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hey...
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it was a good day... got on a nice move down... made 4.2 points and i got taken out one time...
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i was thinking a lot of going live soon but i still dont feel comfortable... there is a little fear of losing and making wrong decisions on my mind... dont know what to do about it... any ideas?
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Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
You could figure out what 'fear' specifically you have?
Fear of losing? Losing what? You will always have drawdown periods and losing will occur.
Fear of making wrong decisions? How wrong, how often etc..
For me I have to find out how much I am willing to lose in a single session (but I always broke it...)
The mental aspect of trading is the most important in my opinion. There is no way to master it until you are trading live and building confidence live. But, there are babysteps also like SIM and growing the account (like you mentioned).
Why not go live this next week and you only get to make 1 trade per day for 5 days with one contract. See how you react, behave, is it any different etc..?
Fear and greed are 2 emotions that every one wants to control. But we are human and we have to live with the fact that our analysis will be wrong at least 49% of the time. The only emotion we need to be really worried about is HOPE. That is the biggest wealth destroyer. market dangling a carrot on a stick in front of u all the time, will give u hope that as long as u follow ur system like a robot, you will make it big. Fact is, the light at the end of a tunnel is sometimes a speeding train hurling at you at full speed. When the light gets real bright, deer is caught in front the headlight, you are too paralyzed to think. That's when market hits you real hard.
Almost 90% of all traders can report a single trade that went horribly wrong that almost ended their trading career. That single bad trade normally lead to revenge trades and recovery trades. Somehow, a trader increases his exposure when he is out of sync with the market and burst his account in few days of that single trade.
Ideally, best way to gain confidence is to trade very small. The trade size should be small enough that a series of 10 loss trades should not worry you financially. Once the fear of net outcome of a single trade is gone, your executions will improve. Keep a note of how you handled each trade and give yourself room to experiment. When hard earned money is on the line, the heart does weep on every loss. But since the trade size is small, you can count every loss as small down payment for learning experience. Only when you have crossed a set number of good executed trades, increase the lot size marginally. every time the execution suffers, reduce the trade size.
Capital preservation is far far important that capital appreciation. Trading to win normally fails. But those who trade not to loose, always wins as mentally they are prepared to accept negative outcome of any trade.
thx guys for your responses...
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true.... i am also part of the 90% having a horrible trade on the record...
although i know that i made a terrible silly mistake which could not occur a second time i still have this alarmsignal yelling of not losing in my head, which prevents me from trading the things that i see. instead i would make my decisions based on money and not on technicals...
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the funny thing is that i know all this... the 90% of trading success is based on mental strength but if i break it down this is typical for trading... theory and experience are two different pair of shoes... in trading you get quiet fast a lot of knowledge but to put this knowledge into practise is a complete different story...
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the best and simplest idea still would be to simply overwrite my memory with a few good trades that i only can do live...
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i think about it...
Yup. I agree, but building up success in SIM couldn't hurt is you treat is like Live. Most people can't, but it is a training wheel, but if you can't do it in SIM than I wouldn't even consider LIVE.
That is why a daily journal and logging is so important. For me pushing my trades to the open air for all to see has a similar ego impact. Nobody likes to lose in public.