This Week's Question: How Do You Stay Motivated to Keep Getting Better as a Trader, Even When Things Don't Go Well?

@Love88, I felt compelled to reply after reading your post. You’re much closer to becoming a good trader than you realize. The root cause of your problems is obvious and there’s an easy fix, but it’s not what inexperienced traders want to hear.

Trading is actually quite easy (you can be profitable with sloppy random coin flip entries) and VERY boring, feeling excitement or depression from wins/losses is a clear sign that the trader is gambling. This usually happens to inexperienced traders who are undercapitalized, trade positions sizes that are too large for their account size and / or aren’t managing the downside.

They also become too distracted by the emotional roller coaster of wins / losses and end up learning nothing about how to trade consistently. Consistent trading starts with consistently eliminating the distracting emotions.

Forget “trading psychology” (it will never fix the gambling mentality), the quickest and best solution is to reduce position size until winning and losing actually feels boring even with sloppy entries and exits, then all the problems with risk management, trading psychology, fear and greed will instantly go away. Just thinking clearly and making emotion-free decisions alone will immediately improve results to break-even or better. This is when the profitable trading journey and the learning actually starts.

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