Emotional Control

It’s easy for me to take a loss and to shake it off, focus on long term and master my emotions when things are going bad. In fact I’m normally extremly calm and focused when things aren’t going my way. Where I have trouble as a person and a trader is when things are going good and that I’m at cloud nine.

Although my logic, discipline and self-control remain intact, I start to become anxious, extremly nervous and fearful because I get scared of my dreams being crushed to obvilion the second I truly start to invest myself emotionally and open up the possibilities that happiness and success are possible. (Happens to be the same problem in my relationships also lol)

Any of get that or am I an odd one? How do you deal with these hightened emotions given to you by success or happiness?

Thanks.

Google “fear of success”

You still haven’t mastered the art of zen. Failure or success (at least in a temporal sense) should not sway you.

The problem is that you dont know where to stop. Knowing when to exit is something that should be defined before placing a trade. You need to have goals, and put everything in a trading journal.
That will prevent you from overtrading, and most important will eliminate a big part of the emotional aspect during a trade.

hope that helps…

Try NLP/EFT Neo Linguistic Programming or Emotion Free Techniques , I swear by it, helped me a lot.

I’m sure your not the only one that finds it easier to shake off a loss then let your profits run… I’m still learning this skill!

Try setting profit targets, and stop losses, close your trading platform, go relax, sleep, spend time with family. Then come back in a day when you expect the trade to be over.

Close my platform after I entered a trade is a must for me.

if it’s a bad trade, ask yourself what you could’ve done better…

if it’s a good trade, ask yourself what you could’ve done better…

win/lose, who cares? same diagnosis

This is actually a really good idea. Watching your trade go up or down a few pips is not only a waist of time, but sometimes causes me to close trades earlier then I would have regularly.

The only problem I can see with this is that my trading platform is US based so if I set a Limit order, it sells ALL my positions instead of just 1/2 as per my trading rules.

time will answer your questions,the more you trade the more you understand.
Try to read many forex pyscological e-books, motivational books and thats will help…

Are you suggesting I simply put aside any emotional implications until I get to the point where I’ve reach my goals? The problem isn’t during trading, the problem is seeing that the account is growing.

If you’re so doubtful about the success of your system, you should put in the effort to rigorously test it. Variance is an inescapable axiom of the market and a winning streak without an edge will be struck down with time. Thus, it’s in your best interest to empirically determine the strength of your success in a backtest. If you can make it back from… (throwing a random number out here) the year 2000 to the present day without going broke, you probably found a nice edge.

'nova has said that his system is profitable. It’s that he psychologically can’t handle succeeding.

I think an interweb forum is not the place you should be looking for help, man.

Obviously, if he can’t handle winning, there must be some deterministic factor that’s causing those feelings. The most likely case is the either consciously or subconsciously, he is unsure about the edge employed by his system.

Psychology is the major road block to my trading. Fear of losing, fear of losing when I’m up. Possibility of winning, possibility to winning if I stay in a losing trade.

I would say for me, psychology hasn’t made me lose money, but it’s stopped me from making more. That’s why I made $30 yesterday rather than $300, and $0 rather that $2000 today, ditto with last week ($0 rather than $1600) :mad:

Don’t let a little thing like a few extra zeroes at the end of your balance trip you out.

If you stick to your plan it shouldn’t matter how much is in your account.

Keep your lot size ratio the same as when you started, and if you’re risking 2% or so, everything will be fine.

If you need a little more comfort, cut your risk to 1% for a bit until you get used to larger lot sizes.

Or better yet, if you feel more comfortable with the smaller sizes, just cut your account in half in terms of trading.

So if you have $1,000.00 there, go back to using the same lot sizes you did at $500.00, and leave the other 5 alone.

This is a different set of head issues.

I’ve been exactly in this place.

Fear of risk is powerful.

What you need to get into your head is:

  1. You WILL lose trades.
  2. Have faith in your edge.
  3. Understand that all you are doing is entering trades based on PROBABLE outcomes, not GUARANTEED outcomes.
  4. Realize that if you have a solid trade plan, and a profitable expectancy, it’s not your fault if a trade fails. Probabilities caught up, and it’s just a move of the market.

Keep in mind those only apply if you have a set criteria for trade entries and exits.

If you don’t consistently use the same setup every time it occurs, and that alone, you need to work at it until you can. Get a tight trade plan that you have faith in, and you can execute fearlessly each time, and the fear will dissipate.

And if the fear persists even after that, you are using too large of lot sizes for your account.