Hello everyone! How do you stay disciplined and maintain a consistent approach to trading forex, even during periods of market turbulence or uncertainty? I overtrade, I overtrade a lot. I trade based on my emotions. If I lose I try to rapidly make a profit and when I make a profit, I will not close the trade for more profits! Right now I am on a break from trading, It would be great for me if you can share your own experiences and help me to handle this kind of emotion! Thanks in advance!
Overtrading is the right brain problem. But many people said is the left brain problem. Many people avoid fixing the root cause. They avoid addressing the right brain problem. They will ask you to fix Emotional problems with the left brain (have a super super super solid trade plan, trade with small lot ....). No matter how solid your super super super trade plan is, you will continue to be vengeful, angry, frustrated, greedy, anxious, ecstatic You should have posted your thread in PSYCHOLOGY session. But even in the PSYCHOLOGY session, many people talk about the Left brain thing, and not the right brain thing.
I am bringing all of my energy into other fields and leaving this craft as a secondary activity. Find something else that you love to do. And i would stay away from FX.
The best you can possibly do... 1. Identify your play 2. Determine how much you're willing to risk that your analysis (guess?) is correct 3. Be willing to stop out when your "risk amount" is hit The further away you get from the above the worse you will do.
You have to understand both yourself and the markets. It is a lot easier, relatively speaking, to keep your emotions in check if you do that.
The brain is a power plant generating thoughts which provoke emotions. It is constantly doing this and it cannot be controlled. Even when you sleep your brain is generating. You, nor I can stop it from creating and producing thoughts. Many of these thoughts ARE true. Many ARE lies. Many are imaginations that have neither truth as a basis nor lies as a basis but just simply wishful thinking. We cannot control them nor stop them from happening. Our brains have a life of their own and they create and react to reality or pseudo reality as they wish, producing a myriad of thoughts. What we can DO is simply see the thoughts a clouds moving across a big blue sky. Fleeting clouds that soon disappear over the horizon and are GONE. New ones rush in to take their place. We can acknowledge the clouds. Acknowledge their existence and by doing so we also are aware that they will soon be gone. They will soon disappear to only be replaced with a myriad of new thoughts. We can thus choose to act upon them or ignore them. They will soon be gone…..you nor I can control them nor can we dictate to our brains what they must create in terms of thoughts. It creates what it wishes, regardless of our preferences. We cannot control our thoughts or our brains. We can only control how we react to them. Thoughts create emotions. However, emotions can also be the birthplace of thoughts. Our brain will oblige us as it’s job is to constantly be “thinking” “creating” “inventing” “analizing”. It does what it does. What it was mean’t to do. That doesn’t mean it is true nor false. It just “is”. Clouds drifting across the screen of a pretty blue sky soon to be gone and replaced by others. The modus operandi of this thing we call the brain. We simply cannot stop it from thinking or generating thoughts. It does so at will. Years ago in Honduras in a town called Catacamas in the Department of Olancho the movie theater finally arrived. Olancho was known for wild west days. Cowboys riding horses with guns strapped on the sides. Shootouts right in town. Killings over nothing. Macho men showing what they THOUGHT was real manhood. Even the ladies were at time caught up in the fighting at times wielding machetes or pistols. Anyway the story related to me (more or less) of the first theater arriving to Catacamas; the people went to see about it. Some rough and tumble cowboys went in the theater with their guns on their sides. The movie being shown is a western. In one scene some cowboys on horse are chasing and shooting at others running away on horses. One of the rough and tumble cowboys in the the theater said to the other one; “shoot back they're going to shoot us and kill us!” The cowboy pulls out his pistol in the theater and blows holes in the screen. Thoughts drifting across the sky…………
Good Morning Scataphagos, You are marvelous speaker of truth my friend. What you wrote is worth about $1million dollars and sooooo damn true. May I please add another number to your statements? I will add the following in red