Gooday fellow traders, asking for some advice with my weakness moving ATM Stops once it is set. I know it is a very personal thing, lack of inner strength, desperation to succeed, endless other reasons, no doubt. I'm up there in age now and in all my days I have been strong minded enough to quit addictions. I have overcome cigarette smoking addiction in my younger years and most recently I have stopped drinking after many decades. I for some reason find myself moving my stops thinking/knowing it will turn back in my favor but ultimately it doesn't, and I let it destroy an account. I have now in a short three-week period managed to lose 3 Prop Firm Evaluation accounts, the last one in a day because of refusing to accept that I was wrong. This has to be one of the hardest addictions I have ever struggled with. Why is letting it go early and accepting I was wrong so hard?

I'm putting this out for all to read and offer me any advice, if any, hoping that in naming this demon it will somehow help me overcome it. I would bet I am not the only one who struggles with this, guessing that is why most traders fail.

Thanks for any advice.
Joe

JMAL 

Gooday fellow traders, asking for some advice with my weakness moving ATM Stops once it is set. I know it is a very personal thing, lack of inner strength, desperation to succeed, endless other reasons, no doubt. I'm up there in age now and in all my days I have been strong minded enough to quit additions. I have overcome cigarette smoking addiction in my younger years and most recently I have stopped drinking after many decades. I for some reason find myself moving my stops thinking/knowing it will turn back in my favor but ultimately it doesn't, and I let it destroy an account. I have now in a short three-week period managed to lose 3 Prop Firm Evaluation accounts, the last one in a day because of refusing to accept that I was wrong. This has to be one of the hardest additions I have ever struggled with. Why is letting it go early and accepting I was wrong so hard? I'm putting this out for all to read and offer me any advice, if any, hoping that in naming this demon it will somehow help me overcome it. I would bet I am not the only one who struggles with this, guessing that is why most traders fail. Thanks for any advice. Joe

Make it more painful for you to move the stops, or make it more pleasurable to not move them.

Be accountable to someone you respect, and realize everytime you move a stop you will have to tell them you f'd up again (pain)

Reward yourself when you don't move the stop (nice dinner, "cheat" food, small purchase, etc)


Currently, there is something you are getting satisfaction from in moving the stops. Maybe you think you know better than what the ATM does? No confidence in your approach? Superior feeling when you move them and you were right to move them? Figure out root cause of WHY you move the stops, and then maybe you will be able to resist.

kevinkdog 

Make it more painful for you to move the stops, or make it more pleasurable to not move them. Be accountable to someone you respect, and realize everytime you move a stop you will have to tell them you f'd up again (pain) Reward yourself when you don't move the stop (nice dinner, "cheat" food, small purchase, etc) Currently, there is something you are getting satisfaction from in moving the stops. Maybe you think you know better than what the ATM does? No confidence in your approach? Superior feeling when you move them and you were right to move them? Figure out root cause of WHY you move the stops, and then maybe you will be able to resist.

I might add, focus on following your plan rather than your P&L.
A trade that loses money is a good trade if you followed your plan.
It's only one trade of many and protected your capital

It really just comes down to personal discipline.

Every now and then you can do it, and the market will come back and let you get out at break even or maybe a small profit or maybe even it takes off in the direction you wanted and you get a nice score.

You might think to yourself, "Ah ha, I beat the market."

But eventually you're going to get slapped down. It's like playing with fire, or guns or really fast cars. All it takes is one time. And sooner or later it will happen. Price will start to go against you and you say, "just come back up a little bit and let me get out break even. I'll take that. Please?"

Then it goes against you some more. And some more. Next thing you know you've lost 30% or more of your account.

I've learned (the hard way) just place your stop where it needs to go, or get out when you think it's time to get out, and call it a loser and move on. I've also learned that if it hits my stop, I was wrong. Period. I was just wrong. It's my fault, I didn't read the chart correctly and took a bad trade.

Let me tell you Joe, YOU are not alone.

I've read your post multiple times as I wanted to make the same out of frustration as Being funded with TST, Earn2Trade, Leeloo, Apex and It wasn't once multiple times. This year alone 8 funded accounts were disappear with a blink of the eye. In a first week.

I may be sound a bit funny but hear me out. What Kevin said is golden and has a wisdom in his word. And it is exactly what worked for me at least in a last couple of months. I'm not there yet but i think i got it.

kevinkdog 

No confidence in your approach? Superior feeling when you move them and you were right to move them? Figure out root cause of WHY you move the stops, and then maybe you will be able to resist.

I hope it is not going to be a long read. I can tell you what didn't work for me is having appreciation like If you didn't move a SL have something to reward yourself.

