Avoiding Stress

Trading can be difficult. It often requires you to look for trading opportunities during off hours. You can be making the mistake of thinking you have to take trade after trade during the trading day. When you think you have to trade all the time, trading can become a real labor, something difficult to keep at doing. Even the most exciting, rewarding activity can become commonplace if you drive yourself to do it over and over again.

Trading can feel that way at times if you don’t comprehend that the less you trade the better off you will be.

You can spend hours developing a set of detailed trading plans only to spend even more time during the trading day looking for the right market conditions, and then having to implement your plan repeatedly. When you allow that to happen, you are overtrading, and trading too much brings stress. You think that you dare not miss an opportunity. After all, this may be the trade that will take you to the moon!

It takes great mental stamina to trade continuously. But we humans are not machines. Your human mind has limited mental energy, and there are times when your mental resources are heavily taxed. That is when you will feel stressed out. If you want to survive as a trader you are going to have to learn to step aside, relax, and replenish your energies before returning to tackle market action.

When you can no longer concentrate easily: when you find it difficult to focus and pay attention: When your mind keeps wandering: When you are easily distracted: It is time to turn off that screen and get away from the markets.