What's the best method to keep yourself from overtrading?

<b>Remembering it is the easy part, following it is quite another.</b>

you bet.. 30 pages trading plan...LOL

i write my trading plan in the palm of my hand every morning.
after an hour of sweating and crying it's gone.
i don't overtrade.
 
I agree with metoxx there.

I'd say the cure for overtrading is being extremely discriminating about which trades you make. Thats why is vital for a new trader to start really slowly (1 or 2 trades a day) and not increase until those trades are showing consistent profits. There is such a strong impulse, when you are new, to go for it like a bat out of hell on speed to try and make a profit. The result - too many bad trades that loose more than the profitable ones.

When you really know what you are doing you can make 20+ trades a day and all profitable - so its not about overtrading but growing trading frequency as skill increases.

:)

Indie
 
White

You did not say what timeframe you're are trading. Moving from the one minute to the five minute chart for setups cut my trades bigtime.
 
1) Trade using a 1200 baud modem -- it will take so long for the data & pages to load, you won't be able to do more than a few trades per day.

2) Breakup your trading account into less than 25k chunks and let the PDT restrictions do their job.

3) Get one of those under-the-desk exercise machines that only let you use the computer while you are pedalling, set the resistance to the highest level. You'll either end up with very few trades per day or great quads.

4) Plug your computer into a UPS and unplug the UPS from the wall. You'll only have about 10-20 minutes to trade before the battery dies.

Cheers,
Traden4Alpha
 
What the heck does it take to get on the right side of this market?
I buy it goes down I sell it goes up!
Ok, now I'm gonna buy...see it goes down!
All right, then I'll sell...oh no,,now it's going back up!
How many trades have I made today?
Better check, oh man, too many to count
Well, I don't know what I'm doing so I'll sell when I think I should buy
OK, now I think I should buy, so I'll sell
DARN IT ANYWAY!! I knew I should have bought.
Well there goes this weeks profits, can't stop now
All right, there we go, a 2 tick profit, I better take it
 
One, you're sitting there, and it looks like a good trade, but you don't want to take it because you know how it feels to lose, and you don't want to risk feeling that way again.

Two, You are tading and losing money, but you don't want to stop because you know how it feels to lose, and you don't want to feel that way again.

So, I would suggest the cheapest way out of over trading, and the most profitable method to overcome trigger shyness, is to finally once and for all deal with the real issue, which is namely that horrible feeling.
 
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