When markets make people do wild things Warren Buffett once said, "It's not greed that drives the world, but envy." So when you hear how everyone is making money in Bitcoin or Blockchain stocks, your envy increases and with that your fear of missing out. Suddenly you're chasing wild stocks and throwing money around. FOMO is one of the most destructive things an investor can do to themselves. Here's Greg Rieben who shared a great blog post he wrote: "Right now we are seeing large gains in cannabis, blockchain and technology stocks as well as the cryptocurrencies. If you’ve participated in these trends that’s great but don’t forget that we are no longer in the first few innings of this ball game. Bull markets can make people feel a lot smarter than they actually are. As the amount of participants increase and the headlines take over, it seems like everyone is making "easy money". Trading during the dotcom bubble, the commodity and real estate boom and the financial crisis, shaped who I am as a trader. At some point in the near future greed will take over and cloud good judgement. It's only a matter of time before most of that "easy money" will be given back. This is why you need to control your inner FOMO." Full Article: 11. January 2018 Controlling Your Inner FOMO “I just wait until there is money lying in the corner and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up. I do nothing in the meantime.” - Jim Rogers I’ve read a lot of books on trading and investing. There's no shortage of famous sayings but the above quote resonates with me because patience has been the hardest thing for me to learn. If I would’ve taken this quote to heart and incorporated it into my trading psyche, I would have saved myself a lot of money and more importantly a ton of time. Early on my extreme lack of patience led to over trading. This was always my greatest vice. I'd take marginal setups to make sure I didn’t miss a breakout or a trend. For some reason I felt like I had to catch every move in the market. If I missed anything I would become extremely frustrated. I just couldn’t miss a move. No way. Talk about FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I had FOMO before it was even coined. I digress. Back to the quote. What does it really mean? The quote will have a different meaning depending upon your trading time frame. For me (swing trader and position trader) this is what it means: Have patience. Wait and do very little to nothing until the best possible opportunities present themselves. You don’t have to trade every day, week or month. The good thing about not trading is you're not exposed to any risk. You won’t lose money. There will always be another opportunity right around the corner. Some of the best opportunities present themselves at market extremes. When everyone is running for the exit or when you’re getting trading tips from your Uber driver or your Dentist, a bottom or top is probably very near. Opportunities take time to develop. Don’t force a trade by pretending to see something that isn’t there. Wait until all your indicators line up and the risk vs. reward is at least 3 to 1. Markets can surprise you by going much higher or lower than most people think. Wait until the dust settles and don’t worry about trying to catch that first 10 to 15 percent of a move. You want to focus on capturing the “meat” of the trend. Searching for that next big move or that great opportunity is a lot of fun and can be very exciting and profitable. However, from my experience avoiding a string of bad losses from over trading or chasing a hot trend is just as important. Right now we are seeing large gains in cannabis, blockchain and technology stocks as well as the cryptocurrencies. If you’ve participated in these trends that’s great but don’t forget that we are no longer in the first few innings of this ball game. Bull markets can make people feel a lot smarter than they actually are. As the amount of participants increase and the headlines take over, it seems like everyone is making "easy money". Trading during the dotcom bubble, the commodity and real estate boom and the financial crisis, shaped who I am as a trader. At some point in the near future greed will take over and cloud good judgement. It's only a matter of time before most of that "easy money" will be given back. This is why you need to control your inner FOMO.

