Know when to trade and when to sit on your hands. You have to be prepared for that – to take action or to sit tight. Be prepared in advance. Get up early, make your plan and then trade it. Majority of people, after some screen time, will have decent ideas. But, path from a trading idea to the profit in your account can be difficult.
Bad idea – no money. Good idea – maybe you will make money. Why is that?
There are so many ways to self-sabotage yourself and don’t monetize from your trading idea. It is like a chain – lose one part and it all collapse. If you are decent in TA that could be very frustrating. That is one of the reasons why trading is hard. Good chart reading or analyses doesn’t pays the bills on its own. Having a good trading idea is just a start. Start of a chain reaction, that could be like this:
Trading idea
Trading plan to monetize that idea
Good money management before the entry
Define stop and target
Execution
Holding your trade to the target
Closing it.
Result is profit, after you do all the steps correctly.
Again - bad idea means loss, and bad or good idea could also mean a break-even trade.
Looks simple, but you can mess every step of the way. And you will get a bad result immediately after a messed step. How? Like this:
You can be scared, and not get in the position, second guessing your own analyses. Result: opportunity missed.
You can entry the position but too late, when reward potential is already much smaller. Result: possible small profit or break-even on first small pullback.
You can entry on time, but put your stop to break-even too soon, and be stopped, only to see that idea was good. Result: a ruined idea.
You can use an artificially small stop, and being stopped, again just to see later that the idea was good. Result: good idea wasted.
You can exit too soon, making a tiny profit that is easy to lose in the next trade. Result: small profit and lack of confidence to enter next trade.
Add a good dose of frustration on top of each of this steps. Frustration that can lead to FOMO, and you will chase markets. Or it would lead to FEAR, when you will miss opportunities.
So, for a good result, every step of the way must be executed properly. Every single step. For the S/R zones (supply and demand) trading - mechanical approach will be good sometimes. On other times you must pay attention to context even more than to technical levels. Like should you enter on minor S/R zones or skip them. Screen-time and building experience will help you there. You have to work on your expectancy. And on your execution. Check the blog article "When and where to enter a trade".
In time you will learn to avoid the usual traps, be more decisive and trust yourself, hold winners to the target. Again – learn and invest in yourself. If you want to live out of trading, you have to be dedicated to it. This is what you do and who you are now. This is your profession. I have a military approach to is. Getting up at same time, early to prepare, trade the RTH session, make a video, look later what “they” are doing. Before getting to bed check the US markets close… and in the meantime doing what other dad’s do.
It is tough out there, make no mistake about it.