MY feeling is that trying to force yourself to end fear is not going to work. it is my personal experience that the best thing to do is to walk away from trading.
Few year ago when I tried futures trading for the first time, I couldn’t handle the emotion and the fear to see the P/L swing so fast! So I stopped and migrate to the swing stock trading where I could size to a comfortable level. Now that I’m giving the futures a second chance, I’m way more comfortable and actually having a day with $500 loss doesn’t bother me that much. At the same time emotions of live trade are definitely different that Paper trade. I will continue to trade NQ for a while especially because I’m the last week I had big real gains! It might be that it easy to lock nice profits with those big swings!
Have goals. Work Hard. Live your dream. No excuses. Anything worth having is hard, or anyone could do it.
Plus I would like to add an interesting topic. Trading futures is a journey and you have to be dedicated, focused and also a little stubborn to stick to it even if you can’t have a consistent profit right away. But when is the stubbornness healthy and when it can switch to addiction at revange? I’m still questioning myself about it.
As Arny says at the end, "don't be afraid to fail." Who does not love Arnold, we all do... But with all that he is going on about in that wonderful video? He was not trading. Do not be afraid to fail? Jesus, more BS from non-trader, feel-good BS. He has hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank. Of COURSE he would not be afraid to try something and fail. BECAUSE HE HAS MONEY! P.S. Morse, I do not mean you as the non-trader, I mean Arnold.)
He started with nothing. Trading is different yet the same. You need to fail before you succeed, its pre-requisite imho. One thing that is hard for me to accept is "there is no plan B". That's easy to do when you have no responsibilities, but very dangerous when you do.
You should start keeping stats on this...you exiting trades early to minimize your loss befor the stop is reached to then see the price action turn back around without you...going into the direction of the original trade to its profit target. With those stats, you can then determine the merits of "re-entering" those types of trades when the price action returns back to a specific fixed point (e.g. your original entry price). wrbtrader
I would prefer experience above feeling. And even then... some can overcome the problem and some cannot; for various reasons.