Traders - Get a Mental Edge to Avoid Tripping Yourself Up!

By: Nazy_Massoud

Have you been in situations where you had several winning trades which were wiped out by one losing trade?

Have these become a pattern?

Like some of my clients, you may be saying, “I have spent hours creating my plan.” Then you start the day with every intention of following it. After a few losing trades, you lose your control and with that, your plans go out the window. You try to make up for your losses by chasing after deals and increasing the size of your trades. So you get in at the wrong entry point and the size does not warrant the risk.

The other scenario I have heard is that you have started the day by following your plan. You are making money. Then you feel that you are on a roll and you do not have to follow any plans. You know what to do and you go for a trade which was not on your plan, with bigger sizes than other ones. Then it happens. You wipe out all of your winnings.

You wonder what happened. “Where did I go wrong?”

You might start blaming your system. Therefore, you go from one system to another. With each system producing similar results, you get more and more frustrated and angry. Not only are you losing money on your trade, you are losing money and time on all the new systems that you are buying….

Next, you might say to yourself, “I do not know enough.” Therefore, you are buying one book after another. You attend one seminar after another to get more familiar with trading. Yet you are not seeing that much of a difference in your results. You are wondering what has happened. “Why am I not getting the results that I want?”

You might even think, “It is the type of security that I am trading. This is not the market for me.” So, you change markets. Yet you go through similar frustrations, headaches and results….

No matter what you do, your results are still not what you expect them to be. So, you might throw your hands up and not know what to do.

Any of these scenarios sound familiar? If so, you are not the only one. Lots of traders go through these.

The most successful traders know the secret. They know what it takes to be successful. They know that their secret to success lies in their mindset. It is the mental edge that they develop which separates them from the rest of the traders.

So what are 7 steps that you can take when your trades go against you?

1. When the trade goes against you, get out of the trade — Do not move your stops.
2. Clear your mind before doing another trade. Then you are not reacting to your loss. You can concentrate and find the right trade for you.
3. Look at each trade individually. By doing this, you are not influenced by the result of previous trades and are not taking unwarranted risk. Hence, when you are up, you are not risking all of your wins. Similarly, when you are down, you are not increasing the size of your trade to make up for what you have lost.
4. Have a Trading budget and stick to it. Only invest the amount that you can lose.
5. Think about trading as a game similar to Monopoly. As you know, each game has its rules and as you become more experienced in it and become more comfortable with the rules, it becomes more fun….
6. Stick to your plan — One of the best ways that I have heard someone defining trading is: “Trading is simple, but not easy. And the greatest difficulty is to accept the simple rules and obey them with discipline.”
7. Remember, it is a process — You have to stick to your plan for a while, before jumping from one thing to another. As Michael Jordan says:

"I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions, I have been entrusted to take the game-winning shot...and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that's precisely why I succeed."

By following these simple steps, your career as a trader will become more effective, more rewarding and ultimately more successful.

Remember: Perseverance is key! Like Albert Einstein said:

“It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.”

To Making Success Your Habit,

By Nazy Massoud

PS. For more Mental Edge tips and reports on how to have more profitable trades, go to www.MentalEdgeTrading.com .

Copyright © 2007 Nazy Massoud

ABOUT THE AUTHOR : Nazy Massoud, a Wall Street Insider, shows traders, investors and hedge fund managers how to develop the mental edge to execute trades more profitably. For more tips and a FREE report on "The 3 Biggest Psychological Triggers That Can Make or Break a Trader," go to www.MentalEdgeTrading.com .

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