His thoughts raced and he still felt the remnants of the pounding in his chest. “Wow,” he thought, “That could have been disastrous.” Kevin had taken a loss, but he actually found himself feeling upbeat and positive. Just weeks before he would have kicked his desk while hurling expletives at himself, the market, his platform, the talking heads on the news and anyone else within thinking distance. That was several weeks ago, before he had learned to use mental tools to bring his execution under control and his emotions under new management. He continued to document the trade that he was just stopped out of. It was a Euro/Dollar Forex pair that he had been trading for some time. The price action had been very volatile, but he waited for a pull-back to a demand level where he placed a bracket order to enter just as the price pierced the demand zone and simultaneously placed his stop just below the demand zone. In the past, Kevin would have hastily scribbled a trade plan based on hasty analysis and as the price action inched toward his stop, he would have given in to what before was an uncontrollable urge to move his stop. He would have continued to violate other rules; for instance, increasing his size as the trade went against him while ignoring the other time frames to verify his analysis. It was different now; he still felt the strong urge to move his stop, but he used the mental tools that he had learned to interrupt the old pattern as it began and remained focused on what mattered most in the trade. What mattered most at that moment was to follow his plan and his rules and allow the market to prove him wrong. When the price action looked as though it was going to hit his stop, he began to use his thought journal to document his emotions as he also identified what his unconscious ego-driven self was saying that drove the desire to move his stop. As he wrote he listened to a special stress reduction audio file that helped him to maintain his focus through the noise of his beating heart and the craving to violate his rules. Additionally, he told himself how important it was to do the “right” thing, that he could tolerate the discomfort as it was in the service of his A-Game. After it was over, he relished the fact that he had experienced a private victory; he had won against his ego and thus he had developed more capacity for strength and endurance the next time. Kevin knew that this small loss was, as he told himself, “going to get him closer to a big win.” Kevin knew that he had just traded as a winner.
Through learning more of the mental game of trading, Kevin began to recognize that he had to become more aware of himself as well. This meant that he had to… Continue Reading
