I decided to relook again my previous posting on “Next trade is more important‘. I discussed briefly on experience of having a string of winning days. Now I am looking at the losing experience. It seems to be a common problem among traders. Well, I made the same mistake on tuesday’s trade as well. Coincidently, ugly was having the similar problem yesterday.
What is the relationship between my E-mini S&P trade and Gold trade? Absolutely NO. But, at the psychological side, trader has a tendency to relate them. This is similar to the theory of points and line.
In the same dimension, it is easily for one to connect two points and make it a line, though these two points are, in fact, have no logical relationship
I find it to be so true in trading. When I had one or two losses in a row within a trading day, unintentionally, I become cautious. I do not want to lose money again and I do think that the probability to success today is low, since I had made two losing trades before. So, I assess the third trade in a different approach, (though I still think that I am following the darn trading rules!). I am eager to take profit now when I see the candle is narrow at the top of chart, (well, that’s lucky if the position is in the money) or I am moving stop loss to break even point far too early, just to avoid losing money, again. Oh, not again!
I do not have a concrete treatment for this kinda of psychological problem, since I am not a psychiatrist. To me, the best solution so far, is to stop trading for the day if I have two 1-R losses in a row. Because, I KNOW MYSELF. I am just not cool enough to make another trade immediately after 2 losses.
Anyway, market is always there, let’s fight another day.