As I sit here on a saturday night - very comfortably drunk , I thought I'd write my first post here in the psych room. As you can see from my join date, I am a ET newb, so first and foremost, greetings to my fellow traders who place an importance on the psychology of trading. What I want to talk about tonight: Facing our demons We all have 'em. Can't pull the trigger, can't stick to my stops, averaging losers, getting out too soon, one bad loss ruins your day/wk/yr, you get the picture. Many traders suffer from it. Not much has changed over the last 2,000 years of trading. You can bet that traders back then also had similar demons. Why? Because human nature hasn't changed. So what's the top ONE demon that keeps haunting you over and over? If you got rid of that demon, how much would your P&L improve? Would you give up your left nut to finally get over your demons? Hmmm...I need another beer.
If your previous posts are legit, you should have more cred than jesus. If you want fubar, try http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80474 What is the point of facing a demon, if you cant destroy the sob?
lol - of course being drunk, I forgot to start with my own demon. My #1 demon over the years was large losses from a single trade. I had no problem making money, I just couldn't keep it sometimes because at some point I'd blow up on a trade and give most of it back, sometimes into the red. Yes, I face my dark side on every trade. I've just come to peace with it rather be driven by it.
"Never under estimate the dark side." I don't like threads talking about specific trades/stocks/etc... I prefer the threads talking about the intangibles of trading. My battle cry when I was on the desk used to be... "It's not that we don't know what to do, we can't do what we know." I stole that from someone, I can't remember. age sucks. On the other hand, beer is good.
"Hey old school I have been trading from past 2 years and i thing i have learned that never average down ( loser average losers ) It is better to put a stop loss as soon as u enter a trade so no matter what happen u know u cant loose a certain amount of money I do get scared as i have lost a lot of money but hey u might learn from it then to do it again Keep a stop loss ( no one , no technical anatystic no astrology no guru no cnbc no market maker can tell u where the market is going ) so i beleive to keep a stop loss or to keep a certain $ amount of loss per trade
He he. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53597&perpage=6&pagenumber=6 Scroll down , etc, is that what you meant old school? On the one hand, i'm fascinated by psychology. On the other, it kinda blows, really. Psychology, whether your drunk or not (you should be, fwiw) is a process of neverending improvement.
<i>"My #1 trading demon: Overtrading a dull market instead of patiently waiting for real opportunities."</i> Ditto, <b>Reardon</b>. It's the AADD part of me. I make money hand over fist in high volatility, active market periods due to quick decisions and (controlled) impulsive behavior. Fast moving markets are my "zone" where trading is easy and money piles up fast. Dull markets test my patience, test the personal weaknesses. Because I'm geared to fast-market action, learning to manage trades correctly and take fewer of them in dull markets is a chore. I backed off to longer timeframe charts for intraday trading while VIX is in a coma here. They work during high volatility, too. Highly active markets = easy money for me. The personal improvement part I continually work on is performance (small losses, greater profits) thru dull market periods. Some traders excel in dull periods with sideways tactics but freeze or fall apart when tapes go normal or get wild. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, which the market will quickly point out.
Sir, Trade only highly volatile, highly liquid markets in short time frames. You will find my outrageous consulting fee in the mail as per usual.
I stopped trading whilst under the influence of alchohol. I've got no trading demons, never really have. It was other demons that messed my head up.