Chapter 3 W: “On the other hand, if what you perceive in market information is painful in some way, then you will naturally try to avoid that pain by either consciously or subconsciously blocking that information, you’ll systematically cut yourself off from any number of opportunities to enrich yourself. In other words, you cut yourself off from the opportunity flow”. A: Our fear of pain prevents us from seeing the opportunities the market presents us. Fear makes us (1)hesitate the execution of the trades (2)entering the trades too late or not at all; (3)exiting the trades too early. A: It’s one the issues we all traders goes through, especially as a new trader. Fear is something we need to be constantly aware of and embrace it.

@Susan Thank you. The good news is that I recently tightened my daily max loss A LOT, so Friday's loss is not a problem in any way from a pure $$$ point of view. -Tightening max loss, BTW, was something I did based on a conversation on that topic on an earlier book club call 🙂 I do feel like I am pretty good at retrospection, at asking "How did I get HERE, when I wanted to be THERE?", so that's what I have been working on since that day. I went back and reviewed this month's trades and found some repetitive mistakes I was making. I then simulated all this month's trades using the things I learned during my review, and the results are now significantly better. Out of 15 simulated trades, 12 were green, 2 red and one became a "No trade" since my entry criteria were never met. I have created a simple and easy to read check list which I will review *every* day before market open. I think of it as a "takeoff check list". I credit this list with a lot of the improvement I have seen in my trading since the max loss day.