Do you find yourself getting impatient, jumping into a trade too early … only to see it eventually come to the level you were waiting for, but by then the losses are mounting and you don’t feel comfortable holding it any longer so you stop out for a loss.
Or does the setup you defined show up but you don’t feel confident so you hesitate and don’t take the entry …only to watch a really great trade move on without you?
Or after hesitating and missing the entry do you feel like you are missing out so you chase the trade, getting in at a really bad spot only to have it retrace and stop you out for a loss?
Or do you want to be right so badly that you don’t honor your stop, letting it go against you until the loss becomes so large it drains your account?
Notice that all these actions are driven by a feeling not, the rational information the charts are presenting.
And that’s because our decisions are always driven by our emotions … always! Even when we think that we’ve come to a rational decision … if we were to truly look at the emotion underlying it, we’d find that it was aligned with a rational thought. But if we try to make a rational decision that does not align with our underlying emotion … the emotion will win out every time.
And the latest findings in neuroscience are confirming this. Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist, founder and director of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute argues that emotions are a crucial component of decision making. He recently studied a group of people who suffered damage to the region of their brains where emotions are generated. These people no longer had the capability to feel emotions … and what he found was that although they seemed normal and were able to think rationally, they were incapable of making even the most simple decisions, like what to eat, or what shirt to wear.
Since science has proven that we cannot ignore our emotions and hope to achieve our trading goals. What do we do? Embrace them!
These emotions arise as a part of a protection mechanism that develops for our protection. So rather than trying to ignore that, we suggest you learn to work with it. To learn from the emotions that arise and use that to inform your trading plan. Rather than allowing them to operate unconsciously and sabotage your trading results, use them to lead you to finding the method of trading the fits your style and works with your strengths.
For almost 20 years we have been providing in depth training that has empowered more than 4000 people to successfully use trading to achieve their goals. Our lifetime membership enables you to progress at your own pace. You can repeat any part of the weekend program as often as you choose so that you can master using technical analysis or fundamentals and each month there are additional trading tutorials and hands on trainings to further enhance your skills.
Our goal is to provide you with the knowledge required to begin trading confidently combined with a professional and supportive trading environment where you can interact with other traders and staff.
If you’ve been thinking about using trading to add to your investment portfolio or supplement your income then we’d love to support you.
To learn more about Learn-To-Trade.com’s stock market trading course, contact us at 416-510-5560 or by e-mail at info@learn-to-trade.com.
