9 – Discipline Eliminates Stress
If you want to have success in the stock market you have to learn to invest while not being scared to trade, as well as not being afraid to invest rather than over trade. You have to find a balance between being an investor and a trader. An investor can be considered someone that does very few trades a year and may even hold on to a stock for many years before deciding to sell. A trader can be considered someone that does many trades a year and never hold on to any stock. So should you be a trader or an investor? The best would be to be both or what we call a swing-trader. If you trade too much you’re not giving your stock enough chances to move up, while if you invest and hold on too long to a stock you’re giving it all the chances to go down. A swing-trader is a trader who will follow trends. As long as its stock is moving up, you hold on to the stock. The moment the trend shifts down, you sell the stock and hopefully cash in a profit. The purpose is not to make many small profitable trades but rather to try to do a few a big profitable trades. Most successful traders have more losing trades then winning trades. The key is to cut your losses while holding on to your stocks as long as they move up without risking too much of what you’ve already earned. Basically you have to learn to be disciplined, and not let your emotions take control of your actions. Building discipline takes time and is the hardest thing to do for new traders, and this is why it usually takes about 3 years before a trader can start making profits, because we lack discipline. Unfortunately greed takes over our discipline and it’s only by consistently losing money initially that we learn to become discipline and not let our emotions of fear and greed take control. Fear and greed creates stress. Even when things are going your way, by having no set plan, you will always fear of losing what gains you have and become greedy in the hopes of making more. When you are making losses, you end up holding on to that stock which ends up making you lose even more money. You will have a hard time sleeping if you know that you can wake up at any moment and find yourself down heavily. Creating a disciplined strategy is what will allow you to remove your stress.
“The source of stress is everything that is uncertain and unknown to us; outcomes in which we can’t predict.”
That is why after experiencing those emotions and this stress, I decided to create a trading system in which I would be able to know and prepare myself for any possible foreseeable events.
“Trading is not about predicting the future; it’s about being prepared and foreseeing every possible future scenario by knowing how to react in the occurrence of any event.”
To trade successfully you must not find yourself in a situation where you will have to think in the moment to make a decision.
“The moment you have to start thinking is when you will start having problems and as a result cause you to have stress. Everything must be calculated and decisions have to be pre-determined, always.”
The beauty of stock trading is that you can place orders that will be triggered in any event you might foresee. You’re decisions on when to sell or buy more stocks have to be decided before you even open your position. When you start making heavy gains you must not be foolish enough to lose all you have gained. Trading in stocks comes initially with risk but if you know how to manage your trades they can become almost risk-free investments. You must not be greedy because if you hold on to a loss, you are driving yourself to a quick and fatal end.
No comments:
Post a Comment