Have you ever been watching a price, seen it start to rise, bought in on that price only for it to drop. You sit on your hands and wait patiently for it to rise again, looking at your loss getting bigger and bigger, the price is going nowhere but down.
You grab your calculator and punch in the numbers and you see your investment dwindle on every price tick.
You open up some of the chat channels and they only talk in there is doom, how it’s going to go down 3,000 points, how anyone holding will be rekt. You gulp as you look at the price continuing to tumble, what have you done!!! The price is crashing and taking all of your investment with it. You start to panic.
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If you sell now, then you will at least escape with three quarters of your investment, better than losing it all. You check back on the chats again, oh no. Doom and gloom, It’s never going to return!
Sell! You sell out at a considerable loss. Well at least you weren’t one of these idiots who held on and see their investment disappear, there was that story of the Korean kid, yeah?
You sit back feeling a horrible loss and dread, but then in front of your eyes, you see the chart tick up again, green bar after green bar appears on the screen as the price climbs, and climbs, past your old purchase price and further on. If only you would have held on, you’d be in profit now.
Has this ever happened to you, it’s happened to most of us, and anyone that hasn’t is not telling the truth.
This is the consequence of trading on emotion. You see a price jump, you want to be part of it before it moons and you miss out. Basically this is FOMO (Fear of missing out) and is no basis for trading.
Here’s five top tips to trade without emotion.
1. The chart will move regardless.
Unless you’re trading a dumpy no value coin/stock, most prices are active and move, and if they move they provide a trading opportunity. If you see a price move, stay out, unless you have planned an entry point prior.
2. Plan your trade and trade your plan.
Whether you use intense Technical Analysis or you have been watching the price action of a period of time and have a good feel for an entry price and an exit price, you should have a price in mind that you will be a buyer (long or short) and you should stick to this or this thereabouts. If you come to the chart and the price is already well off your entry price, you’ve missed it. Reset your entry price and go around again based on new information, don’t chase the price up (or down if your’r shorting).
3. Accept that you’re not going to be right all the time.
A good trader isn’t right all the time, a good trader accepts the outcome and adapts and builds in a solid trading strategy. A good trader will close out his trade, take the loss and reset and re-evaluate his position, without emotion.
4. Have a good RRR
The success in trading is having a solid Risk Reward Ratio. You don’t need to be right all the time to earn money, in fact you don’t even need to be right half of the time. If you cut your losses shorter than you allow your profits to run, you will win more than you lose in the long run.
5. The price isn’t against you
Regardless of what you think, the price doesn’t have a personality and isn’t moving against you on purpose. The price is a product of billions of transactions from 100’s of thousands of traders and bots around the world, all pulling and pushing in two directions based on billions of datasets. The resulting status quo price is a result of this amazing process. It doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your trade and unless you are a very big player, the market won’t even notice you. What is happening in front of you is the result of a very big trading system and the price is a barometer on which you have trading opportunity, up or down, looking at it in any other way will be maddening!
Good luck and stay focused. Don't overleverage and have a clear trading strategy.
