Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
When was the last time your emotions influenced a trading decision?
Since you ask emotion influence, I want to share a phenomenon happens on me almost everyday in my first 3-4 months.
After reviewing all my trading logs on a daily basis, I found that I can always have a profit on my first trade everyday, then the second and third trade are lost ones.
I think I'm alway cautious at the beginning of everyday, then with the profit I got from the first trade, I feel safer that I can afford a loss and become too risky. Sometime the 2nd and 3rd trade neutrelize my profit, and leave me a small loss.
After that, I become nervous, I don't want to leave the market with a loss, which comes from my initial profit. As you can imagine, the results are always disastrous.
Now I have become much more calm. I can somehow control my emotion by accepting my fault and focus on trading skill rather than profit/loss.
I'm still working on the emotion issue. Now, it's my 6th month in trading, hope this is what you want.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
According to Denise Shull, all decisions require emotions. The latest research shows that you can't make a decision without engaging your emotions. And you certainly can't eliminate them.
"Emotions are a good thing! It is only when they are conflated or confused with automatic behavior or action that they become a problem. Emotion in its pure form acts as information in the unconscious. In short, this means to create our maximum success, we need to start culling and analyzing what it is telling us. "
"A huge misconception exists across both the professional world of psychology as well then as the average human decision maker. It is axiomatic to believe in “controlling emotion”. Professional researchers talk in terms of “emotion regulation” but it is the same thing – and there is a very very good chance the entire concept is flawed.
First of all – an emotion alone never ever did anything – it didn’t make a bad decision, lose money or anything else. An emotion alone is just a feeling – with content and a source. It really is only a piece of data – a reflection of meaning. So why control something that alone is essentially powerless?
Well we talk about controlling emotions because in misunderstanding them for the better part of the past 70 years, we confused them with actions – the psychological and physical events that need controlled. It is only a movement – a physical action that can cause anything to happen. So in order to properly leverage the information, motivation and other valuables within your emotions – first remember that you only have to control the action you take. Make them two separate things – because they are.
Second, figure out that you can feel bad – angry, sad, agitated … whatever… and not do anything – except analyze what is REALLY making you feel that way. Until you KNOW what is really making you feel that way, keep analyzing the data because once you know you have created mental and psychological capital – which is power.
This is huge – you have the ability to create power within yourself simply by understanding yourself. You have the ability to create change simply by analyzing the emotion data and not by mixing it up with action.
A few bold neuroscientists talk about this – they buck the trend of the cognitive revolution and notice that we don’t just think and do, we feel, think and do…. and we need to consciously and explicitly leverage all three. There is even research that shows the attempt to control certain types of emotions makes them more intense – and more likely to be acted out – (which is what is happening – if you don’t understand the emotion, you automatically act it out).
If you want to ACT in the way that serves your goals, stop trying to control you emotions and use them purely as data. Choose your actions carefully once you understand your emotions."
Emotion for me is a Cumulative thing. I don't get emotional in a trade, it either goes my way or it doesn't. What I get emotional about more so is when the trades start stacking up against me during the day/week/month.
There isn't much of a reason to get emotional in a trade, you should know exactly what to do in any given scenario. For instance you should know when to stay in or get out. If price moves against you should know what to do. If you put on a trade you shouldn't be in you should know what to do or if you get slipped or lose connection. If price almost hits your stop or limit and comes back to your entry you should have all this stuff accounted for before you enter.
R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
I've been taking the "High Performance" trading psych course with Steve Ward.
Steve teaches that the above idea, that emotions are a good thing, that we don't want to trade emotion-free, is the current thinking in the trading psych field. Emotions properly channeled constitute an edge over the machine.
I had bought close to the bottom and sold close to the high (it was my target)
Since I was greener than green for the day I did not have the heart to take another perfectly valid long setup I saw a bit later. It was too much for my nerves.
Here is the second setup where I SHOULD have gone long:
