I received this comment in a review from a trainee:

Really frustrating day…Over traded the junk out of MS and C and made hardly any money.

MS and C : Was trying to fade them in the morning but they were the really strong up until about 1pm. This is when the short started to work, but I traded so many tickets in both of them that I just stopped trading them. It’s very easy for me to over trade MS, C not as much. I’ve done this in the past w/ MS.

I certainly have had these thoughts of grief and frustration. It is no secret that I have broken a few trading keyboards in my day. Yesterday I walked by GMan’s trading station and noticed some keys unattached to his keyboard. Hey, it happens.

When I get a feel that I am overtrading a stock I find that I end up writing a ton of tickets, I use up all of my emotional and intellectual energy, and I don’t make money. I take a step back. I ask what is the real trade here? What would be an A+ long? What would be an A+ short. Then I tell myself I will make only those A+ trades. If those trades present themselves then I make the A+ trend trade. But I stop with the in and out trading. That is just a continuing day of grief, frustration, no money, and smashed keyboards.

Learn to be self-aware as a trader so you can make this intraday adjustment. They will save you grief and improve your trading risk/reward.

Bella

One Good Trade

no relevant positions

p.s. Here is the follow up response from the trainee:

absolutely..i’ve done this in MS specifically because I am trading it with at least 1000 shares a clip, somtimes 2000. i can write 20 tickets in it, in a blink. and also the liquidity I feel like I can control my risk really easily..this leads to alot of in and out/over trading…i did recognize that I was over trading these stocks during the day, so i did shift my focus away from them. but this also caused me to miss the trade i was actually looking for earlier in the day. in a stock like MS I am not going to give myself a 20c stop, probably not even a 10c stop..more likely its going to be 5 cents or so..so to say that the solution is to give myself a bigger stop in this trade, is in my opinion, not right. the solution i think is to be more selective.the trade I was looking for did not materialize in the morning, and this is not at all surprising. the time of day that this trade is going to work is much later in the day.