lose, the leftovers. Another thing it will happen, your approach to the market will be different, the pressure might be higher and what if after increasing you funds that much you have a loss, the loses of 10000 USD fund are bigger than the loses of 100 usd fund, in case you keep the same risk level.

Instead deposit a small fraction, something you will not miss, remeber you must take your funds as already lost, to go to war you must accept you are already dead. But i know, you must trade bigger amounts someday, well, easy, deposit only the leftovers of your paycheck, when you receive your paycheck and you have some of the previous month, deposit that leftover, if not, deposit nothing. Of course if you have debts, you must pay some of it first, spare second, deposit to your trade account at last. Remember, the wish of increasing your trading account adds pressure on you. YOu must trade with no pressure with money you can say goodbye.

Regards.

165

Hi, everyone!
In my opinion, forex trading is not for people who have weak nerves. For such people it’s better to use EAs in trading, really good EAs. EAs don’t have any nerves or any dependence. Unfortunately, not all brokers allow to use EAs in trading.

166

Do you guys do your trading 100% manual by yourself or complement it with EA’s or signal providers like Zulutrade ?

167

Manually, i use an EA provided by the broker but it’s only function is to set SL and TP automatically, EA’s are not for robot trading only, it has other uses too.

Regards.

168

it is said you must follow your system blindly and you must do so but there is not such a thing called perfect system and prefect trader. So, did you recorded those losers propperly? Do you have more than 100 trades already? or Are you testing it at least for 6 months? (1 year recomended). So, just make a filter of the winners and find recurrent patterns and keep with those. You will trade less and will profit more, just that easy.

Regards.

169

I have never used zulutrading. But I tried to trade with EA. I understand that it’s not reliable. You always should watch after orders by yourself. But I don’t understand those brokers who forbid to use EA. It’s rather silly

170

Trading automation is great because it is a robot with no feelings doing all the trades the problem is trusting a supplier and no one can do that with real money as it becomes expensive buying their robot then using your own capital then hoping it will all work.

Once you master manual trading you can create your own automation or robot but the problem is getting over our emotional problems with trading so it could be a good or bad idea depending on your luck maybe.

171

I agree that you should first of all master principles of trading by yourself. And only after that you can use EA, you can understand how it works and maybe in future it may work for you

172

Thanks, for the advice i am, i am trading quite a lot of hours on demo at the moment so i can understand the market, for example in the UK it is bank holiday friday and monday and i thought i would try trade it just to see what happens for my learning curve.

So far not good, but that is what i expected.

I am keeping track of my trading, so i can be certain of what times are best for me to trade, when to go long, short etc.

173

There is no money in the market for the holiday even the US celebrates Easter so they are not going to be at their desks.

It is difficult to trade because nothing is happening and it makes the trader anxious because they want the money but it is not there so it is a good time to lose money from the spreads and bad positions since the indicators don’t work well either.

174

After 4 years i’ve found out it is really hard to get rid of money obsession. Once done i’ve found myself stuck into something more weird.

Before I explain the “thing” let me explain how things are. We like money, everything we do is money related, go to work under the excuse “we like it”, well it can be true but ultimately what we want is money. Basic instincts. Ok, but it is truth that we cannot be bought with money sometimes, our belives are stronger than that, some people say that money moves everything, well, i say no, it might corrupt some people but sometime the cause is stronger, money can buy one or two guys with inflence, but it cannot buy an agry crowd.

By the way, it is good if you like money, it is bad to be obssesed with it. Even some bilbe characters were rich, even Jesus gives some tips on sparing and spending. BAD is when you are obssesed with it. Let’s say you like a girl, i think there is nothing wrong with it as long you are a man, it is BAD when you start stalking at her, getting obsessed with her, it is really bad when you do something stupid like harast her or something worse. The same with money, but guess what WE ALL ARE MONEY STALKERS, scavengers and we don’t are aware of it.

