Everyone hates to lose and sadly no-one is in possession of the capability of foresight, thus losses are an inevitable part of trading. When we enter a trade we intend to either be right, or incorrect, and even if we broke-even we'd still be classed as being inaccurate - as no-one enters into a trade just to break-even! When unsuccessful merchants encounter a lot of losses they start to take part in self-destructive patterns that help them escape the discomfort they are experiencing. Bring to light these self-destructive actions that will help you realize what you do before it takes hold of your physical health. If you end up already engaged in these patterns hopefully this article will help you to get you back on track as fast as practical. What are the destructive patterns? If you end up caught in a lot of losses or a bad performing week / month be certain to watch your behavior. You'll start to partake of activities that at first appear safe, but on over the top use ( or in time ), start to cause physical damage to your fitness.

Ask the following query : during drawdown periods do I find myself over-indulging in these activities : Food ( particularly preprocessed food - e.g.

Chocolate, ice-cream, chips ) ? Sex ( includes viewing porn ) ? Alcohol? Drugs ( includes unnecessary smoking ) ? Laziness ( find it hard to wake up in the morning ) ? Entertainment? All the above taken in over the top doses can be deleterious to your own physical health ( some even in little doses ). These activities above during your losing period are only covering up the discomfort of confronting the true issue, and your body makes an attempt to rid the emotional discomfort by attempting to'fix' it with physical pleasures.

Sadly it is going about it in the wrong way, so what should you do? Firstly... REALIZE WHAT you do AND STOP IT! You want to realize what you are doing and you want to STOP doing it immediately! You may either decide to stop, or you will be compelled to stop when your body finally breaks down and forestalls you from any sort of movement. It is going to be much more profitable to you in the long term if you can decide to stop *NOW*. When you have stopped you now need to work out a method to solve the agony - not by cutting out or neglecting it, but by staring it in the face.

Bring your problems out into the light, be truthful with yourself. There may be no expansion without discomfort, you are experiencing the emotional discomfort, now it's time to find the error and so your expansion. Commence your Review The review process starts in 2 separate areas : You & Your System.

These are some checklists for you to go thru to find out where the difficulty could lie [*CO]'YOUR SYSTEM' CHECKLIST Was your system completely tested previous to trading it ( or paper traded if you don't have the capacity to program your system into back testing software ) ? Did you test with out-of-sample data? Do you have a system???? If you don't, how does one even know if the strategy that you are trading is even profitable?? Is your system's code correct? Did you over-optimize your system? ( What have we debated about over-indulging? ) Did you paper trade your system before placing capital on it? Did you trade with a bit of capital before placing the remainder of your funds on it? Did you know the system's limitations? Did you correctly drill your system? ( See our blog article on why I am the system designer from hell )'YOU' CHECKLIST Is this drawdown you are exhibiting with your system normal? Are you happy with your system's historical drawdown performance? Are you absolutely conscious of the hazards concerned with your system and the instrument ( s ) you are trading? Are you trading with funds that you are comfy risking? Are you depending too heavily on your performance? Have you set practical goals? As you can see there are typically two areas that you want to explore : the mechanical aspect - your system - and the emotional aspect - you. Both can be in charge of making the way you're feeling the way you do.

It'll either be a blunder on the system's side with the way in which the system was tested and / or programmed, or it can be your own mental profile not being ok with the system's performance. Your Answers = Change = Your Expansion What steps should we now take? Now that we've started a corrective process where we've stopped the malevolent nature of our over-indulging tactics to grab control we should continue our'corrective nature' by invoking our findings and taking ACTION in correcting our blunders. If the difficulty was mechanical - fix it, if the difficulty was emotional either go about setting up new thought patterns, or change your present system. The answers lie in if you must expand your understanding in system development, or if you want to grow emotionally as a person. Unfortunately there's no simple road, and even if there had been everyone would be doing it. Hopefully this article has made you ponder over some of your behaviors during drawdown periods, be certain to keep an eye on yourself and as usual look after your body, because there is no use in making all the money on the planet when you do not have the physical capacity to like it.