Help me guys

[Moha 0]

Hi guys I have a trading psychology problem

Right now I have such a big fear of failing in trading

I am also afraid of being wrong in my analysis or trades and I am afraid that my knowledge is wrong (I have been studying trading for 2 years)

Can any of you tell me if this is normal and how I can fix it please

[Martin D 29]

It's normal that traders deal with psychology issues but as we're all different they can be different issues, the fear of being wrong is common. It's not a one size fits all solution, you need to be honest with yourself about what is actually causing it. For example

- Do you fear being wrong because you've been wrong in the past while developing your tradebook and now you fear this one will be wrong as well? If so practice over and over and record the data until you prove to yourself you have an edge.
- Do you fear being wrong because you fear the monetary loss? If so you could reduce your size and build it up slowly or if it's a combination of both the first two then perhaps SIM till you prove your tradebook then deal with the fear of monetary loss.
- Do you fear being wrong because of a more deep seated issue such as being reprimanded heavily for it as a child or large consequences of being wrong in your prior/current workplace? (for example if you were an air traffic controller then a mistake could cause mass deaths). I won't pretend to know how to fix this but the first step is always admitting what is causing the problem

As traders we have to accept being wrong some of the time, it's part of the job, no trader is right 100% of the time. Our tradebook just needs to give us an edge so our wins outstrip our losses.

Edited April 30, 2023 by Martin D

[CarloNe 4]

The book “trading in bets” Anne Duke and the series of vídeos fromMark Douglas “Trading in The zone workshop” free on YouTube helped me a lot to manage the fear and thinking in terms of system. 

The book although not trading related,  have concepts that are very related. The bet is the risk you are willing to accept to see if your system is right. If it is wrong then it is the fee you’re willing to pay for a lesson (education). 

it helps to detach the emotions from the execution. 

If the system has an edge (higher probabilities to win) and the execution is flawless then you have a winning system, where the entire system is the combination of technicals and emotion management. 

Hope it will help. 

[Moha 0]

@CarloNe Thank you so much for recommending these authors to me

[Moha 0]

@Martin D 

Thanks for the reply

I'm afraid of making a mistake because online trading training is all wrong (apart from the bull bear team from which I learned many strategies such as 5 min ORB) and therefore you don't really understand how to learn how to do it

[Martin D 29]

1 hour ago, Moha said:

I'm afraid of making a mistake because online trading training is all wrong (apart from the bull bear team from which I learned many strategies such as 5 min ORB) and therefore you don't really understand how to learn how to do it

I don't think that's true, there are certainly some but there is also a lot of good online training outside BBT as well. I have personally learned as much (possibly more of my strategies) from sources outside BBT as I have within it, that's partly natural when you have a variety of different traders that don't all conform to the same rule set so you're not forced down a certain path, you hear conflicting information, for example Paras core strategy is T&S, Thor uses T&S and wouldn't trade without L2, Aiman doesn't use T&S or L2. So if I'm a new trader how do I comprehend that? Is it important or is it not? (I have my opinion of course but obviously that would be in conflict with at least some mods regardless of what I say).

When you have 1 trader leading you either trade that way or you're probably not going to be part of the community where as with BBT there's so much variety and contradiction that you need to figure it out for yourself which parts to listen to from which mod. I listened to the Thor and Carlos podcast today about the benefit of a community and they basically said a benefit of BBT was the variety (which is true) but it also said to me, all these traders grew up as traders here in BBT and they all trade different ways, in that case I'd have to assume that if they don't trade like the longer term mods like Andrew and Brian then a large element of their education was either personal discovery or from other sources. As I said this has been the same for me, I haven't come across anyone who trades exactly the way I trade (there's hundreds probably thousands of successful ways to trade) so it's not a criticism that they couldn't teach me everything, it's just part of a journey as a trader looking for an edge but you can't say all communities except BBT are "wrong". That's a long way from the truth and sounds like blaming other people because you haven't pieced everything together yet.

The issue is that any person I've seen (including BBT) only explains half the situation because the other half requires experience, they understand based on the context and experience of the situation when not to take trades but it's hard to give black and white rules on that. I've never found anyone who has been good at actually passing on that experience imo. Carlos and Thor said it themselves in that same podcast, it takes 2-3+ years to do this for the majority of people (if they last that long). If someone could give you your strategy and it just worked for everyone then clearly it wouldn't take 2-3 years.

Because I answer a few posts on here/discord I've been PM'd a few times with people struggling to get strategies to work from mods here. It's not that the strategies don't work it's that they are missing the context/their experience of when to use it. Regardless of whether you can recite every word Thor or Andrew or whoever has ever produced you can't trade like them just based on that, does that mean it doesn't work or does that mean you don't have the experience to make it work or your mind doesn't work exactly like theirs does? 

Unfortunately I'm not quite sure what the issue is now or how to help, you said you're afraid because all online trading is wrong except BBT so I'm not seeing the issue now because you're in BBT now so that's fixed according to what you said? Or are you still afraid this golden ticket will fail as well? If you've just watched their videos and not looked at the strategy 1000+ times in live or in replay then it probably will, if you have and recorded it like I mentioned in the solutions in my first message then you'd know whether it's working or not.

This is only my opinion of course but you're not going to get anywhere just blaming other people for lack of success. This is a solo job in that aspect, if you got conned by some FURU then you didn't do the due diligence, if you didn't mesh with their strategy then tough luck I didn't mesh exactly with any mod here either (and there's a lot more options than most communities) but I didn't blame them, I took the pieces and built on it over and over and over again failure after failure after failure until I figured it out.