Today is Thursday May 24th and I will be taking off a few days from the markets. I will be traveling and trying to get in some early summer activities. Its a good time as I have had some very good days and still yet with the good performance, it does give me time to reflect.
Staying humble as traders is important in getting good results. It is so easy to get emotional and think more highly of yourself than you should. Trading well is work. One can never take it for granted as that is where it can come back and bit you.
Many traders will say that they can pick up good gains, but for some reason, they always find a way to give it back. The problem many times is in there thinking. You always need to have yourself screwed on tight. If you let your guard down, you will get hit. Those hits cause you to want to hit back and now you are trading from a different premise. Getting even or revenge from what you did to yourself is unhealthy and that is where the battle is won and or lost.
I often speak of myself in many of my posts as I am my own trading coach. This is often for me just as much as it may help others, but I can only go by my own experience of many years.
Staying Humble with gains and losses is necessary. Keeping emotions as flat line as you can is what is expected. We are human, well most of us are, lol, and with that comes all the things that we do. Experience anger, inpatients, happiness, sadness, revenge for some at times, hot tempered and on and on. Those trading emotions are easily transferred onto the screen if we are not mindful.
We need to take every thought captive and filter it to make sure it healthy for us. If it is out of line, we need stop and crush it, throw it out, get rid of it and “REPLACE IT” with the right stuff. You will not be willing or able to do this if you wait until you are in the heat of battle. It all needs to be done with purpose and in advance so when it happens you will be mentally prepared. That will require something from you and that too is work. The work and decision that you make now will pay dividends to you personally and to your trading account, so it pays to face those issues now.
This stuff does not happen by accident, and you won’t get the trading results you want by accident either. It is up to you and only you. If you make a decision to change those hidden things within your mind you are on the right course and can expect change. You need to have a plan on how to do that, so take some time and give it some thought.
If you know how to trade and are able to spot good moves within the market, the things that hold you back from reaching your potential is just you. There are two key parts, knowing first how to trade well with good risk/reward balance. Managing your trades once you put the trades on and gauging market conditions so you know how to proceed with the first two.
The other key part is being and staying in control of your emotions and directing your thoughts so you stay healthy. From that standpoint, you have a foundation to build something on. No foundation, it will crumble under the weight.
I hope this helps to give you some encouragement to look within. We all need this. Things like not pulling stops, being able to accept when you are wrong, being patient and waiting for the trades to come to you, not hunting for trades, staying open minded to direction and more.
Find and reflect on what will help your trading in this area. The more time you put into it, the better your trading results will be on the other end.
If you don’t have a good trading method to build the first part of the equation, then the second one won’t really help. You need both. Everyone can do better. Start from where you are and keep moving forward. Stay positive, but be honest with yourself and again remember to stay humble and take it one day at time.
I wish you all the best. My next post will likely be this coming Tuesday. Until then, I wish you all the best.