Now, let get to what helped me out. Small spoil, Jigsaw puzzle need to align in your head. What I mean by that is brain need to acknowledge and understand what is actually happening another words is self-awareness.

I have a friends who is into trading as well and we are different. He doesn't understand why I have some struggles when he has now issues with that what so ever. I don't get him why he struggles with something i do well. On the daily bases I send him my stats and on the days I fail evaluations he asks questions. By responding to him I need to speak out loud and explain to him what actually happen. You see where I go right ? He became a psychotherapist . What it actually did, I have to explain things out loud the brain started to hear not listen. When you do it multiple times you started to notice the pattern. Notice what Kevin said find a root cause. It is interesting how it works. First puzzle was putted in place.

Many are saying hey you need to review your trades right? Working FT and kids + trading do not equal to Review your trades. When family went away i jump on opportunity to review it, just to see what is the fuzz all about. this when AHA moment occurred. Second puzzle got in place and this where attention went to in trading session. Second puzzle went into a place.

Time goes on and I still blew up funded accounts but on the longer time frame. Being obsessed with trading I watch videos how people do things. So one day I landed on the video where trader gets in and market moves in his direction and reverses one tick away from his target. So he got out at entry +1 tick out. We keep hearing stick to a strategy. This when I realised that he didn't give a crap about money all he was focusing on is his ability to do what his strategy does. Doing it for 10 years, this was another Aha moment and puzzle fall in the place.
So what I started to do is to check my past trades and see what is my MAE and MFE. Before I execute, I started to talk out and explain why I"m getting into a trade and where I will be wrong and get out. If SL gets moved and I was loosing more than 400 I was saying out loud i'm going to turn off the computer and walk away.
You may wanna ask why $400, this is because me and my friend talked about out loud so the brain Hear not listen that past year stats shows that I can recover that $400 within two days. So third puzzle fall into the place. So no more stress as I know based on the track records I will loose 2 days and I am ok with that.

Little bit more to the above. If you are out of the trade at scratch it is not the end of the word because you still get in at the same price if markets comes back or can even get a better price. In some days I execute same trade 3 times if I see it still in place. What funny that trade will cover the losses and make it to the winner with a good profit. I guess this is where Confidence comes in .

Last puzzle that fall in place was realisation that is no longer about money. After looking at the market for 10 years interest of money faded away. What remain is a question: Why other people can do it and I can't. It is become a computer game find a entry spot and to see your target or SL being hit. Does the SL moves yes, because the entry is not accurate and SL is a fixed with 10 ticks. it still moves but you know why it moves because you know the set up it may be just a stop hunt and the trade is still in play. At the end of the day why worry about it, if you know based on your stats that you can recover it in a couple of days.

It is hard to believe but Hearing and Listening are two different skills. Good luck and thanks for the opportunity

Warning - Long post.

I believe there are 2 sets of challenges associated with honouring stop loss. 1st one is universal for 'humans' and the 2nd one is specific to 'individuals'. Nature vs Nurture analogy can be helpful here.

Though there is a lot of focus in the trading world on the 2nd set of individual factors, I think the universal factor is very important. Probably more important despite them being entrenched and hence technically non-modifiable. The crucial thing here is awareness. We are simply designed to feel 'right' and do the 'right thing'. Since stop hits are confirmation that you are wrong, it's acutely painful and we reflexively do anything to avoid that pain. What's is interesting is that, it's like a dark crevice in our mind which just goes away when you look there with the torch light of awareness. May be a bit too philosophical there TraderTom videos in YT helped a lot in navigating this with ease. I particularly benefitted from his suggestion to aggressively add to winners to counteract some of our innate flawed nature. (Please note that he currently doesn't seem to follow what he preached in the past. I presume it's beacuse of the huge followers in his free telegram channel and the unnecessary pressure he created for himself to be seen as a winning trader on a 'daily basis').

Second set of factors are specific to each individuals and hence theoretically more easily amenable to change with mentor/tutor. Our personal traits like impulsivity, reward seeking etc. and early experience often leads to addictive behavior and finds it's expression through gambling or trading. You don't seem to have these issues and hence I will skip. If interested trading psychologist Brett is a good resource here.

With regards to what helped me, there wasn't one aha moment. After 6 years of spinning my wheels, I finally accepted 'probabilistic' outcome of trading in 2020. During covid mayhem and serenity, I reviewed my old 1000+ trades with tradervue, and it clearly showed that my win rate was well above 65% and yet I was losing due to those handful of big losers secondary to removing stoploss. I also came across a stat based trading service and their best strategies are often in the 55% win rate but they made money by letting their winners run and keeping the losers small. Though I have listened to Mark Douglas several times over the years, for some reason, his wise words started to sink in. I made a simple change of time based stop loss instead of price based and it helped a lot in discipline. I am essentially flat by the end of the trading day with no profit target or stop loss. It started off as a trading exercise but I liked the no fuss approach and the results.

