Betty winced hard as if her skin had been pierced by a deep dull needle. She had sworn over and over that she wouldn’t do it. But here she was, again caught in a web of self-seduction driven by fear and greed. “Why is it so hard?” she thought as she looked at the trade that she had just closed. She had input a limit order to buy 3 contracts of the NQ as the price action was about to hit a demand level on the 60 minute chart. She had meticulously determined from her daily and weekly charts that a significant demand zone was about to be retested. The lines had been drawn and her plan; as it usually did, outlined in precise terms her entry, rationale, targets and scale points. Actually, the plan was flawless as evidenced by the fact that the price action did exactly as she had foreseen. And, if she had not exited the trade prematurely the market would have proven the plan to be correct. But, regrettably, she became more and more frightened as the price action breathed until it became unbearable whereby she gave into the pressure and exited the trade for a miniscule profit only to watch it take off like a towering green bamboo shoot rising from her exit. In this instance like so many times before she had let herself down; and she felt stupid, depressed and desperate to know how to stop this madness.
Change, as Betty had experienced, can be difficult. But, why is it so hard to just do what you say you want to do and not do what you say you don’t want to do? Firstly humans are creatures of habit. Doing the same thing in the same ways fosters a level… Continue Reading
