Recently I’ve been in a major dilemma with trading, a relationship, and emotions. This one girl and I have been hitting it off for awhile, but we recently hit a rough patch and the relationship may be at stake, spiraling unforeseen powerful emotions. This has had an affect on my trading, in the morning have a emotional moments, then get back in the mindset. The issue is the emotions sneak up on me while I’m trading and I lose my focus. I can’t seem to shake it, I know emotional trading isn’t bad but this is more of a distraction. I can’t trade in the morning because those are the worst times for me. So I start around 10AM, but still throughout the trading day these emotions linger. I would prefer not to get into the specific details of what’s happening in the relationship. I have the right mindset and discipline but can’t deal with the distraction, yet I still need to trade as it’s a revenue stream. What do other traders suggest?
Take some time off to deal with the emotion until it has no *effect* (not affect) on your trading and is no longer a distraction to you then go back to trading.
Fall back onto mechanical trading to keep your confidence in trading up and to maintain awareness of the markets, plus your income. e.g. make all entries and exits using pre-set stops, trading longer-term as necessary for the time being. Make no decisions in trading, except what are the rules of your strategy? Its easier to make decisions when no capital is immediately involved and the unrealised profit/loss number on the screen is not moving (and changing colour). Good luck with your relationship. Take a break?
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/losing-a-dog-and-trading.320367/ I lost a long term girlfriend and a 15 year old dog within 2 weeks of each other earlier this year. I kicked ass at trading at first, because I was in shock, and I was able to focus my anger on my craft. And then I fell apart. Nothing but losing days for a couple of months. Take a break.
i faced this trading+emotional phase in my early days. everytime something used to upset me, my trades went downhill, but i think over the time i am able to control myself
Since I use NT8, I am considering programming my strategy and running it on a server. Until I’m able to get through the relationship issues.
Stick to the 2% of your capital rule per trade. If you trade options, it is easier as it is built into the trade. That said, if you are not feeling well and that includes being stressed emotionally, reduce your number of trades. Chances are good when you are not thinking clearly, that you will make mistakes and lose monies. By cutting down on the number of trades, say you used to place 10 trades in an entire week. Cut that to 3 or 4 trades. If you are risking 2% per trade, you would have 20% at risk of your total capital at 10 trades. Compare that to 3 or 4 trades and your risk to your capital goes down to 6% or 8%. Huge difference in the reduction of risk.
Mental Assessment is in my trading plan, knowing it profitable I should either A. Program an algorithm or B. Take a break until everything's been worked out
That's a good checklist. I wish I had it in June. I'm not sure I would have followed it, but it would have saved me a lot of money if I had. Also, I've been working on automation more and more because of this.