Well, as i’ve said, once you can be no more obsessed with money another issue emerges, more dangerous, wich it was planted in our monkey brains even when we were little crying things know as babies. This thing is “The Need to be Right” presented sometimes as the form of “Losing is Bad”. Yeah, it is true, i have a small fx account, money i can lose, if i lose it all it will not affect my style of living because i have tonsw of money to cover it. The problem is it is really not easy, even after years, to take a loss, the famous 1% per trade, one insgnificant amount of you total capital. Why? Because we still think that losing is Bad. Do you still remember those days in school when the other kids started to yell at you because you failed in some move at the field during the game? Do you still remember when you parents yelled at you besause of your poor B-? Well i don’t have anything about formal education and parental education, it is just lacking of live education. Go ahead, go walk out for a while and look around, does the outside world care about you? No, it does not. Does it it care if you are on a losing streak? No, it does not. The world will not colide as your parents told you years before. Yes, investing is risky but let me tell you one thing, Lose is more than Hesitate. You as a trader might be the target of all jokes of your friends and colleagues, ther is always the odious guy who enjoys to destroy other peoples feelings and make fun about it just to be the center of attention, belive me we all have it, if you not, i borrow you one. There is always people who does not know anything about trading but yet they advice you to stay away. Well, that is the life education i am talking about, but it is still incomplete. The mising thing is to teach yourself that losing might be good for you or at least is not bad.

We are somehow kinda different from other people because we’ve decided to do it while others still rely their expectancies sitting every day in front of a desk in an office wich demands the best of them everyday under the constan threat of losing their jobs and having s****t in return. Me personally i like my job but i don’t like the conditions of it anymore because i’ve notice that we as humans tend to fail quite often and most co-workers are fail intolerants while they lie about their own mistakes and my work became just too hard because of it. Family isn’t quite encouraging because they will never understand, they still belive that having a job is the maximum goal in life.

So if life sucks anyway, and we as middle working class are poor anyway because system is set against us, taxes, job securities, and so on, why not taking a little risk? We are screwed anyway. What is a losing streak compared with our unprobable gains in the future? I have a phrase that helps me when i am realy demorilized: “A little chance is better than nothing”, when i’ve quite my firt job i was called “irresponsabile” and even an imbecil by my family, i rejected a job offering from a big frachise and my step mom was realy angry with me, her words were the worst thing i’ve ever heard in my life, i told her “i will not work for that corrupt franchise”, i have principless, no matter if i sleep under the bridge i will not surrender my principles, “You must accept any job” were her words, well i will not sell my soul for a slurp of soup.

So that is why i’ve decided to become a trader. Because i know losing is the most common thing here and i am ok with losing, i don’t have to put my dignity or reputation at risk, just my money, there are not written rules and the only catch here is to be ok with losing, contrary to what we have learned.

So, how do you guys handle with the obsession of being right?

Regards.

175

One of the main things I do is take partial profits on all the trades that go into profits at least 15-30 pips. If your trade is 15-30 pips in profit… think about how significant that is. You were definitely right to some degree if your trade gets into that zone.

So if your trade gets into that zone, and you take partial profits, you give your ego something to work with in the event that the trade reverses against you. You were wrong… in the sense that your top-tier profit targets didn’t get hit, but you were right enough to get double-digit pip gains and bank some of it. Even better on you if you can move the S/L to BE when you take partial profits and put the trade as “risk-free” status.

I’m by no means a pro at this yet, but in addition to that strategy, I do aim to close losing trades before the original S/L is even hit. I may set the S/L at -30pips, but usually by -20, you can tell that your original hypothesis is highly unlikely to occur and you can feel some small sense of “victory” by saving some money on your stop.

So that leaves your ego vulnerable to those full blows when price goes straight to your stop, but with practice this scenario will happen less than 20% of the time, and that is much more bearable for me personally.

I agree with the points you made above, and I have a similar perspective on the world, and a similar feeling about my job. I also find it very frustrating at times, being surrounded by people that don’t really understand the level of servitude their job puts them in.

That said there are people who really do enjoy going to work, I believe that. For instance my girlfriend works at a daycare, and she finds her job rewarding, and I believe that’s genuine.

I think the real sadness in the world is that some people don’t have the luxury of being able to choose their principles over money… or else the sacrifice is significant. You might have to see your own family starve in order to reject that job you don’t believe in… so it’s really not the same situation for everyone.

