Skip to main content

How to Get Off the Performance Roller Coaster

From Dr. Steenbarger

Do you find yourself on a performance roller coaster? This is a situation in which you make money for a while, begin to think you have it all figured out, only to fall back, lose money, and feel like a rookie all over again.

A while back, I wrote about the performance roller coaster and some of the emotional factors that sustain it. The gist of that important post was that how we process wins and losses affects our subsequent trading--and sometimes contributes to winning and losing streaks.

I just finished an enjoyable interview with Mark Wolfinger of the Options for Rookies site. One topic that came up was the way in which traders identify with their P/L. Once a trader's sense of identity and esteem becomes caught up in profits and losses, the trader begins an emotional roller coaster simply due to the natural ups and downs of markets.

There's an important difference between *wanting* to make profits and *needing* to make them. When the trader *needs* to win, performance pressures are magnified many-fold. Even normal losses can make the trader feel like a loser--and then trade like one!

Conversely, when our self worth becomes too wrapped up in trading results, periods of profitability can easily lead to overconfidence and even grandiosity. It's not at all unusual for traders to stop doing what was making them money once they've had a series of winning days or weeks. And that leads to the downhill portion of the roller coaster.

The advice I shared with Mark in the interview and that I've mentioned elsewhere is that it's vitally important to be psychologically diversified. If you're counting on trading to provide your sense of accomplishment and value, losses will become unduly threatening. If you don't have aspects of life to draw upon when trading goes bad--relationships, career, personal interests--it's going to be difficult to rise from the slump.

It is possible to care very much about trading and work hard at it without riding a performance roller coaster. You can feel very good about your evolving process as a trader, even as you struggle on a given day, week, or month with making money. Once you take yourself out of the equation, it becomes far more easy to focus on markets and the patterns we trade.

.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WOW! I think that sums it up

Many of you have been reading this blog may have noticed that my blogging frequency has increased over the past few weeks as I got short the market. As you can imagine I am down money since getting short the market, this is the time when most people pull away from posting. But my goal is to stay active and involved and show you that trading is not always rainbows and butterflies. It is times like these that the things I have been sharing over the past couple of weeks are so important. You need to trade small relative to your account. I have a decent short position in the market and my portfolios are set up to make some awesome returns if we finally turn lower. But something I would like to point out is that my account is 70% Cash.  I learned a long time ago how important it is to live by the rules you preach. Because of my discipline I am able to continue to hold my positions, I have time and capital on my side. I can't stress enough how important it is not to get to big....
Post a Comment
Read more

Stay Small, Stay Out of Trouble

To expand on my post from yesterday about patience. I want to talk about a very important element that allows patience in a position, and that is staying small. If you trade too big RELATIVE to your personal account size, you are likely to be forced to exit the trade before the trade works in your favor. Many trades myself included have all experienced the pains of trading a position way too large given our account size. There is this predisposition out there that the only way you are going to make money in the financial markets is if you are trading 10 lots of options and 1000 shares of stock at the time. This is not the case, and if this is your mentality you will likely ensure yourself trouble. We have all read the stories of traders blowing up their account. I personally think a good rule of thumb is to not risk more than 5% of your account value on any one position. Good Luck Trading! In The Money Trades And 1 favor that we ask:  If you like the hard work w...
Post a Comment
Read more
more good news from FXStreet : Tom Fitzpatrick, senior technical analyst at Citibank in New York. Monday, July 15, 2002 "Parity is a psychological, not a technical level...and whether we pause around parity or not, we are likely to see significant further dollar losses...Our initial target is $1.03 to $1.0450. If that level is taken out, it actually casts a question mark against the whole of the dollar's rally of the last seven years, and could open up a full-blown bear market for the dollar." Julian Jessop, chief European economist at Standard Chartered Bank. Monday, July 15, 2002 "The dollar is under pressure from everything from economic problems to asset reallocation away from the U.S. and corporate accounting problems. It's difficult to see any positive factor for the dollar at the moment. The root of the problem is the U.S. current account deficit. If the U.S. doesn't have to attract an enormous amount of foreign capital, people wouldn't have to wor...
Post a Comment
Read more