hello everyone! I was wondering that how can I avoid doing too much trading? and What can you do to control yourself when you lose and still want to open another trade? And when you reach your profit goal how can you prevent yourself from thinking of making even more profit?
You need a well defined plan with clear trading signals. Then just take every signal you get within your plan with total discipline. Don't just make up trades. Ofcourse this is all easier said than done. In the real world we end up trading our emotions and feelings and not the market itself.
This is just my personal risk management approach. I limit myself to 7 open trades total at any given time. When I close out a trade, I have the opportunity to place another trade. Never risk more than 2% per trade. If trades start going your way, move up your stop losses. When you are stopped out, that ends that trade. You will lose monies in the stockmarket and you can lose all 7 trades. That is reality. On the plus side, small losses should not be your concern. It should be the quality of your trades. 7 good trades will beat 20 mediocre or bad trades. And you can make a lot of monies on 7 good trades. This is not static as you replace closed trades with new trades. Do not worry about the profits. Profits will take care of themselves. Focus on the process of trading.
You can try Renko charts, this is a method to avoid overtrading. You will see that you will make far less trades. Once you learned it you can switch back again to other chart types.
Good Morning eleanorK80, Over trading is not real. It is a marketing term developed by Trading Sellers who sell trading courses and trading books to provide an excuse for trader losses. Over trading is a very good thing because : 1. You learn to trade 2. You learn what you do not know. 3. You learn how to win 4. You learn how to lose 5. You learn how to recover losses. You can not learn this by not over trading. Please continue trading and take however many trades as you want. Disclaimer: These are just my trading opinions. Please do not take what I say as truth because I can not prove anything I say makes a lot of money trading. Please trade per your own responsibility. I have been day trading manually for 4 years and my total profits is about -$11,500 so I am not a profitable day trader, yet. For 2023, I am down -$4000. I am working on recovery day to day.
Great question… I have struggled with this myself. There are different schools of thought: 1. Leverage up. Moving for you? Double down! 2. Clearly define exit. My professor would say up 10%? Take your profits and move on. 3. [Harder] If you really want to do it right, do what the pros do. Read the reports and create your own pricing model in Excel. Then project and predict exactly how much your target will move. When the price equals your projection, sell out.
Overtrading is usually caused by not having the patience to wait for the set-up to materialize for the strategy you are using. When you try to force something bad things usually happen,at least in my experience that has been the case.
I have a checklist of all conditions that must be met for me to enter a trade. I have the discipline to not trade if all conditions are not met.
It's called awareness and self discipline. Once you know it's detrimental to your long term profitability, You need to avoid taking the mistakes. It's like a muscle you train to grow. Once you've grown this muscle, through multiple repetitions. It's going to be harder to take the wrong decision. Because you've trained yourself for it. It becomes a habit of yours. Overtrading is being wrong, too early or too late. There is only one trade to be taken. -> The right trade. Over time and rigorous study, You know what trade is right or wrong. Even if the good trade can lose and vice versa. Most trades are mistakes. You just need to figure them out, And take the choice no to make them anymore. It's experience, mindset & character. That's the holy trinity. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. - James Clear If you wish to become a profitable trader, You make the choice not to take -EV trades. aka ... the wrong trades.