Advertisement
Breaking Bad Trading Habits

Trading Psychology: Let Go Of Controlling Your Trades

When I talk with traders who seek my assistance with their trading challenges a big issue is the challenge to hang on to a good trade.

We find it very hard to let a position mature, giving it room to breathe. Day traders in particular know the scenario well: You get into, let’s say a $EUR/USD trade: Price moves in your favour only to retrace two thirds of its move in matter of minutes.

At that point most traders get trigger happy: The urge to get out of the trade and take the money left on the table is often uncontrollable. Staying in the position is painful, literally as you are fighting with your innermost demons, often times unaware of the massive value conflicts which are playing out beneath the surface of your conscious mind.

Taking partial profits is a valid strategy that makes it easier to hold on to a position through a pullback, or retracement. Re-assuring as this might be for your overwhelmed brain, it is not going to address the underlying cause of the emotional roller coaster most traders and also investors go through each time the market goes against them.

Our need to have control derives from old survival instincts which are deep rooted in our energy matrix. When we are in control, or think that we are in control, we feel safe.

The hard truth though is this: You are never in control, no matter what you do.

The mere mention of the idea often engenders fear.

Control simply is an old default mechanism to which the conditioned mind reverts when something seems not to be to our liking. Anything the logical mind dislikes means that it is outside of our comfort zone.

At a time of awakening into a larger consciousness we are becoming present to a lot of things we do not like. The dislikes appear from the larger vantage point which exposes old patterns and old behaviours hitherto unseen.

The majority of our trading behaviour patterns derive from the need to survive and not from the need to grow and expand into new opportunities.

When a trade goes against you your dominant thought is portion of your capital and protection of your ego mind.

Neuro science studies show that whenever the mind goes into a negative, limiting thought pattern the entire mind body matrix contracts: The communication between the brain and the cells that enable balance and harmony goes into red alert. The blood and oxygen supply to the cells gets interrupted as the body prepares to function on “war ration” because it sees the need to preserve energy in an environment that is running out of life giving resources.

This default reaction whenever something happens that is not in alignment with what the logical mind likes to see is hugely incapacitating. If left unchecked it stops you from functioning in an environment that is naturally expansive. The friction between your personal reaction and the evolutionary impulses increases. I explain more about this in my book The Buddhist Trader. 

Harmony is naturally expansive. It is in alignment of universal forces

Harmony is also the state that enables you to notice things you cannot possibly notice when you are looking to protect your position.

Harmony always emanates from the heart space and not from the linear mind. The linear mind can set intentions to change a point of view, however it cannot expand your conscious awareness.

The belief that your mind can expand your into the next version of your development is the stumbling block that stops you from growing and expanding into new horizons.

You cannot develop as a trader unless you develop as a person first

While you continue to see life through the lens of the logical, linear mind predominantly you cannot see something new, or experience a new way of being in the world and of trading. 

In order to free yourself from the dominant survival thinking and acting you have to grow into another part of you. That part is a full body experience which is centered in the heart space. The heart math institute has done much research to help educate the general public into understanding the power of getting into heart coherence.

When you shift into the experience of love you trade very differently

I am fully aware that the above is a huge stretch for many of you. You may think that it is the soft option out. Actually, exactly the opposite is true: Being ready to move from the linear dominance into the dominance of the heart space is like jumping of the spring board into water for the first time.

Most of us experienced a lot of fear when jumping off the spring board for the first time. I certainly did. The protective part of the linear mind comes up with many reservations and objections to the new practice. Most of these objection you aren’t even consciously aware off. Instead you simply feel the fear and unease.

The intensity of day trading makes it very tough for your brain to slow down and adjust to a new frequency. It has to overcome many issues, one of them being the EMF (electro magnetic field radiations) from the electronic equipment, before it can connect to a new frequency that facilitates a new experience.

There are techniques that help you to make the jump into expanded consciousness.

Meditation is an important tool. There are other potent consciousness expansion techniques which you may not have heard of as aids to improve trading:

One of these techniques is using your environment consciously.

This technique is perhaps the easiest technique to learn, because it combines both the linear mind and subtle energy of the higher consciousness realms. It involves learning to become consciously aware of the energy in the environment, making changes in the environment and noticing the difference in energy feel.

The next step is to learn to get into the heart energy and differentiate between external triggers that push you into the old habitual survival thinking and your own conditioned reactions.

These strategies teach you to see trading predominantly through the lens of the expanded consciousness and instead of seeing it predominantly from the linear, logical part of the mind and help you to stay out of the need to “control”.