Since then, I have been on a steady path of profitability but still vulnerable for rare big losses. This is because, occasionally, I feel like I have a 'superior' market reading skills and unncessary stronger conviction than what's needed. However, I never, ever, add to my losing position now and hence my losers stay relatively small. I also realised that I missed so many good opportunities during that period because of my marriage to a losing position. Hence, not doing that circus anymore.

Final point. Though I fully accepted the probabilistic outcome of my trades, it's still disappointing and frustrating some times. For instance, yesterday's stats indicated that a big gap up opening after 52 weeks high close is bearish with win rate of 54% and profit factor of 1.3 for bears. Hence I was short but it didn't work out. Yes, I was disappointed but it was not painful as I know I'm just playing a numbers game here. My old avatar would have hung on to that short position for several days or even weeks hoping for a pullback or a correction. Not me. Not now. Not anymore.

Like to thank all that responded to this post, very much appreciated!

kevinkdog 

Figure out root cause of WHY you move the stops, and then maybe you will be able to resist.

Back to what KevinKdog wrote above, I would say the root cause of why I move my stops is not wanting to accept failure, after so many years working to be a successful trader. Knowing that now may be time to give up trading for good. Something I can't imagine having to do easily.

Some good news! If you haven't seen my last post in my journal "Joe's Trading Garage" I have passed an Apex $50k challenge since the posting here. The bad news is it took an additional 2 failed attempts before passing. I commented that I thought it may have been due to my recent surgery. Knowing now how important it is to be physically and mentally sharp when trading. Still no excuse for moving the stops.

How did I turn it around (knocking on wood), removing the lure of riches from the equation was my first objective. No more greed, just a small modest amount. Second, one to two trades preferably one per day. I would rather sit and wait 2 hours before taken a trade than make multiple trades in that time. For me I know the odds go down the more I trade. In any case, two loosing trades and I'm out. As far as my stops, I try and place market orders where I would be risking no more than 1% of account. When I show some consistency, I may start a trade copier. Again, thanks for your comments, sometimes one just has to ask for help.

You're framing your behavior as "addiction". Says who??

You've indeed struggled with two of the toughest addictions out there and overcome them both.
But that doesn't mean that every bad habit you struggle with is an "addiction".
This framing automatically puts in the "hard" category, rather than the "simple" one.

I want to emphasize: I'm not saying it is easy or being disrespectful of the challenge you are facing. But I do think that some of the complexity of trading psychology is learning to separate the hard stuff from the simple stuff. As a result, many of us are so overwhelmed that we overlook the simple solutions to the simple problems.

Once we frame something as complex or hard, regardless of the reality of the problem, our mind automatically has a hard time overcoming it. We block ourselves and struggle even if there's no real issue there. To the contraty, once we frame it as simple (assuming it really is), our mind can sometimes easily "just get through it" with little to no resistance.

And just to be clear: yes, in some cases, it isn't simple. Sometimes there's root causes to deal with, self sabotage etc. But don't ASSUME you're in that category quite just yet.
Many times, the simple root cause is just that everything is so mixed up that it's hard for you to separate the "spaghetti" your mind is in - to separate, simple-to-overcome problems.

There's no nicotine here. No alcohol. Nothing.
A simple "Never move my stops. period" is all it takes.

I'm sure you have a few rules in your life you have no problem keeping. You see them as "simple".
You don't run red lights.
You don't walk near ledges of rooftops.
You don't jump in front of cars.
And you don't move stops!

moving stops , stops to tight , stops to wide . generally traders that have a problem with stops are trading with a to large of position size for their trading accounts . most of the time the stop is to tight . take the ES for example , use a 8 point stop with a 20 point target with one micro contract and take long trades only . you will find it hard to blow up a 5000 account doing that.

Don't blame yourself, we're all humans.

1: Open a Sim account and trade there for 1 month (or as long as it takes) and under real cirumstances, you will learn how it doesn't make sense to move your stop away and you will build more healthy habits over time.

2: Stop trading at Prop firms immediately, it only worsens your bad habits. Come back when you are profitable in Sim for ate least on month, clean disciplined trading.

3: Learn a new strategy where your stop and target is "to the tick" defined and undebatable.
Eg: Volumetrading with stops "somewhere" near some level is unsuitable for you.

4: Understand that trading is quite boring when you are just following your rules. Thats how it is.