Hi All, I'm new to day trading stocks, but have been trading cryptocurrencies for about 4 months. I've found that going through daily affirmations before I started my trading day helped to keep me focus and remind me of how I need to think and behave while I trade, and wanted to share them with you all. I built this originally with the outline from Trading in the Zone, and have added maxims from Andrew's book as well as things I found I need to work on. Please feel free to post your own affirmations, would love to add to mine as it is constantly evolving! ---- I am a Calm, Disciplined, and Consistently Successful Trader. I objectively identify my edges and strategies and master them I will stick to a single strategy until I have mastered it. I will define each strategy in great detail with if then statements I will act without emotion, and listen to what the charts are telling me. Trading is a game of probabilities, and my edge gives me the house advantage, I just need to play long enough to reap the rewards. A strong system may only give me a 60% chance of winning, which are great odds over the long term. I will only use tips from others as a starting point for my own research and will decide for myself if the conditions are met for a trade. I do not confuse brains for a bull market. I must be very careful in who I choose to follow. I predefine the risk of every trade I will not enter a trade without having a clearly defined plan on how to exit if I get stopped out and how to take profits I will not chase a trade. If I have missed the entry point, that trade is gone, and I will look for another opportunity I completely accept the risk or I am willing to let the trade pass I accept that in the market, anything can happen. I will never blame the market. The market is king and does what it wants to do. I just have to get better at listening, so I can go along for the ride. It only takes 1 person to move the chart in a certain direction, breaking support or resistance and potentially invalidating my trade. The market is very often manipulated, but if I play my cards right and stick to my system and track the path of least resistance I can still win in the long run. I am 100% responsible for the outcome of my trading. Capital Preservation is more important than Capital Gain. I will not risk more than 2% of my capital on any trade. I will always miss out on trades, but there will always be others because I'm in it for the long run. Not taking a position is often the best position to take. I will only enter a trade if the odds are greatly in my favor. I will exit the trade if the trade turns against me in accordance to my exit and stop loss strategy My goal is to make money and manage risk, not to be right. I act on my edges without reservation or hesitation I will enter a trade only when all the conditions are met, with a profit to loss ratio of AT LEAST 2:1. I will not act emotionally, but calmly and rationally at all times. It is all practice. I will only trade when I am in the right state of mind to trade. If I am feeling down or depressed or overly euphoric, I need to step away and recover. I will follow my plan throughout the trade and only readjust if there is significant new data. I will not panic sell or act emotionally, and realize that the market can often retrace against me before moving towards my targets. I recognize that sometimes I must 'pay to see the flop' (see if it moves in favor of my position) instead of exiting a position too early, as long as it is within my defined strategy. I pay myself as the market makes money available to me I will take profits and not be overly greedy which may result in me giving back those gains I will let my profits run cautiously, being sure to take back some gains first, scaling back slowly and moving my stop loss to ensure profits. Once I have hit my profit targets or have hit my max loss, I will stop trading, or trade exclusively in a simulator so I do not give back those gains or garner more losses. I continually monitor my susceptibility for making errors and being emotional I will accept my losses as lessons learned, be thankful I was able to learn the lesson, and move on. I recognize that any loss is gone forever, and I can only look towards the next trade. I will not and can not make back the money I lost on the trade. If I act emotionally to a loss, I will accept that as well, and then remove that emotion so that I can learn from it. I will be happy as long as I have executed my trade plan as I laid out, regardless of whether I made money on the trade. I will reflect on my trades on a daily basis in order to learn lessons and improve each day. I will not let other people's gains or losses affect my emotions and trading. I feel no need to be better or more right than anyone else, and am not effected by FOMO. I accept that my mind will try to avoid doing things or try to distract me in order to avoid pain, and that I will identify and eliminate any reason for reacting this way so I can do what must be done. I understand that as a Professional Trader, I have to do things that are boring such as journaling and strict trade management in order to improve my understanding and my odds. I will identify all the things that my mind will try to do to distract me (reddit, news, chatting, food, videos) and address the source of those emotions directly. I will act with Discipline and Professionalism at all times, because this is a Professional Game that needs to be respected. I understand the absolute necessity of these principles of consistent success and thus never violate them I will pay attention to how I think and how I feel at all times, and how that affects me. If I am tired, or simply not in the right mindset to trade as a peak performer, I will stay out, trade in a simulator, or reduce my position size to negligible levels. I will be constantly aware of the cognitive biases that affect my decision making, such as having a confirmation and anchoring bias. It is all practice. Every trade whether it is real or simulated is practice in my quest to become a better trader. I will learn from it and move on. I will not let the results of my trading bleed over into the rest of my life, because I am more than just a trader. Whether I succeed or fail in trading does not change the fact that I am happy with myself and how I live.

