Sounds like me. I need to lie less, but I find the utility of telling fibs to so tremendous in day to day operation. I.e., I'm late on an assignment, I have an excuse. If I'm good about it 90% of the time, is a lie bad the last 10% of the time? How would you recommend I go about unwinding my hackish approach to life and finding peace? I'm a mess psychologically, and I know I don't deserve success. I want to clear this up. I could argue that I am successful in most other areas of my life, except I'm not -- everything I do is some kind of underhanded, crooked hack. I don't even know how I got this way, except that the sheer convenience of being deceptive is just too hard to get away from.
Yep, you hit the OP nail right on the head: D.E.N.I.A.L. = "Didn't Even Notice I Am Lying" (to myself)
Not a psychologist, but I'd pick this as the problem. IMO the BS trades are this. Maybe somewhere along the line you picked up the idea that if something isn't difficult it's no good or you're trying to prove your better than the game. Good trading is BORING. Just waiting for the correct set up, then executing like a factory worker. Not Gordon Gecko yelling BUY and SELL on the phone with a hot chick draped over his shoulder or a grandmaster chess game. If you have an edge, just execute it over and over like a f'ing robot. Stop trying to make it a thrill or a challenge. Go to work like an assembly line worker, watch the screen like an assembly line worker and run the rivet machine like an assembly line worker. FWIW. Good luck.
Well I went to see the psychiatrist. Even tough I will have to do some psychological tests she believes my problem is anxiety. She discarded crazy, depression or bipolar disorders. She referred to peeling an orange, as medicine takes away anxiety there is a possibility we can find depression hidden underneath but she thought that was less likely. I will be taking one table 10mg of lexapro everyday for a few months and since this drug takes a few weeks to start working I am taking half a 0.5 lorazepam tablet twice a day. Hope this takes away my compulsiveness (stupidity) while on the keyboard. During the next few days I will monitoring my ability to trade under this new 'system'.
================ Ant-icedo; Thats helpful written advice, on a written plan, but only if you want to manage your trading like a business. You may want to occasionaly modify your well researched plan [in writing]; i have, on exits for example..................................... Your emotional based trading maybe more fun, than a business; hobbies usually are fun,action packed , thrills chills & excitement but cost money.
Here's my advice, for your psychological problems. You have a problem because you trade out of frustration, out of boredom, just like sometimes we eat out of frustration or boredom. First of all, you should realize that you can do anything out of boredom/frustration, but whereas scratching your head will just make you lose your hair, trading will make you lose your money. Deep inside, what you are probably thinking is "I need something that will make me happy, so I'll now trade and win some money", yet the problem is that it's not your drive to get rich that makes good trades, but your patience. So if we care about not losing our money, we have to follow some rules. My rules are these more or less: 1) Don't trade if you are distracted, on the phone, with other people or if you are frustrated. 2) Do not trade unless you've written out where you will enter and where you will exit (if you lose, or if you win). 3) some other technical analysis requirements for making trades. You will see that once you have the requirement of writing down a strategy (thinking of a setup, entry and exit points, drawing trendlines and so on) for each trade you make, once making a trade will mean some work and hard and focused thinking, you won't use trading as a videogame or a way get distracted from your frustrations and boredom. You will treat it seriously as you should. For me what happens is that I have two modes of trading. Regular intuitive rational calm mode and excited (cocky/angry) mode. If I come back from a vacation and haven't traded for a while I am always in regular calm intuitive mode and I make money most of the time, and only lose little when I make a mistake. But after a while, especially after winning quite a bit, I get cocky and excited. Then I start trading very lightly with almost no thinking and no waiting. I just take trades out of boredom. Then I lose 50% of what I made in calm mode. At that point the cocky excited mode turns into angry excited mode and I say "you bastards, now I want my money back". That's when I risk losing everything, often by doubling up a losing position (instead of closing it). In order not to fall into these troubles, I must follow the rule of preserving myself from trading unless I am patient, and having to write down a strategy is a guarantee (if I follow that rule) that I won't just trade lightly, out of boredom or cockiness. Or maybe this happens with those immodest traders... like me. I have to be reminded that I am not god, by being kicked in the ass by the markets. After a few winning trades I start believing that I infallible. Anyway, those rules I mentioned are there to remind us that we failed many times, to keep us modest.
Great post, Travis. Nothing's worse than when a string of successes with a strategy leads you along the path to destruction. I was shorting a specific stock near its 52-week highs, and had one successful trade after another. If the trade moved against me early in the day, I doubled the position and took profits on the next pullback; if it went against me late in the day, I simply held it overnight for the morning pullback. Worked like a charm with not a single loser. I had no worries because the stock's 52-week high was my stop loss and this particular stock was not likely prone to news, takeovers, etc. They'd already posted their latest dividend and stated their latest earnings. It was just one of those nice predictable trading vehicles. During this great run, I then shorted a stock that hit new highs on a very predictable piece of news to be announced the next day. It was basically a pre-announced "buy the rumor" run up. The trade moved against me a bit and I doubled the position, ending the day holding a small unrealized loss and fully expecting to "sell the news" the next morning. I'll preface the end of the story by saying that if I had followed my normal risk management rules the moment it moved against me, I would've ended the day with a $100 loss on this trade. After hours, the rumor was confirmed as expected, but this stock that had gained 40% that very day gapped up another 20% ($4 share) in after hours! I had no idea what to expect on market open the next day. Normally, you'd expect a closure of part of the gap, but it was possible that short covering would drive the price up another $4 or more. Who knows? (Just take look at HIG yesterday.) My poor risk management had placed me in a very uncomfortable position. The lesson I learned was valuable, because who knows what kind of mess I could've found myself in down the road had I continued to trade the way I had been based on a string of successes with a single stock.
4 years later and I still have a problem with this from time to time, but i never blew out my account, and just keep at it. At least you can admit what your problem is, now you just got to do what it takes to "make it" in this business, and if you want it bad enough...you will. best of luck
This problem that you (referring to the author of this thread) and I have, has motivated me since a few years ago to work on developing an automated trading system, so to have something that will trade consistently no matter how much it wins or loses (the system won't get bored, tired or excited). I think that is the best thing to do for everyone. But some people, just a few people I think, manage to keep mentally balanced even with just discretionary trading, even when trading huge amounts of money (not easy). Not me, because I am not that balanced in daily life either. I found that I can make much more money with discretionary trading than with automated trading, due to my limited ability to program a system that understands all my ideas, or to even fully realize what my trading ideas are. But I also found that when I lose my emotional balance (quite easily), I can lose all of my capital pretty quickly (usually by doubling up a losing position and then keeping the position open until I lose everything).