the trick to understanding yourself when it comes to trading is to come to grips with the concept that once you place your money into the market you are actually trading your beliefs about money.
Money can actually strike at the core of our thinking because money means so much to us, it is our safely and security and it can make us happy and can make us sad if we don’t have any. That’s why our beliefs about money play such an important part to our trading success.
Usually, as a new trader, when your account is growing you’re happy, when it’s diminishing you’re unhappy, your state of mind is being moved with the fluctuations of the market.
Successful traders learn to lessen the emotional rollercoaster, gain control over their emotional swings and take a more measured approach.
Traders can control their emotions in many ways – through implementing practical risk management strategies as well as through understanding their own personalities when it comes to trading.
By understanding your own trading personality you can ‘watch’ yourself reacting to the market and you can detach yourself enough to understand why you are reacting the way you do (because of your beliefs about money!) You can then develop rules within your trading plan that help mitigate and control your emotions so that you can accept your risk and trade according to your plan and rules. New traders generally are not as focused – they tend to live in fear of loss, risk and the outcome of a trade.
Check out some tried and tested ‘survival tactics’ below to help you master the psychological aspects of the business of trading.