📈Trading is unnatural for Homo Sapiens by [ThinkOrSwim (TOS) Rangers]
“It’s crazy to do the same thing over and over again, but expect a different result each time.”
Albert Einstein. © ️
Why am I using this quote? Because trading is in fact an unnatural activity for a person. We are not physiologically adapted for trading, which is why it is so difficult for us.
Engaging in intraday trading, observing the rules and performing the same actions * under the same conditions, the trader gets different results every time: either a plus, or a minus, or a profit, or a loss, or in general the deal does not go anywhere.
* By the same actions, I mean that you do not trade for the body, you just press a button, and the result from pressing may be different. Everything else is already happening in your brain🧠. This is the main difficulty of trading. What it means❓ I’ll give you a simple example.
How does a child learn? 👶🏻 He takes a finger and sticks it, for example, into a fire. It hurts him, but after a while, he forgets about this pain and sticks his finger into the fire again. Most likely, the child will not do this the third time, because it really hurts and his entire body has already remembered it.
❗️A trader has to stick his finger into the fire every time, that is, receive and receive this little pain. Why? Because according to his system, only every 3rd or every 5th deal brings profit. And his whole body after the second deal screams: “Stop dude, stop sticking your finger, it already hurt! Your brain is completely filled with cortisol, you are stressed! “
And the opposite situation is during a profitable trade. When you get at least one profitable trade, not even through the system, you have a dopamine explosion💥. Now the body is screaming on the contrary: “Come on, let’s make at least one more deal, I still want a dopamine explosion”.
You make another trade, then another, and end up overtrading and dumping all day profit📉.
How did this happen? The next day you came to work and your whole psychology was already set to receive dopamine. Psychology can be understood as your physical brain🧠, that is, a piece of meat that produces all these hormones.
So you come the next day. Your brain remembers that if you make a trade, you will receive dopamine, because the brain has not yet received the negative reinforcement in the form of today’s stops🛑.
You sit down, the market opens well, but you don’t see ideal stocks right here. There are stocks, but they are so … mediocre. That is, high noise, big spreads, but your brain wants dopamine, and therefore you get involved in this deal anyway and … the piece of paper doesn’t go anywhere.
In the best case, you close everything to zero, in the worst case, you get a small stop again, and if you entered with increased risk either into thin paper or paper with a large spread, then you also get a daily stop.
Thus, the main job of a trader is to develop and use such tools and habits (and I’m not talking about software) that will protect you from serotonin, dopamine bursts and allow you to maintain discipline and strategy💪
That is why in my previous posts I wrote that it does not matter what strategy you use. Most likely, if you were taught how to work with it, then it was profitable, or it is profitable, or profitable in some phase of the market, and it is important how you use it.
The very correct steps during the day allow you to understand when your brain 🧠 is playing against you. With your consciousness, you will be able to properly manage the situation and either not overtrade or not enter, if the day is really bad, you will be able to stop in time during the trading session.
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