putting aside the technical and operational issues, my errors are rooted in my urges at times to be right.
Exiting winning positions too soon! I've started screen recording my trading sessions. Playing them back at 30x speed EOD brings a lot of clarity.
I don't consider moving stops, impulsive entries, deviating from plan, etc. to be errors, but bad decisions. I seem to make 1-2 bad decisions per month. -After a slow period, I'm tempted to take an impulsive (non valid) entry that "looks good". -After a losing streak, I'm tempted to look for a bigger target than what my trading plan is designed to capture. The immediate result is "extra profits" or "extra losses". My long-term result has been negative. IMO, the biggest problem with bad decisions, is that more follow. If you take a non valid trade, move your stop, etc., and you make "extra profit", you're likely to repeat the action in the future. If it goes bad, you'll lose money that you shouldn't have lost, and then probably start looking for another "good lookin'" entry (that isn't in your plan), as you try to get back to even. The bad decisions are gambling. If you have a tested plan that is working, just press the button when you get a signal, exit where you're supposed to, and live with the results. If you don't like your results, analyze and adjust. DON'T TRY TO OUT TRADE YOUR PLAN.
Well said, and patience is a virtue. Several good themes here. Mechanize your mental thought process 'aka strategy', stick to it, monitor, answer and account for the subsequent 'why' questions, and then stick stand by your rules/words if only so you can properly evaluate their success. I also trade with a live account because it forces you to learn from your strategy mistakes in a very 'real' way and or immediately update code/fix bug. My big mistake 01: I have built a profitable automated trading system to predict price, place and manage open trades - but by being greedy and wanting to give 'it' more money to trade with - I started manually replicating some of its trade signals to 'boost' profits. These were by definition emotional trades and whilst initially positive - threw the 'systems' margin management / volume balancing out of alignment which ended up costing me dearly whilst asleep later that night thinking I had done a good thing 'helping it out'. My big mistake 02: Not fully appreciating at first (because all focus was on entry exit strategy) just how important account and open trade/position management such as exposure/volume sizing/different instrument pip value calculations are to actually making money.
Lack of focus. It's something that I'm trying to correct by monitoring/analyzing the same securities even when not actively holding a position. Getting distracted and chasing the next hot thing not only causes one to miss new setups in the original security, but dilutes the quality of the new trade decision as the result of shallow analysis and limited history with the newer security. I've noticed this is typical after a significant win, but also somewhat true in revenge trading as well. Staying focused can be boring, but lulls in trading may have the same effect as sleep- a period for recovery and a setup for the new day(trade)