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Winnipeg, Canada
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: Sierra Chart
Trading: ES/ZB
Posts: 106 since Apr 2015
Thanks Given: 94
Thanks Received: 167
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Hello fellow traders! This will be my first post here at BigMikes forum.
I must say that for the past 2 years of trading I've generally avoided forums as they can be filled with lots of negative, debbie-downer type posts and I decided that sort of environment was not desirable as I was still impressionable in my early stages of trader development. That being said I've come to realize that having a network is important because there are hurdles I want to get over that I might not be able to do so on my own. Of all the other forums this one here seems to have a lot of mature traders looking create a good network for themselves and others. So here I am!
My current hurdle.. Loss Aversion combined with anxiety from missing profitable trades.
First a little background. I started trading about 3.5 years ago where I bought just about every book I could, spent hours everyday reading/researching attending webinars (bikemikes' included haha) and simply being a human sponge for information. I practiced developing strategies and making trades on FOREX demo platforms while learning lots about technical analysis.
This went on for about 1.5 years before I opened my first trading account with a Futures broker. From there I spent about 2 years of slow but patient learning and trading with my own money that saw me lose about 40% of my account. Through this period of trial and error I've learnt plenty more about the markets as well as myself.
I'm now at the point where I have a sound methodology that I firmly believe in and that i enjoy trading. I have a daily process/routine filled with worksheets for my market analysis and to keep track of all my trades from a profit/loss perspective, to expectancy, performance of trade setups, and my own performance of how I execute those trades. I've achieved a far more consistent method of trading and therefore have stopped losing and am at a small gain/break-even stage with my results.
This is where I am stuck.. As the title of this post suggests; I have residual pain from sustaining losses over 2 years and have struggles with executing trades (loss aversion) at the same time because I can see the potential of my methodology and my own performance I have this pain from missing out on these trades.
In short the fear of losses is preventing me from making trades and then watching profitable trades pass me by is causing anxiety from missing those opportunities, which in turn prevents me from making more trades (its a negative cycle you see). Because of this I am not trading as frequently as my strategy would require and therefore I am losing my edge.
Im wondering if anyone else has gone through the same kind of scenarios I have and if anyone has any suggestions or techniques to help with getting over this mental roadblock of sorts?
Thank you all for your time spent reading this somewhat lengthy post and thank you in advance for any comments!
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