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to make things shorter: I am a winning player but psychological problems intervene and ruin everything.
I have only one problem and I am sure most traders or maybe even all of them have that problem. I need to fix it as soon as possible or else I will never reach my goals.
I am a discretionary trader. When recognize some pattern that I saw before I would enter or put a limit order if I see the pattern earlier. So far so good. From that point on, I have little influence on what will actually happen with the price. Once the order is hit, that's it. But I ruin lots of trades by removing those orders (that were not hit) and I have no idea how to fix it.
Once the trade is opened I actually feel relaxed, but the biggest problem are pending orders. I remove them a couple of ticks before I actually would have the trade open. I rethink the situation and with usually the emotion of fear remove the pending order.
I did not make more than a thousand dollars last week, because I removed all my pending orders. It's a problem now.
What works so far:
Standing up and going into another room and checking how position is doing from time to time. Same with pending orders. Last week I went to bathroom, came back I saw my pending order was gone and there was no position order. No struggle, no rethinking, no nothing. Easy win.
I often meditate that one trade does not matter in a series of trades and that there still is a long way to go, thousands of trades.
I convince myself that money does not matter.
But then, if I forget all that, everything reverses and I am removing those again.
I have stickers on monitor reminding me of my golas, of variance. I played a lot of poker, but it did not help so far. I don't have that same problem in poker. It's like I lost my balls, you know.
Maybe sports will help? I need a practical advice I guess. I have zero ego in markets. I need at least some so I can enter trades. How do I increase my ego? I noticed playing poker I have a lot of ego, I sometimes throw chips worst cards. That probably comes from not knowing what the right play is, so I rely on instincts to maybe try to scare the opponent. With markets it is the opposite, I know too much and chose very good trades, but something holds me back. Last 50 trades or so were all gold, but I did not take like 100 trades (most of which would end up winners).
The quickest way to solve that is to know the probabilities associated with each signal you take along with it's associated draw downs etc... At least that is the first step. If you don't know these things how can you have the confidence it takes to hold or enter a trade. Executing day in and day out is largely dependent on confidence not in yourself but in your stats. You don't need ego to be successful in the markets in fact ego will get you hurt but you do need confidence to execute. If you want to use sports analogy think baseball where things are largely done on stats. Once you know the probabilities you then have to learn to trust them which is essentially step two.
"The day I became a winning trader was the day it became boring. Daily losses no longer bother me and daily wins no longer excited me. Took years of pain and busting a few accounts before finally got my mind right. I survived the darkness within and now just chillax and let my black box do the work."
I know I am profitable. But I still remove those orders. I trust my analysis. I need to overcome that somehow. I don't care about losing it all, but I care about making it where I want to be.
Do you just know you are generally profitable or do you have stats that you can really lean on going back for a couple of years for each signal you take? The more data and measurement you have for each signal the easier it is to lean on that data and execute your trades. If you have extensive data then that is where military style discipline comes in to learn to trust it. That is an area that took me quite a while to master and was a painful process. I think your approach to setting your pendings and then just walking away can be helpful. The less you stare at screen the better imo.
"The day I became a winning trader was the day it became boring. Daily losses no longer bother me and daily wins no longer excited me. Took years of pain and busting a few accounts before finally got my mind right. I survived the darkness within and now just chillax and let my black box do the work."
I am not one of those beginners hehe. I trade since 2008 and what I do has also worked in the 80s. I am very confident in my trading. But that's not about my ability, it's about skipping tades.
As far as I can understand myself, I feel confortable not taking a trade, because it probably decreases the variance. That is of course a stupid think to feel and to think, since I am not making money I should be. I don't want to earn a living, I want to become rich and what prevents me is that the risk (measured in number of trades) I take would not feel confortable any more.
That sucks I did everything I could and I can't
I watched "Fight Club" the other day, the scene "Let it go". Still does not help =) I really need to let it go and just take the goddamn trade.
I am 100% sure, if there was someone with a baseball bat standing next to me and hitting me each time I skipped a trade the problem would have been solved.
Yes, walking away is good, I never did it before with pending order (I ALWAYS do it with open trades). It came to mind when I wrote the first post today. Maybe I should try that.
Thanks for the following words. Very helpful. Exactly what I need.
I think you're 99.9% there, fear. The question is fear of what? Only you can answer that, but here's an exercise help you drill down to find your core issue. Get out a piece of paper and answer these 10 questions, be honest and you be surprised with the results.
1. Why do I pull my standing orders?
2. Why do I pull my standing orders?
3. Why do I pull my standing orders?
4. Why do I pull my standing orders?
5. Why do I pull my standing orders?
6. Why do I pull my standing orders?
7. Why do I pull my standing orders?
8. Why do I pull my standing orders?
9. Why do I pull my standing orders?
10. Why do I pull my standing orders?
"I convince myself that money does not matter," I believe this is a clue.
The fact is, money does matter, that's why risk management is so important.
Have you ever thought transcripting your discretionary trading into a bot, It doesn't have to be the exact methodology but it helps:
1) Collect long historical and statistical data
2) Gain confidence
3) Compare discretionary vs mechanical
If removing your limit order is a one click easy/too often problem, you could build an indicator/strategy with some warning text (like are you sure you want to cancel limit order....), this would make the process more complicate and allow you time to re think your action, instead of simply clicking on your mouse. Besides, the main problem with changing your plan has to do with fear, and that is a very introspective and subjective process, no one can really give you advices, it has to come from you. Maybe writing a journal can help.
I had a likewise issue with removing stop loss orders or donīt setting them at all. I solved it by setting up a text to speech which reply every half hour. I use a free alarm clock tool which you can download here: https://http://freealarmclocksoftware.com/ Maybe it helps.
In your situation it's better to place a limit order with your pending limit loss/ profit orders and after that just go away from the computer.
This way you will let the market to decide either to take you out or make you a winner. And, market is always right.
D