How Emotions Hijack trading

By | May 9, 2016 3:37 pm

Every trades have experienced strong emotions in his/her trading and have struggled with them. One of the main reason for erratic trading results ie. Having big loss because you stayed on the trade hoping the market will reverse or missing out on big profit by exiting early have been attributed to emotions.

Strong emotions have affected your trading. Most of traders put lot of efforts to overcome this problem by learning on technical analysis learning more and more techniques every day, attending lot of Seminar and Webinars But that doesn’t seem to matter.

Lets take a small Example

Ankit recently attended a trading seminar and he learned a new strategy and he wanted to apply the strategy in market, He does paper trading for few months satisfied with results, He now wanted to take a live trade.  Ankit  get into a trade during mid session as the rules of new strategy he has learned in the seminar.

Ankit took a trade in Nifty Future Long at 7860 for a target of 7920 SL 7840.

As soon as trade got executed,Every Tick increase/decrease in price is changing his emotional balance, Price going in his favor he is feeling Joy, thinking he can make 3.5K per lot  ,price goes against him he start feeling STRESS as he will take a loss of 1.5K per lot..

After few minuted in the trade Ankit was not feeling comfortable, his heart is racing and muscles becoming tense, Nifty does 7880, Ankit is getting 20 points  little profit, His mind is urging you to get out now—at least you will have a profit, it says.

Nifty feel down 5 points, Mind says I told you get out, Ankit held on to its never, Nifty feel down 5 more points, Little Profit of 20 points has halfed now.Mind says You cannot take loss, EXITTTT

Ankit still struggled a little bit longer  try to hold on and price jump up 5 points, mind becomes insistent: “Get out NOW!” And, Ankit does. Ankit is feel relief. Whew! All that tension is over. And, Ankit made a small profit.

The relief feels good. Then, a few minutes later Nifty took off and achived the target and move above it also. A sizable profit was Loss because Ankit was mentally and emotionally hijacked.

How many times have you faced similar experiences? You promise yourself you will change but fail to follow through with your plan. Fear, or another strong emotion, gets the better of you—every time.

Same Kind of Situations are repeated

  • When You have a Winning streak, You think I got the Holy grail as all my trades are going right, and than you start doing trading errors and BOOM , You lose out all your Profits.

The first step in learning, WHICH emotion is overpowering you the Most, To Understand the same I have put a Poll on Twitter (https://twitter.com/brahmesh)

You can cast in your vote and than i will share my finding on it..

6 thoughts on “How Emotions Hijack trading

  1. C.M.Dhumale

    Despite knowing and acquiring relevant knowledge, still fear factor plays imp role which i could not avoid uptill now.

    Reply
  2. shiv charan

    Thanks for an important lesson …. I am also victim of same and have lost all my money only due to fear … Fear is because of lack of confidence …. Lack of confidence is because of repeated failue of plans and hitting stoploss sometimes for no reason because i see bounce back after hitting stoploss ..I stand confused ..Now I am left with no money to trade so watch helplessly

    Reply
    1. Bramesh Post author

      Learn from your mistake and stand up again.. by vowing not to repeat them.. Train Hard your mind..

      Reply
  3. Vijay

    Anyhow I love this Trading ,whatever be the result. Positives would have been better but there is hope as long as there is some Capital left to Trade the next day. Certainly there is no angel up there for me to help except myself and I know this, damn sure, I’m the root of my own good and bad.

    Reply
  4. Vijay

    I don’t know what possess me when I trade. Things improve a bit and then take such a cataclysmic blow, I become so emotionless at the onslaught of wrong trades. On hindsight even without any analysis, its clear a Simple Trading Plan and a simple Trading Strategy is all that would have saved my lakhs today and from a certain personal apocalypse.

    Reply

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