The real reason that people fail has to do with their personality and mindset.
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straight FACTS
I haven’t had exactly this kind of experience but it’s common especially for traders who have not made money consistently.
I strongly recommend you read the book trading in the zone by Mark Douglas. You’ll know that the right mentality is to know that every moment is the market is unique, unlike any other before it. This I sthe reason why a triple top will work one moment and not work the next moment. You’ll learn (not just know) various aspects of the market and acquire the right psychology fit for trading and hopefully this will never happen to you again.
Stop trading and read the book first, this is my recommendation…
Thanks to share your thoughts. Yes, somehow a sort of precise planning can make you guided here. Whenever you will try to evaluate your trading results, at the end of the day you will know how was your performance. Whether your learning is paying off or not.
i read that book when i first started, was really helpful.
“and didn’t have a stop loss” aside from not following your trading plan. I think that you gave yourself an answer what was wrong with your trading style. Go back to school and learn RM and MM techniques and try to apply them consistently during your trades and without any excuses
Cool; nice to know your progress on yoga; but from the last 3 years I have been doing meditation; it’s also helpful to me.
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Totally agree yoga and meditation for great for trading mindset and overall mind body and soul health which again in turn is helping see the charts clearly
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Time away from the charts is just as important as the time spent on them .
Meditation is something I’d like to try myself always good to a peaceful mindset
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Exactly; basically trading is all about mental game; so a good mental health is obvious here.
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I’m taking a week away from forex this week and realigning my metal stand point and really enjoying it
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Great advice here,
I’m just staring to fully understand the power of time away from the charts, I’m having a few weeks off and really finding the head space to be very be good, taking a step back is a great idea and I totally recommend it. #backstronger
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Here is my experience too… You are not alone… I have a strategy working for me well, but it takes time for the formation to be completed, so, any time I try checking my chat to check if there are possible setups, I will see something that will just trigger my hand to trade, telling myself its just small risk, oh this looks promising… In the end most end as loss, and that is when I will now see 1001 reasons I shouldn’t have.
I checked my journal today saw that 95% of trades i lost were unplanned, Yet I can’t count the many times I have written in my journal never to trade without my plan. Infact when the trades are going against me, I feel terrible and will swear never to repeat such mistake, but that doesn’t last…
Please, I am worried this habbit seems too hard to let go. And if I’m not careful will destroy my trading skills, coz I seem to be on the same level, I use my strategy to make profit, then use my impulsive trading to wipe out profit. Its depressing, trades I lose via strategy doesn’t give me bad mood as this does.
I just feel I should share with you too
Something that might help @benthony, create an online journal, maybe here on babypips and make it compulsory to update it each trade open and close even when it’s not according to plan. It’s easier to follow your plan that way. It gets harder to behave poorly when you make yourself accountable to people other than yourself.
never give up to reach the goal.
I gave myself a impromptu holiday from trading myself , I was chart watching far too much
Decided to take a dose of my own medicine lol
It’s simple. You know what you need to do, but you aren’t doing it. There’s a disconnect between what you know you should do and why you think you should do it. You haven’t answered the why so therefore you won’t do it.
The problem is that your analysis is pretty good and generally you’re correct on your trades. The ones which don’t work out and you cut are easily forgotten and the confirmation bias is to remember only the ones that worked out. The small losses were simply trade errors and not losses. Your analysis only missed a key piece of information and that’s why it didn’t work out, not because your crystal ball isn’t a crystal ball and the market is a probability engine.
When you start to take that loss you look for reasons why it will work out. You move the stop because you’ve seen some info for why you think it will turn. Many times this probably works out and you take your 2/3% profit but the risk on the trade was closer to 10%. Not a good risk reward ratio, you’re cheating yourself because you believe your risk is as low as the stop loss, but actually it’s not even 10%. It’s 100%, or rather your max pain point, 20%. Possibly once you get beyond 20% loss you’ll increase the pain tolerance to 60% or more. This too will still work in your favour from time to time. You’re being trained in bad habits. It only has to wipe you out once, it doesn’t matter how many times this situation works in your favour.
The why of it is that you are not a rational creature all of the time. There are cases where you’re not rational, automatic stop losses protect you from the irrational self. You need to learn about this and accept that you’re not actually always the one in charge. Confirmation bias is going to hide from you all information that says your current trade is a loser and it will focus on the retracements rather than trend itself. How can you combat that? Practice can get you there through a lot of pain but then you’re learning bad habits and those are very tough to break. Far better to learn the good habit and take the hit before you get into a really tough situation where you’re not sure what to do. Stay in the center, away from the emotional extremes.
The cost of emotional extremes is that it takes you longer to return to normal.
When you hold a losing trade, you lose the potential to make profits. And you surrender money that will take you twice as long to get back. (unless you increase size to avoid the time cost, then you’re done)
Cut the trade for mental space and capital preservation. You never want to lose control of a trade.
When you’re clear headed you are able to look for more opportunities and exercise your edge.
No edge can hold up with large losses. Therefore no matter how good your analysis may be, it cannot make up for large losses.
As an experienced trader, I think calculating your earnings will merely stir up your emotions. Focus on developing your trading approach by going over your trading journal. You can then evaluate your performance at the conclusion of the trading day instead of sabotaging yourself.
Well said!