Over Trading... I can honestly say that my biggest losing days were the result of better reasoning going out the window which lead to reckless behavior in the form of high leverage and (way) too many trades.
Since I can't speak for anyone else... The reason's I've over traded (All which have nothing to do with making money...) are as follows.
- Wanting speed up results (using too large of size)
- Not accepting/acknowledging a losing day (leads to more losses and more trades... Objectiveness goes out the window
- Not accepting i'm wrong about the day, the trend, etc
- Needing to be right about my Analysis/projections
- Too excited, euphoria
- Revengful, wanting to make up a previous losing day.
- Fear of missing out on a trade
- Trying to take every signal my "system" provides
- Getting side-tracked in other methods
While my tendency to over trade is on it's way out vs my entire trading history, all it takes is 1 day where my better judgement goes out the window to ruin a healthy performance.
As an exercise to see if my suspicions about over trading were correct I put together the attached excel sheet showing just my profit/loss per day and the # of trades in that day.
You'll notice an uncanny correlation between big (red) losing days and the volume spike in trades.
On the other hand there are a few days with great results and which also have a higher than normal number of trades but that's just a FEW days, so it's safe to say that those days were the result of being on my game, but at the same time that the risk worked in my favor the extra trading activity wasn't really worth it.
So in short it's never worth it to over trade!
In fact, if i had tracked my total risk on each trade as a sum vs the total reward on each trade for the winning days with a high volume of trades, i'd be willing to bet that the overall risk taken is also a large and obvious correlation.
Also worth noting are the exercises attached wherein if I had honored my max risk per day pf -1k, or -5% of my account balance then I would be up approx 5k, or 25% over the past 3 months.
Also worth noting is that had I taken even less max risk per day of -3% -$600, I would be up even more... Closer to 8k or 40%.
Of course the risk taken is relative to the return but it's interesting that less risk actually meant a greater overall return.
So there's actually 2 key lessons to this, 1 is to have reasonable risk levels and honor them... The other is to take fewer, higher quality trades, reducing the leverage and maximize the edge.
Just slow down, maintain discipline, and reap the rewards!
Since I can't speak for anyone else... The reason's I've over traded (All which have nothing to do with making money...) are as follows.
- Wanting speed up results (using too large of size)
- Not accepting/acknowledging a losing day (leads to more losses and more trades... Objectiveness goes out the window
- Not accepting i'm wrong about the day, the trend, etc
- Needing to be right about my Analysis/projections
- Too excited, euphoria
- Revengful, wanting to make up a previous losing day.
- Fear of missing out on a trade
- Trying to take every signal my "system" provides
- Getting side-tracked in other methods
While my tendency to over trade is on it's way out vs my entire trading history, all it takes is 1 day where my better judgement goes out the window to ruin a healthy performance.
As an exercise to see if my suspicions about over trading were correct I put together the attached excel sheet showing just my profit/loss per day and the # of trades in that day.
You'll notice an uncanny correlation between big (red) losing days and the volume spike in trades.
On the other hand there are a few days with great results and which also have a higher than normal number of trades but that's just a FEW days, so it's safe to say that those days were the result of being on my game, but at the same time that the risk worked in my favor the extra trading activity wasn't really worth it.
So in short it's never worth it to over trade!
In fact, if i had tracked my total risk on each trade as a sum vs the total reward on each trade for the winning days with a high volume of trades, i'd be willing to bet that the overall risk taken is also a large and obvious correlation.
Also worth noting are the exercises attached wherein if I had honored my max risk per day pf -1k, or -5% of my account balance then I would be up approx 5k, or 25% over the past 3 months.
Also worth noting is that had I taken even less max risk per day of -3% -$600, I would be up even more... Closer to 8k or 40%.
Of course the risk taken is relative to the return but it's interesting that less risk actually meant a greater overall return.
So there's actually 2 key lessons to this, 1 is to have reasonable risk levels and honor them... The other is to take fewer, higher quality trades, reducing the leverage and maximize the edge.
Just slow down, maintain discipline, and reap the rewards!
