Rear View Mirror symptom

J

Jdesey

I cannot be the only one who does this. Exit a trade... and then watch to see what would have happened if I held. It it goes further against my trade I feel like I did great to take the loss before it got worse. If it goes further with my trade I feel bad because I missed out on more profit.

Who suffers from this.. and more important what are solutions. I do take the tickers off my screens, but I end up looking anyway.
 
TheDawn said:
The reason why you deviate from your trading plan is because you don't have enough confidence in it. So do more backtesting to confirm its profitability and once it's confirmed, I guarantee you you will have no problem following it.

Take a few days off from trading to recover psychologically from the losses. Once the emotion has worn off, when you know you can face your losses again, go back to your losses and analyze the losses for what they are and find out what led to the losses. And then go back to the drawing board to rework your trading plan if needed.
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Jdesey said:
I cannot be the only one who does this. Exit a trade... and then watch to see what would have happened if I held. It it goes further against my trade I feel like I did great to take the loss before it got worse. If it goes further with my trade I feel bad because I missed out on more profit.

Who suffers from this.. and more important what are solutions. I do take the tickers off my screens, but I end up looking anyway.
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If you got out as planned, then you did the right thing. You just need to tweak your system.

If you got out sooner than you planned, and price eventually moved to your expected target, then shame on you. :)

My suggestion is that you should base on exit criteria on price and not some arbitrary numbers, such of x-amount of points or %.
 
Jdesey said:
I cannot be the only one who does this. Exit a trade... and then watch to see what would have happened if I held. It it goes further against my trade I feel like I did great to take the loss before it got worse. If it goes further with my trade I feel bad because I missed out on more profit.

Who suffers from this.. and more important what are solutions. I do take the tickers off my screens, but I end up looking anyway.
More...

 
Jdesey said:
I cannot be the only one who does this. Exit a trade... and then watch to see what would have happened if I held. It it goes further against my trade I feel like I did great to take the loss before it got worse. If it goes further with my trade I feel bad because I missed out on more profit.

Who suffers from this.. and more important what are solutions. I do take the tickers off my screens, but I end up looking anyway.
More...

Everyone experiences it, but what matters most is what you do after you witness it. The best traders out there are all mechanical and non-emotional and go "Mreh, I did what I did because that is what I saw."

If you are asking if anything can be done about it? There is. Look at how much profit you made that day, and shut yourself up.
 
It is natural to ponder on those things that you
mentioned, but what is important is that you got
out of your trade with a profit.

Looking back to see what would have happened
if you stayed in longer, kicking yourself because
you got out too soon, or sitting there with your
calculator crunching the numbers that if only I
had bought 5,000 shares I could have made
$25,000 today, doesn't really serve any useful
purpose.

You have to realize that you cannot be in every
trade, and things aren't always going to go the
way you wanted them to.

Just try to do better tomorrow.
 
GoldDigger said:
It is natural to ponder on those things that you
mentioned, but what is important is that you got
out of your trade with a profit.

Looking back to see what would have happened
if you stayed in longer, kicking yourself because
you got out too soon, or sitting there with your
calculator crunching the numbers that if only I
had bought 5,000 shares I could have made
$25,000 today, doesn't really serve any useful
purpose.

You have to realize that you cannot be in every
trade, and things aren't always going to go the
way you wanted them to.

Just try to do better tomorrow.
More...

Exactly. If your instrument moves 100 ticks in your favor but you capture only 50 ticks of it? So WHAT! At least you made profit! THAT'S the mindset you must have.
 
Do backtest with all things remain the same except the exit profit (bigger target + trailing or let profit run + trailing indefinitely). Only the backtest can tell you what is right.

Assuming that the backtest result has positive expectancy, then just add extra lot(s) or leave some lot(s). If the backtest result has negative expectancy, then you have no regret of not holding position the next time price move further after you take profit as planned.

No one knows what is going to happen next. That's why we do backtest and have a trading plan.
 
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