Pretty hard tbh.
Step away from the charts, set alerts and try not to look.
I started some new thing with emotional and it controls all my actions. but I have improved by learning from professionals and I learn I should do it in that situation (less emotional but more theoretically). So knowledge an experience would make you less emotional when doing anything not only trading.
The easiest way is probably just to stop checking every 5 min. What i used to do to avoid anxiety is set my SL/TP then just turn off MT4 and go play games or watch movies.
Controlling emotions is linked with discipline. If you could discipline yourself to act only according to the strategy and not according to emotions, you can trade for profits. Practice discipline in each of your trades.
As humans, we cannot avoid our emotions while trading. But we can train ourselves to control them and not let them overpower. A trader should have skills to control their emotions while making trading decisions.
It is practically impossible to become emotionless as we humans do not come with switches that can help in putting off emotions. So, the right way is to learn to deal with them. You can always start maintaining a trading journal and practise meditation that will help you in learning how to be patient and calm while trading.
I think the op meant to say eliminate system doubts. The answer is by backtesting
It is impossible to become emotionless. So, rather than looking for ways to turn off your emotions, I’d suggest learning how to deal with them is a wiser and feasible decision that will help you in the long run. A few techniques that helped me include, maintaining a trading journal and practising yoga. The latter helped me in remaining calm during panic moments.
Setting trade alerts , set and forget style trading using max 1% risk should leave you emotionally detached from your trades
Emotions are an inseparable part of human behaviour. However, you can certainly control their influence. The best approach to deal with emotions is by understanding them. You can also follow stringent trading rules to avoid taking emotion-based decisions, like use of stop losses and target profits.
You should have no illusion on your money that you invested. If you have deep illusion, you cannot sustain losses. One should avoid over trading because overtrading lowers the equity of balance. Knowledge earning and practicing accumulate confidence in a trader.
Emotions define your personality. So eliminating them is not possible. But you can definitely learn to control them in order to avoid bad trading decisions. To keep emotions under control, create a trading strategy which is based on your requirements and market knowledge.
Since you’re not a robot, it’ll be impossible for you to become emotionless. You are a human being and it’s not bad to be emotional. When it is about trading, you just need to understand that facts and statistics will help you make better moves.
Becoming emotionless should not be your objective and neither is that possible. Instead, learn to manage them. Design some trading rules for them and do your best to stick with them. Initially, you will break them. But you have to be disciplined and teach your brain to avoid breaking them.
1 Like
To become emotionless, you have to learn to accept losses normally. A loss should be covered with making another profit. But don’t make any entry against the market trend. Technical analysis helps catch the market trend and it’s quite well if technical analysis is accompanied by fundamental one. Traders should check what’s going on worldwide because such incidents have direct and indirect impact on market.
There is a lot of emphasis on traders becoming emotionless in trading, which I truly believe misses the whole point.
As @kristaperry just said its neither possible or advisable.
There are a number of common sense things that can help reduce emotions.
As was written in the Reminiscences of a Stock operator - sell down to the sleep point. (if you don’t know what that means read the book).
Also, one trick I have found that actually works is thinking every trade will be a loser - they rarely are but this negative framing can work to your benefit.
The other thing is don’t play whack a mole with ultra-short time frames. Nothing sets off the emotions more than seeing flashing green and red on five min (or even 1 hour) candle charts.
It has actually been proven in experiments that psychopaths make better traders than rational people. So yes, being an emotionless robot, can work - but for most of us its not an option.
Oh one final point, reduce the meaning of money in your life. The reason we are so attached to winning is that we believe money is scarce and hard to come by.
That may be true but having an abundance mindset does tend to reduce the effects of losing trades - and as a by-product of that, you get fewer losing trades.
Being emotionless is impossible, as emotions are something we are born with and can’t be switched on or off as per our wish. In order to remain emotionally balanced, the key is to accept failure and try to be neutral to both wins and losses.
There is no need to become emotionless! Rather, learn to manage those emotions. You should trade with a good trading plan having firm rules. So you don’t get distracted during trading.
Sometimes, excessive and off and on losses turn a trader emotional. But, emotion is the major hurdle a trader should avoid. He or she should not let the emotion grow in him because it affects the ultimate trading. A person should stick to earning more and more knowledge because this is the only thing that can get a person out of emotion.
Emotion is a psychological disease that turns a trader frustrated. Emotion enmeshes a trader whenever he or she fall victim to losses. It is the first and foremost duty of a trader to recover from emotion as it is harmful. It destroys a trader from the root level.