anyone went through that? curious to hear some stories and how did you fix it or manage it or still struggling with it for me its showing up the most in trading vs other parts of my life i would do good and as soon as im aware that i am doing good right away i make a stupid mistake that would bring my account back down to where it was before. even in sim trading. i started with 5k sim account and in a week got it up to almost 16k using same strategy that i use with cash account. i looked at my account and every single trade was green. the next morning after i saw that i was doing great a switch flipped and every single trade i made for next two weeks was red. using same strategy. again just want to hear other people stories how self sabotage shows up in your trading.
you went 1 week with every trade being green and then 2 weeks with every trade being red. Its pretty easy. If you have a losing trade, stop trading for 2 weeks. If you have a winning trade, keep trading,
thats not how it works i stopped for 6 months and came back and still drained my account back to original. im if you never had to deal with self sabotage you wont understand how it works. im just asking for others to share stories about their self sabotage. is like asking non parents for advice about parenting. you dont have kids dont give advice about parenting.
I dertermined that the reason I was self sabatoging was I didn't know what to do next. I solved that by having a written plan and focusing on following the plan.
Any mistake you repeatedly make, and you know it is a mistake while you are doing it, is self sabotage. I guess taking trades completely out of plan is a common self sabotage for discretionary traders. For me mistakes tend to come out more during losing streaks than winning streaks. During a winning period it is easier to stick to your rules. I am a system order i tend to self sabotage in two way these day. 1) Manually override the system and take profits a few points early if there is resistance at my exit point, incase markets reverse. Fear emotion. Not a big one. 2) Not putting on enough size. My systems says risk $XXXXX on the next trade but I over ride and reduce risk to 80% of $XXXXX, because I think the next trade is going to be a loser. Again fear emotion in effect. Apart from those two I my pretty good at not self sabotaging myself. The worst is not taking a signal at all, effectively reducing risk to $0 on that trade. I won't do that.
Was someone in your past always unhappy with you no matter what you did as a kid? I went once a week for six months of hypnosis. I go couple times a year to stay the course.
Psychology and mental health are huge aspects of trading that are never fully addressed. To be a really great trader you have to practically be a monk, black belt, pyschologist, priest, actor, novelist, nutritionist...all tornadoed into one magical entity. So many average guys buy a trading course book subscription thinking they'll be the next American Idol Superstar Millionaire Trader in a week. It never works out like that. Gain wisdom and insight first. Plenty of wisdom and insight
Investor here...Doubling down!! Over the years my wife and I would set a limit of (early years) $10,000. then to $15,000. now $25,000. for any one stock (unless it's a 100 shares of a $400. stock)...Yeah, things like 100 shares of QQQ is different (with a covered call). We would break that pattern "Boy, this quality stock looks awfully cheap...Let's add 100 more shares (think GM or GE)"... It never ended well... In the last 10 years we have done it twice...Apple and Budget/Avis (CAR). Anything else...We try not to double down.
i do it all the time - i make money so i can BURN it on research - my thought is one if i stop the madness - i can own the world and mars. ~but then i would know anything if i stop.
as you get older the causes get washed away unfortunately. i have no fn idea what caused any of the issues. they re just like giza pyramids. im working on it i was just curious what other people went through when dealing with self sabotage because trading seems to pull all the issues to the surface and you have to work through them to become consistent. that why i like this thing because it is exposing all my bullshit beliefs