But back to the point, I really don’t like to be wrong either. I really do like to be right about my trades. But I am wrong A LOT. The majority of my trades aren’t hitting the profit levels I had imagined were possible. But that’s okay… because my strategies mentioned above, keep the money flowing INTO the account. Maybe it’s not at the rate I had hoped, but it is consistent, and consistent income is pretty much the universal benchmark for success in business.

So it’s really true that if you can see your trading as a business venture, or even a job (working for yourself), then the idea of being wrong will change.

176

Don’t look your trades like right or wrong. You’ll never know what is moving the market. Remember market is a chaotic enviroment ruled by the thoughts of trillions of people and all of them are looking at different charts and different time frames. The analisys tool is just a tool to make it rational, nothing more, just take it as it is, a rationalization, nothing more, your “joojoo” that helps you being more disciplinated.

However never change your system but at the same time remember it is not the ultimate truth.

Regards.

177

I don’t believe that it is all that chaotic. There are specific interests from specific entities at specific price levels. Those market moving powers however are largely invisible to me. So if I call one of their moves… and they move the other way… then I’m wrong about that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeing your trading as predicting an event, as long as you understand that your tools are not perfect, and that you will see the situation wrong.

Basically if I lose, I do feel like I’m wrong… but more to the point, the feeling is that I was beat. If I sold, and the market rallied, then the Bulls crushed me. It was their day to shine, and I’m okay with that… because I know I get my days too. It’s a give and take system, and I’m okay with that reality. I’m highly competitive, but I try to be a good sport and give credit when they knock me on my ass!!

178

Precisely that is why you must not think as right or wrong. Yesterday I’ve opened a buy order with GBPJPY regarding BOE’s interest rates, because the last three times it rallied because rates and active program remained unchanged, this time my trade is going nowhere and it might hit SL. Who knows, maybe next week it turns out to my favour, if i lose i lose little, if i gain i gain much more of what i am willing to lose. Anything can happen, not even central banks has the power, look at JPY, BOJ has tried to devaluate, it worked for a while but now it seems to raise again.

The analisys is just a tool providing you a probability, nothing more, finally the results is given by the psicology of mass. Do you really think daytraders or scalpers do care about BOE? Or do you think BIG inverters are looking for Fibonacci levels? You will never know.

Look at you analisys as a Feng Shui fashion or a hand reading witchcraft wich helps you to mantain the course nothing more. I do my analisys and i do trade and after pulling the trigger it is up to the market, what i realy like is to study the whatever is happening in both countries related to the pair and that added to technical analisys help me decide wich direction to take, buy or sell, there is nothing into it.

Just look at the earthquake in Japan, effectively, the currency fell like a rock but if you are familiar with japaneese philosofy, the word for crisis they use it also means opportunity and short after the currency started to rally.

Te point is, you will never know what really moves the market just as an near to death patient who miraclously now is much better, some will say, it was the hand of God, the new developments of medicine or his organism healed just because. Different point of view of the same results.

Regards.

179

I used to have your perspective, and I never really made consistent money with it. With my current strategy of hunting for “smart money” moves, I am doing much better.

If you find the opposite to be true, I cannot really argue with it, it is your trading and your career

180

If you are doing in average well, i am agree with it. But if you are in just a winning streak, well, realize it will be over, and you will be demoralized, but it will come back, the problem is dealing with the losing streak. Just take loses as they are, meere loses, nothing more. Instead, learn from it but don’t asume anything as the ultimate truth, remember, the market can turn against odds.

Analisys is just a tool to figure it out what might the crowd just be doing, nothing more, market turns are the result of the sum of all players moves.

Regards.

181

As a newbie, I am so thankful for the insights, perspective and stories.

[B]Mr Gone[/B] and [B]akeakamai[/B], thank you so much!..

I’m also afraid and greedy… I’m only in less than a week on [B]live trading.[/B]

I learned a lot from both of you!

182

Something i’ve learned re-reading my posts is that i suck at typing, sorry guys, when you are used to type in spanish over an english keyboard, it becomes weird to match typing with how it is pronounced in enlgish and off course the order of typing sometimes is not followed by my hands.

Regards.

183

It’s so understandable and clear anyway. I’ll surely follow your post. I must conquer my fear of losing.