With all of the experience and understanding, books, chart patterns and indicators that we are adding to our trading toolbox, it’s easy to forget what we need to get rid of from our trading routine. We don’t think about the things things a Trader Needs to Avoid when we’re adding new things to our toolbox. It is one of the most important things that determines whether a new trader turns out to be a winner or a loser. It’s a skill to be able to tell what’s just noise and what’s making money.
You can’t follow every indicator, trade every method, or keep adding to your trading method. You have to pick and choose, and you have to know what doesn’t help you make money and what to get rid of. A trader has to figure out what they are doing that is making them lose money, and then they have to give up those bad habits and bad tools.
Here are things a Trader Needs to Avoid:
Give up the desire to be right.
It’s not important to be right in your predictions and opinions. Instead, try to go with the flow of the market and not try to be right in your own mind.
Give up your feelings about how the price of your trade moves.
Even if you watch a live stock stream for a long time, you have no power over how the stock moves. Don’t try to cheer for your positions and get caught up in every price tick. All of the other parts of trading are in the hands of the trading gods.
“They” are not to blame for your losses.
There is no mysterious ‘They’ that is making you lose money. Either you made bad decisions or your system just made a bad trade. You can be on the same side as ‘They’ if you trade in a different way than they do. A free country and a free market make it. If “they” were really in charge, most of the big hedge funds would do much better in the long run.
When you lose trades, don’t beat yourself up about it. You should stop.
If you follow your trading strategy, there must be no regrets after you lose money on a trade. In this case, if you didn’t do what you said you were going to do and you lost, your money was your tuition. You paid for it, so move on to the next trade.
Give up your own ideas.
It’s important to give up your own opinion and get out of a trade if it moves in a direction that shows you were wrong.
Accept that you can’t change your mind.
The more you think a trade can’t go wrong, the more risky it is. It will make you trade too big and stay in the market too long. You always have to be ready to be wrong.
Don’t think about how well you did in the past.
For each trade, don’t hold grudges against stocks and think they “owe.” Do not fall in love with a stock and hold on to it as it goes down and down.
When you trade, don’t let yourself be judged by that.
Do not let your trading make you who you are. Diversify your life by having best friends, relatives, passions, and other things to do. It’s not good to get too excited about the markets.
When your stop is hit, quickly get out of bad trades.
Your perfect trades will be the ones that make money right away. If they go against you right away, be ready to be stopped out. There are times when you can lose your money in trading if you say things like “It will come back, I just have to wait.”
Give up on price goals. The best thing to do is let your winners run as far as they can go without stopping them.
In the appropriate market conditions, trends can go on for a long time. If your losses on losing trades are small, the big wins during these trends can make your whole year fruitful if your losses are small on winning trades. If you set a goal for how much money you want to make, you will miss out on the chance when the big move comes. Let a last stop take you out.
Rather than giving up trading, you should give up these bad habits. These are the things a Trader Needs to Avoid.
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