Mike,
Hello. This wasn’t a good week. I made a lot of mistakes.
1. I didn’t stick to my plan and took several trades without a clear plan.
2. I felt anxious most days. I was aware, and did some exercises to clear my mind, but after the first losing trade, I lost my focus.
3. I feel frustrated from not being able to have a good day after seeing so many opportunities and not sticking to my methodology from the past week.
Bella
If this is how you feel after this week of trading, you are not alone.
Also, this is how we all felt when we first started as traders, even often as developing traders.
Further, even experienced traders can feel this way and engulf frustrating weeks. And isn’t this worse when the market seems to just go up and up? What is it about strong trading weeks that breeds more frustration with our trading? I will leave that for another post at a later date and get back to our topic.
Let’s suggest an exercise to build a road to more positive and constructive thoughts. Ever sit next to a carping couple who berate, admonish, and belittle others in their life? This ruins your meal. Today I sat next to two lovely Brits who started every sentence with “lovely” or “brilliant” or “darling.” By far my best breakfast of the week (thank you, Sarabeth’s).
What trade did you make this week where you had a clear plan and felt in control of your risk/reward? Write that trade down in detail. Study it. Relive how it felt to be in such a trade. Envision more trades like this next week.
Now go do something special for your significant other.
You can be better tomorrow than you are today!
Mike Bellafiore
Related blog posts:
How to Get Back In
Find the Setups That Fit Your Trading Personality
No relevant positions
One Comment on “This Wasn’t a Good Week!”
Bella,
A few thoughts:
First some humor…
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” -Mike Tyson
And more seriously….
From my own experience, a robust PlayBook with a matrix of positive expectancy trade set ups is *one* crucial attribute of a consistently profitable trader (CPT).
A CPT must also develop a set of processes that make the PlayBook’s *objective* knowledge accessible/usable to the trader in the highly emotionally charged environment of live trading, especially when experiencing draw downs.
IMO, those processes are as unique as each individual trader.
A CPT must understand their own emotional/psychological landscape with the same level of detail as they know their trade setups.
The CPT’s PlayBook must be aligned with their own psychology.
The CPT must be able to think objectively and act in their own best interest despite varying degrees of emotional/psychological discomfort in the course of a trade.
The CPT must create/maintain processes that accentuate their trading/emotional strengths and minimize their trading/emotional weaknesses.
All this playbook and process work *never* ends.
Best,
-B