Over the past year I’ve been trading Forex I’ve learned a lot. From patterns, candles, indicators and oscillators. The list goes on as I tried to build a good foundation for the secure home I want to build. All of these things can be looked at, dissected, shown a image or a visual, however the missing link I feel I’m missing is the psychological aspect.
And by missing I mean, controlling it and not letting it control you.
The biggest leak to my strategy is seeing A. not letting my trades run and cutting profit to early. B. Overtrading/revenge trading.
Whats everyone’s Holy Grail of reading material or suggestions that I can bury into my head to gain some discipline and feel more in control of the trade instead of the trade being in control of me.
Thanks and Happy Trading
Mark Douglas books are good, also Brett Steenbarger books .
But we warned your hard wired to do the wrong thing in trading despite all that reading.
Apparently a frontal labotomy helps, failing that try to change your belief systems around money.
Trading Barrier #5 - The Illusion of Control in Trading
There is something to read about that taking profit too early.
Here is the link
Indeed, very much informative! Reading trading eBooks in the weekend is my habit!
You cannot over trade when you are using a specific strategy and P/L system. Unless you don’t know what you are doing.
@Vanpeters If you lose the plot you can.
Any losing (or winning trade) can set off a litany of emotions.
Granted with a mechanical system it shouldn’t, but we over estimate your emotional control.
I don’t really believe in Holy Grails in trading. In my personal experience, one calms down eventually, after a lot of trading. The more experience you become, the calmer you become. Or number, if you’d like.
Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I agree Johnscott31, win or lose can set off a bunch of emotions. I know plenty of people myself included that after a good trade they then proceed to tank the next few till that 1 good trade now turns into a negative and vice versa.
The missing link is this. If we trade currency and hold the money long term ourselves, we get charge one time fee for transaction only.
If we trade through a broker, we get charge swap finance fee every day eventhough we traded only once in a long term hold position. Thus, interest rates can pressure us to stay away from longer term trading. With longer term trading, there are multiple strategies to profit from the market. At least, that is the positive study I have been researching and confirming over 10 years period.
For example, let’s say you are AUD for long term. Well, they can cut market interest rates so low that you will be charge unecessarily high swap fees to force you out of position. Why? Because liqiuidity is missing. They will range forever until you have been financially charged and force out of your position.
What I am saying is that interest can increase or be cut to the benefit of the market, and not to your benefit. You don’t make the rules; they make the rules to their advantage. This means you don’t really have proper control of your success in this type of business. FROM the swap fees alone, one can clearly see that the market wants people to trade short term.
Therefore, don’t trade through a broker. If you do, don’t bet too big a lot sizes. You can be forced to lose. And obviously, trade for the long term instead.
REMEMBER: The market will always move: up, down, or range. But, the market will move to its benefit. The market needs liquidity. No liquidity means they cannot pay you. And that is one reason why the majority will and can lose.
If it was about how knowledgeable you are the markets would nt exist
you can still have a strategy, and still overtrade because of a loss, and wanting to gain what you lost back right away, instead of just moving on and waiting for the next best setup. It’s really just all emotion
The market exist because the “majority” thinks that they have knowledge.
All the strategy in the world are useless because the rules of the game along with the mathematics are not on your side. If you can workaround the rules and counter the mathematics, that’s when you have some chance of making profits.
Well my strategy is working for me
Lying to yourself is NOT a good thing. If your strategy is working then show me the prove please. And how long have your strategy been working? If you can show me your long term profit, then I will gladly recant my statements. Well, do you have evidence to prove your profitability?
I don’t have to prove anything to you, I have no idea who you are lmao the only person I have to prove myself to is MYSELF. All I know is that I’m only taking A+ setups and am making profit, and WILL achieve my goal of being a full-time trader. Enjoy the rest of your day 
Ok. Good luck to your “profitable” system.
I don’t think there’s anything to show or prove. Your both making valid points. If his math works for him it’s working for him… there is no 1 perfect way for the profit for all strategy any profitable trader will tell us all that. I think we are getting off topic though. I’m looking for psychological advice.
We are just fooling ourselves that we have “brain” problems. If that was the case, we should not be trading at all. Additonally, all of us would be rich by now just by solving our brain problem.
THE POINT IS THIS: When POLICIES and the MATHEMATICS are colluding against you, your chance for profiting is really minute. For example, why restrict hedging? If you don’t like hedging, then DON’T hedge. Why restrict everybody else? Additionally, market stats can be interpreted many ways. Thus, stats will be interpreted and policy be made to the advantage of the market (NOT YOU). Anyhow, good luck to all who think they can beat a system created in such a way like this.
thanks! :)