Sophocles, Oedipus Rex: Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.
how about the fear of missing out ? , if the train allready left the sation no need to to try and jump aboard... (risk wise , bad decision) better miss a good trade opportunity then beeing in a bad one...
The only way to eliminate emotion from trading is to trade with a fully backtested system with clearly defined trading rules, as this will give you total confidence. When you are absolutely confident you will make money in the long run, then after trading for a while you will start noticing that you don't give a rat's ass about the outcome of each trade anymore. When you finally reach that mental state, then you made it as a trader
The implementation of a systemised or methodical approach can provide a psychological safety net, nevertheless, this has to be accompanied by ones own discipline.
Nobody knows the future (except God), but you can certainly test a trading system and see if it has a real statistical edge or not.
xelite777, the historical performance of any given system must never be overestimated within a random environment. Besides, the art of speculation resides within various facets, of which some are quite blatantly overlooked within any period of back testing.
That may be true to a certain extent but the fact remains that you STILL need a winning system to trade. Unless you prefer trading on hunches, whims, tips and gut feel (instead of solid empirical data), which is by far the easiest, fastest way to end up in the poor house.