Don’t overthink your losses. There is one correlation that seems to be a common trait with most successful traders: the less a trader thinks, the more profitable they are.
What I found with struggling traders is that, when a trader is in a loss position they start arguing with themselves that they should get out, but that they don’t want to take the loss for whatever reason, and their arguments get trapped inside their mind. Kind of like when you have to get up early in the morning and keep hitting the snooze button. But whilst you are hitting the snooze button you keep arguing with yourself that you should get up and then you fight for one more minute calculating in your head how much time it should take to get ready and if you run to the train that you should still make it.
Not getting up early in the morning when the alarm clock goes off is procrastination.
Not starting with the assignment in time is procrastination.
Trying to avoid a drawdown when your system tells you is procrastination. Procrastination is what turns a drawdown into a loss.
I found that when people / traders procrastinate they justify in their mind that they still have a choice in that matter, that the consequences of not taking action (i.e. not getting up in the morning at the time they set the alarm, not taking the loss at the price their system told them to, waiting with the assignment until the last week before it is due) are still more pleasurable than the perceived consequences of not taking the action.
Procrastination ends the moment you feel you run out of choice. The moment that when you don’t take action now, the painful consequences of not taking action weigh much more heavier than the pleasure of not taking action.
That is the moment when you stop all the arguments in your head and you jump out of bed.
That is the moment when you stop all the arguments in your head and only images of you failing the assignment pop up on your inner mind’s eye and so you start focusing on the assignment day and night.
That is the moment when you stop all the arguments in your head and you finally take that loss, when the pain of staying in the trade is greater than the pain of taking the loss.
I hope this is helpful…
With a toast to your trading profits
Mandi
