Jeetus Christ

my advice for anyone having a tough time in the market right now: > cure causes, don't treat symptoms. often times it's not our most recent action that ruins us, it's the inability to have accepted the action (or inaction) prior to that. example: > "I will buy when this range breaks out" *days later, the range breaks out* > "ehh, but it kinda looks like a sweep of the high / this news event is a good reason not to buy / funding is too high / etc." you don't realize you just made one of the greatest sins imaginable in trading, you LIED to YOURSELF. an easy way to knock over the initial domino in a poor string of decisions that will soon follow Here's why: A) if the market rallies higher from that point, it sparks some strong emotions - suddenly you find yourself distraught because you didn't listen to your initial plan emotions in trading are like a dam with a crack—once you let a little seep through, the flood soon follows. then somehow, maybe only hours later, with price x% higher, we might find ourselves willing and able to play into our initial thesis - just with a substantially worse entry nothing good follows from here. A.2) if the market decides to continue rallying higher, you've now been rewarded for FOMO-buying when the market rewards your behavior, it's easy to want to repeat that behavior in the future. it's not difficult to see how that'll eventually play out... A.3) if the market decides to stall, or perhaps even fall back inside the range entirely after you finally find the courage to enter, any shred of confidence you have will be utterly destroyed, and it's now on you (the person that lies to themselves) to get yourself out of that poor position, whilst in a deteriorated state of mind; goodluck. B) On the other hand: if the market decides to reward your hesitation, and trades lower after breaking out of the range... you have now been rewarded for lying to yourself. the counterargument here is: you were able to acknowledge new information and make a crucial decision on a whim. in which case, maybe you are alpha - fair play. only you know whether that is the truth, or not. (check your long-term results for verification) or maybe it's just variance, and the outcome itself has allowed us to justify one of the greatest sins in trading in which case, we will do it the next time too because if I'm willing to not buy a breakout when I told myself I would, what's stopping me from not cutting a position, when I told myself I would? or FOMO-buying a rally when I told myself I wouldn't? it's all the same. often times our poor performance in the present can be traced back to a singular moment in recent history which led to a string of poor decisions a singular moment which we've constantly attempted to compensate for a single action, or inaction, which we've been unwilling to accept because when it was time to make that decision, we allowed emotion, specifically fear, to sway us we so desperately wanted to avoid one fear, and as a result, we allowed a whole new wave of emotions to creep in - many of which we never accounted for eventually you realize, you could've avoided all this by simply accepting the one fear that inherently comes attached with the initial decision you were going to make. reverse-engineering this process is an effective way to uncover, and address, the root cause of our poor performance. lots of self-awareness is required in order to even want to begin recollecting those decisions it's common for our brains to subconsciously trauma-block our poor performance, which enables us to continue on the downward spiral forcing yourself to go on this journey is incredibly difficult but in my 26 years, I've found that in markets and in life: the most difficult things are often the most rewarding. thanks for reading. much love and goodluck🖤