Don’t tell me for a minute that this is not a problem. I can’t be the only one I know I’m not the only one. I do all this great research and lay out these wonderful plans in writing ahead of my trading day and my trading week. I have a great strategy and it works. so then in the heat of the moment sometimes I deviate from the plan. Last week I was doing really good stuck to my plan 100% Monday through Thursday. But yesterday I went off plan. first I entered SPY calls before it hit my entry level. Then to make things worse I got impatient and switched to QQQ puts. I turned what was a $7600 profit for the week into a week of making $5800. Yes that’s wonderful but I went off the plan. And of course how I stuck to my plan the original SPY calls with the original entry worked out beautiful i’m trying to come up with solutions. I am committed to read my written rules every single day before the trading day and I have this post note on my monitor. And I’m gonna seriously ask myself before I push any buttons “is this move in my plan“ that’s before I enter or exit or push any buttons. Who can relate? What ideas do you have
it was boredom and impatience... I entered pre price level cause I wanted to make a winning trade. I then exited that trade and flipped to short, again not being patient. the issue is not this one time I went off plan. I generally stick to plan over 80% of the time. I know it is human nature that screws us up. It is easy to give in to FOMO and impatience, that is human nature. To be good at this we must suppress all of that.
Create some tangible daily/weekly reward for keeping 100% to your rules, now it's just in your head, not in your bones, need like a weekend treat for sticking to the plan, not something expensive, has to be accessible weekly, but important eough to catch your heart...
Stop being so anal, technical, trying to control everything and beating yourself up. Learn to embrace slight deviation. Life and trading can get sloppy at times. Understand and observe those stretchy rhythms...the art side, philosophical side, the sex side
So you know the answer. What I found is when I focus on whether I followed the plan rather than P&L or the fact that the market is moving without me I tend to stay more disciplined. At the end of the day the question is not about all the opportunities I missed if I woulda, coulda or shoulda, but did I follow my plan.
I will clarify, don't mean the actual pizza / movie as a reward, as with kids, rather the emotionell pleasure of sitting down at your favorite coffe shop and knowing you made it, knowing you are 100% disciplined, that is something you will remember also during boredom and co.
if you fall apart when your in a trade - you should not trade at all. it's a sign you do not know what your doing, your ill prepared, haven't thought thru the whole event. incomplete planning and wishful thinking provided by a talking head on tv is just crazy.
You are being 'results oriented' and not 'process oriented' Of course maintaining process discipline is always easier said than done. The temptation is to think I can cheat a little bit on this trade and go back to being disciplined over the long run. Except doing it just every now and then risks it becoming a bad habit.
Hello Jdesey, Stop lying in your trading plan and trading strategy. Stop scamming your trading plan and trading strategy. Take some time to be Honest with yourself and your trading plan/strategy and trust the Law of Large Numbers. Let me correct you: You THINK you have a strategy you THINK works. You THINK you have a great strategy. You THINK your strategy works. You THINK you know what a great strategy is. You THINK you have a plan. You have THINK your plan works. You not KNOW anything, you ONLY think it work. Once your account is 7 Figures, then YOU WILL KNOW your strategy is great. Deposit the correct amount of capital in your trading account and be ready to make ALOT of money with your trading plan or lose it all, for what you THINK works.