The Only Thing to Fear …is Losing
Perspective is always important in trading.
If you are scared of losing money in an
account,
not only does it almost guarantee losses,
but
it can also reveal some very troubling
things about
how you approach trading…things that you
may
not want to acknowledge.
There are things in life that should be feared…
- Jumping Out of an Airplane Without a Parachute
- Being Thrown into a Small Dark Room Full of Poisonous Snakes
- A Scorned Wife
- Running Out of Dr. Pepper on a Hot Summer Day.
LOSING MONEY IN A TRADING VENTURE SHOULD NOT BE ONE OF THEM…
WARNING – Do not read further unless you are willing to face the truth about
what it takes to
succeed in trading…
The Good News
Fear in trading is as easy to overcome as simply deciding in your mind to not fear
losing on a trade, or in an account.
If you have trouble doing this, then there are other issues at play that need to be addressed.
So, if you determine you are not going to fear losing, but still find yourself biting your
fingernails in a trade, there are several potential culprits…the first one I will address
is the ego.
What Does Fear Have To Do With Ego?
Your ego needs to survive. If it senses a threat, then it triggers the fearmones in your
body (I made that word up).
You see, we believe that:
success = smart, failure = dumb.
That is what we are trained to believe.
Thus, when you lose on a trade, you made a dumb decision, even if it was a smart decision.
You know that if you take another trade and it loses, it will validate the conclusion
from the first trade, you’re dumb.
Then the wheels just come off because it no longer is about trading smart, it
is about your ego…you are now trading to prove to yourself that you really aren’t dumb,
you are smart, which is just dumb.
The key is to recognize it is by whether you are following the rules or not. If you aren’t
following the rules, chances are, your ego is contributing to your trading decisions…and
that can be bad, very bad.
YOU HAVE TO REPROGRAM YOUR THINKING
Your ego thinks that losing on a trade is dumb.
You have to realign your thinking to the truth.
If you did your research and concluded that trading the strategy is smart
(when your emotions aren’t in the heat of a trade), the outcome of a single trade does
not mean that the trade was not smart.
You established previous to the trade that it was.
Don’t let hindsight change your mind and kick your ego into survival mode.
MORAL OF THE STORY
Chances are, no matter how long you have been in the trading game, you probably
still have to deal with your ego to some degree.
Some more than others, but it is something
we all have to watch out for.
And that is the Truth About Trading.
Change Your Trading, Change Your Life
Ryan Jones
SmartTrading Founder
