Get Smarter
about trading
Get our 5 min weekly newsletter on what matters in option trading.
Read time: 4 minutes
I did something I wasn’t supposed to do, I broke my rule of not trading this week.
Oh, don’t act like you haven’t told yourself that before!
But before I tell you the numbers, I really want to emphasize on the importance of having confidence in yourself.
These last couple weeks, I’ve come across traders who show little to no confidence in themselves. This results to them exiting trades prematurely, missed opportunities, or losses.
Confidence is essential in this business. Without it, you will not succeed.
-30% down from where the account started this week!
And to make it sound worst, the account touched $5,000 in value twice! So actually -40% down from its all-time high.
So what happen?
Well, I started trading different tickers like Tesla ($TSLA), Roblox ($RBLX), and Marathon Digital Holding ($MARA).
It turns out, these stocks are not a good fit for my trading strategy. Every stock is different, and they do not move anything like the $QQQs or $SPY.
Lesson learned; I will stick to what got me to $5k all-time high, trading the indices.
On top of trading different tickers, this market has been difficult to get a hold of for the last couple weeks. Trying to understand what the market trend has been nothing less of hard.
Every week during this series, I have come out green, but this week is different. First red week, and that’s okay.
This hasn’t ruined my confidence as a trader. The goal for this small account is still to hit $10,000 by the end of the month.
Which brings me up to the main topic of today.
In trading, you have to have “I don’t give a fuck” attitude while being wary.
Be confident in your trades but be aware of the risk. Be prepared to lose money.
Here are 4 ways I stay more confident in my trades:
Pick tickers that you know how they move. I made the mistake this week of picking tickers that I do not know at all.
It caused a level of anxiety and me not being confident in my trade. And also carried those emotions to tickers that I know well.
The internet can be a noisy place, where many traders have a plan in mind but can be easily influenced by someone.
To avoid social media influence, I close all social media apps, mute Discord, and do whatever else it takes to avoid seeing or hearing from other traders. I want to trade my own plan, and if it fails, it will be my own fault, not someone else’s.
Nothing speaks lower confidence than not having a trading plan that tells you where to enter, take profit, and place your stop loss.
Once you have established a sound trading plan, adhere to it meticulously.
Reflect deeply on every trading session to improve your confidence. By clearly understanding what went right and what went wrong, you can boost your confidence tenfold.
Why you may ask?
Because it helps you:
Traders on Twitter have been predicting a market bloodbath all week, highlighting their tendency to become too attached to a particular market condition.
As you can see on $SPY, we’re bullish, and it’s moving strong!
If you become too focused on one market condition, you may miss opportunities, or make a bad decision because you’re biased towards that particular condition.
I got caught up in the idea of a market crash in 2022, given the many negative events happening worldwide.
While I made a lot of money in the first half of the year, I ended up giving most of it back because I was biased towards further downtrend.
My conviction in a market crash blinded me to upside opportunities and left me feeling anxious for several weeks.
So the lesson to be learn is, don’t get married to a single market condition, lest you become a widower to your profits.
That’s it for today. See you next week.
PS: What’s the #1 thing that made you want to check out this newsletter?
Reply and let us know. I read every reply.