Hello Andrew, I have been trading for about 16 months. The first 6 months was on a simulator and the last 10 months has been live. I have had my ups and downs and I probably have told myself 8-10 times I was going to quit trading, but I kept persevering through. I have learned many lessons as I have progressed and would like to share two key psychological lessons to beginner traders that might help. I feel it is a 3-4-year process to learn the intricacies of the market and overcome personal psychological challenges to be a consistent successful trader. The psychology of trading is so important. It’s very difficult to maintain a level head, not get overly emotional, set proper expectations and discipline yourself. I really wished someone would have saved me from major mistakes by drilling in my head these two very important psychological lessons at the beginning of my trading: 1. SET REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS: As a beginner you just cannot set an unrealistic daily profit goal. I personally set a $200-day goal for myself at the beginning on a $10,000 account is what I started with. Knowing what I know now, that was way too much to expect. I should have just set a $20 a day goal. That would have stopped me from losing $8,000 in my first 6 months. I cannot express enough how important this is for you to do as a beginner. I would have rather made $100 over 6 months than to lose $8,000. It’s almost enviable you will lose money in the beginning so if you set the right expectations you will limit your losses or allow yourself to be even minimally profitable which doesn’t feel like a win, but it really is. If someone would have told me you should be extremely happy with making $100 in 6 months trading I would have thought you are crazy, but I realize now how great that would have been. I was like most beginning traders, I looked for great mentors and good chat rooms like Andrews to help me. But it is easy to try to immolate what they do and have the same expectations to make $700 to $1500 a day like they do. But this is just not reasonable expectations as a beginner. When my expectations were too high it forced me to do too much share size or made me push the trades too far and not take profit and let go red or break even. My winning trades started to become losing trades because a $50 win on a 300-share size trade was not enough, I wanted $100 or $150 win and that just was not reasonable. I saw my mentors or others making $700 on a trade so I thought I should be doing that, but it just did not get it in my head it was all relative. My mentors were using 5000 share size trades, capturing profit in the small moves. They were able to anticipate trades faster than me so when I was buying they are about to sell and I was holding my positions too long looking for bigger moves but that didn’t work. So, I told myself ok the problem is I am not trading big enough sizes. So, I increased my sizes to 1000-1500 shares. Guess what happened, I traded scared, could not make smart decisions, stopped out of trades too soon, made more mistakes because it just was not a comfortable size for me, so I started losing even more money. As a beginner I was unable to anticipate trades, I waited for more confirmation which is a smart way to trade, but I had to understand I was minimizing or shrinking my profit zone. I was not taking the relative profit for my share size in the profit zone that I should have been taking. I thought I was failing taking $50 profit on 300 share size trade when Andrew would make $500 on same trade so I felt I was losing but in reality, I was winning the same as Andrew. He traded 4000 shares compared to my 300 shares, it was all relative. It took me a long time to realize my expectations were wrong as a beginning trader. I could not set my expectations based on my personal needs or goals. I had to set them based on my experience level, knowledge and account size (comfortability of money I was trading). I had to learn to be patient, grow with experience, grow with proper expectations, which my expectations would align with my share sizes. As a beginner start small, start with realistic expectations and be ecstatic with $20 net profit after commissions wins! 2. Be Disciplined Trader: Once your expectations are reasonable and in-line with reality of your trading knowledge, then you must adhere to a great amount of discipline which was the second hardest thing for me to do. It is easy to write down a daily goal of $20 but it is not as easy to be ok with only profiting $20 for a day’s work in the market. It was incredibly challenging thing to stay disciplined on my share sizes, stay disciplined on my expectations and stay disciplined on only trading my top strategies. I would have an $150 profit day and then tell myself yes, I can do this, I can do $150 every day. And guess what, the next day I would lose $300 because I tried to increase my share size or push my trades too far. Then the day after that I would want to make up for the $300 losing day, push even harder and lose another $200. There is also the fear as a beginner of missing out or not maximizing your winners (buying the bottom and selling the top). In the beginning I would get very disappointed missing a trade or selling too soon. This anxiety would cause me to lose my discipline. I would take bad setup trades. I would not sell when I should be, trying to sell at the top. As a beginner this is a must to be disciplined with. You will very rarely hit the bottom and top. Don’t bet your self up on these things especially as a beginner. And always remember if you miss a trade, there will be another one right around the corner. There is always another trade for money to be made. You must learn how to discipline yourself and sticking to your realistic daily expectation regardless what happens the day before or the day before that. Every day you start with the same $20 or whatever reasonable expectation you have each day. Write down and post it on your screen or put a $20 bill next to your screen to remind you every day. Ask yourself every day would you rather lose money today or make even just $20 today? Because at the end of the day, you will either lose your money or your discipline will create the results of being a consistent profitable trader. It will be one or the other, please chose discipline! The market is extremely fickle and unkind. It will eat you alive in seconds. There are no excuses or manipulating the market, it has no emotion or feelings. You must be extremely quick and decisive decision maker. One tiny mistake, one misstep in your discipline and you will lose money every time. Be patient. Be realistic with your expectations. Trade proper share sizes that align with your expectations. Plan your trade and trade your plan based on your expectations. Trade only your best strategies. Be extremely disciplined with all above. You will be a consistently successful trader!