The Truth About Day Trading Stocks: A Cautionary Tale About Hard Challenges and What It Takes To Succeed

CHAPTER 2

How Emotions Can Destroy a Trade

In day trading it’s immediately obvious: Your emotions can be your worst enemy. They’re usually counterproductive to all your day-trading efforts. As an amateur trader you learn right away that emotions are the bane of your strategies.

The control or even the elimination of feelings should be the Holy Grail of day trading. If you’re out there high-strung, acting like a loose canon, you’re not day trading, you’re gambling. You’re not in control of your trade.

You know when your feelings are wrecking a trade. You’re in one and it goes against you. You hold, and then you hold it for longer, and then you get mad at the stock.

If you’re like me when I was a greenhorn, you might start to viciously mutter: “You better go back up, or I’ll throw this monitor out the window!”

At one time or another, all day traders feel that way, and it leads to big trading mistakes. Though few of us ever smash up the equipment, when we feel that frustration we do have a tendency to actually break trading rules. We also tend to invent new rules that make no sense at all.

To err is human ...

We know, we know.

Emotions are like frenzied little voices in your head. They get riled when things don’t go as planned. They’re the part of you that freaks at uncertainty. Well, uncertainty in day trading is a given, a fixture, so ... what can you do about that?!

I’ve been struggling with that irony for my entire day-trading career. I can never make my feelings disappear. I’ve ...