The four states that cost money
FOMO buys the top because missing out feels worse than losing. Revenge trading doubles size to win the money back and turns a bad hour into a bad month. Tilt keeps you clicking after your daily loss limit. Overconfidence after a winning streak quietly triples your position size until one normal loss erases weeks of work.
None of these are character flaws; they are predictable responses to variance. The fix is not willpower, it is process.
Rules that remove the decision
Pre-commit in writing: maximum trades per day, maximum daily loss, mandatory break after two consecutive stop-outs, no new setups in the final hour of your session. Rules written when calm protect you from the person you become at 3 a.m. watching a green candle.
The journal
Log every trade with a screenshot before entry and after exit, plus the setup name, the reason, your emotional state, and the R outcome. Review weekly and sort by setup: you will usually discover that two setups produce all your profit and three produce all your losses. Deleting the losers is the fastest performance upgrade available to any trader.
- Date, pair, direction, timeframe.
- Setup name and entry trigger.
- Entry, stop, target, size, R risked.
- Screenshot before and after.
- Emotional state, one line.
- Outcome in R and one lesson.
Play the long game
Judge yourself on execution, not on profit and loss. A losing trade taken exactly to plan is a good trade; a winning trade taken on impulse is a dangerous one because it rewards the behaviour that will eventually ruin you. Consistency compounds, and in this market compounding is everything.