To achieve success at daytrading, you need to have the best daytrading tools, choose the right markets, and also have the right day trading systems. What’s more important than those however, is the right psychological and emotional outlook. Those little friends of yours that give you a nudge from time to time called fear and greed.
Daytrading PSYCHOLOGY:
Without the right day trading psychology, it’s almost inevitable that you will fail like a trader, and the reason I only say this is because of a certain thing that controls all of our behavior; and that’s emotions. Yes, although you might not like to be honest, and think that your decisions are “logical” or whatever, every decision you are making is with the idea to move away from pain or towards pleasure (or a combination of both). And even though you might think that you could trade without emotional attachment, emotions May have a big impact on your trading, and might stop you from trading at all.
The two main emotions people experience when daytrading are fear and greed, and while you’ll never be in a position to remove these emotions completely, you will need to manage and control them, understanding their purpose and how you can learn with regards to you through daytrading then you ever thought possible.
Daytrading FEAR:
Fear is the emotion that stops us from doing things that may be too risky. Generally it means False Evidence that Appears Real, however in the case of daytrading we have to check out things differently. Within the right quantity, fear is actually an emotion that we need, it’s a basic survival instinct to permit us to do something quickly and obtain out of situations that may harm us. However when fear becomes irrational or too great we are able to be prevented from doing stuff that might be essential for us to attain what we want to. This is known as conflict of great interest and is a challenge that many people face throughout their lives, not only in daytrading.
In day trading, the main fear an investor has is they are likely to create a losing trade and generate losses. This can be a rational fear as no trader wants to generate losses, but it’s irrational whether it prevents the trader from taking any trades to begin with. No trader, no matter who they are will be 100% right all of the time, it’s an impossibility because of the variety of factors and changes in the market and the world. There is nothing ever the same.
To illustrate irrational day trading fear, an investor might make a losing trade, after which be too fearful to create the following trade, which of course turns out to be a winning trade, and would have covered the prior loss. By letting the fear take control, the trader now has a net loss, although the next trade was winning. Obviously this isn’t the case every time, but it illustrates the uncertainty that traders face and also have to learn how to approach.
Daytrading Fear can be overcome with a group of rules, education, mentoring and exercise. This is actually the exact reason why we now have structured our emini daytrading course the way we have.
DAY TRADING GREED:
Greed is the opposite emotion to fear. It’s the emotion which makes us do things we’d not normally do because we want more. Wanting more is not a very bad thing because you need to be able to motivate yourself, however there’s a line between greed and motivation that some people aren’t seeing.
If we are being greedy we start doing things whenever we realize that we shouldn’t. In day trading, greed could make traders take random trades, or keep positions longer than their trading system dictates.
For instance, if your trader is watching an industry moving strongly upwards, the trader may be tempted to make a trade despite the fact that their trading system says not to. They have allowed the greed to take control, and much more often these days in this scenario, they’ll be buying right at the end of the move and will then consequently have a losing trade. Likewise, they are able to also remain in a trade too much time and instead of exiting the marketplace, they remain in and all the profit they’ve made is lost because the market turns.