Summary:
Live trading on 100 shares:
My trading was wracked by fear today - fear that I wouldn't succeed at this.
Crazy how this works. I think that my emotional state carried over from Friday and a weekend of thinking about it. It wasn't helped by today's schedule either; I had quite a bit on my agenda for the rest of the day, items that needed a lot of prep and I wanted to get done with trading early.
I started the day ok; I think the emotional state of fear came just before hitting the profit HOD. I was actually determined to quit and walked away from the comp to tell my wife that I was done for the day. Then I came back to shut down NT and thought I spotted an opportunity for another quick gain. Pffft.... this rapidly descended into another, and then another trade and before I knew it I was negative. Then the game became very much about fear and breaking even.
I am not sure about what to do with this - some days I am not affected at all - it is more about a state of mind. This fear is usually associated with me wanting to take a quick scalp and I become more concerned about that then I do price action. This can drive me crazy and I am not sure how to diffuse the emotion. Perhaps more work on the visualizations.
Today's agenda sure didn't help. Let's see how I feel tomorrow.
Trade well.
Details:
The same patterns show up again and again.
AAPL
CMG
LULU
MA
NFLX
Hi DTF,
ReplyDeletePerhaps paying closer attention to self-talk might help? You said "I wanted to get done with trading early". Did you start out thinking exactly that? There's nothing wrong with wanting to trade just the morning, or just the afternoon - especially if it's part of your business plan... But is this more about "getting it over and done with"? You know for a fact that trading is a job that's not quite like other jobs in that often, it pays to just do nothing. Let the market come to you - if it doesn't, it's ok to call it a day and do something else (and you've got so many choices! :-)). If you have other commitments for the day (business meetings, classes, anniversaries and such...of course you should try to schedule dental appointments in the afternoon if you plan to trade only mornings...), it's also ok to not even open your charts. But if you must take a few scalps, and they turn out to be winning trades, it's good to call it a day ie. don't stretch your luck. If you are in a rush for time, you'll see things that are there as well as things that are not there. I'm not sure that I'm making any sense. I just really wanted to say "hi"! :-D
I think you are exactly right - I had too much going on yesterday... before I even started trading. Becoming more sensitive to 'me' is probably what most of the rest of this journey is going to be about.
ReplyDeleteHi! =)