Thoughts on Overtrading and How You Fix It

Overtrading. You probably heard that before.

We’ve all be guilty of that. I’m not unique either. Been there, done that.

Look at this scenario. You’ve had a great day trading binary options, you went up 5% for the day, or even 10%. And then you’re there, lingering at your com. Your finger’s a little restless, you start fidgeting your mouse all across the monitor screen. You’re thinking to yourself, “one more trade… one more trade.”

So after a couple of moments you actually win a trade.

To borrow the words of one of The Binary Lab members,

“Don’t get cocky. It always gets rocky. The market is unpredictable” – Kevin Sanders.

Unsatisfied, you’re still on the lookout for another.

startrek facepalm

You lose it. Damn. Chase the trade… Martingale… Revenge… What have you.

“Shouldn’t have traded into the lunch hour”, “Julian at Binary Lab told me not to do that. But it’s too late for that now.”

You start holding your breath. You start praying on your trade… “please hold it there” “please move one pip”

Before you know it you’ve got series of 3 consecutive losses – but you know what? That’s not the worst part.

The worst part is you lose your cool, and START TO FAIL TO CLEARLY THINK OF WHAT TO DO NEXT. 

4 Tell-tale Signs That You Are Overtrading

You commit one of the following errors:

  1. Click a wrong trade – currency, size, or expiry.
  2. You start messing up your trading rules – you later think. “Oh shit. I totally forgot about that rule while looking out for this other thing…”
  3. You say “heck! I’m going ALL IN!” on a really bad setup and blow your account
  4. You give up just short of the Perfect Trade, and develop a inaccurately formed idea that “Trading Sucks” or “Trading is Evil”.

Sound familiar?

You start thinking, “Should have withdrawn my profits when I could”.

Or, “My account manager was right. If I only I took that deposit bonus, I wouldn’t be one trade away from blowing my account”

Or “Dang! I could have bought a new ______ with that money I blew on those trades today. Why the hell did I do that?”

Trust me, the feeling is even worse when you have kids. I still remember the time I grew $500 into $4500, and then lost it. Could have paid for a short family vacation. It gets worse when you develop clearer and more vivid images of the exact items or benefits you could have gotten for that ill-spent money. It don’t matter that I have a big account sitting at over 7 figures. I sucks to lose money, and I hate losing money. Period. I know right?

And then there’s also some of you who have your confidence wrecked and you develop a phobia.

Amidst phobia comes dependency.

You start to think of “faster” “better” “easier” solutions, without realising that, there wasn’t anything fundamentally wrong with the method. After all, it did turn your $500 into $1500. But then you blew it. It really was your bad, but then you start going on that shopping spree for the “Magic Silver Bullet” solution, and don’t flinch on swiping your credit card on silly courses that really teach the same thing in a worse way. You then realise that that isn’t going to work, conveniently forgetting that your shattered confidence is the real problem, and go on scouring social media groups and forums for the “Best Auto-Trading Binary Robot”, subscribe yourself to a bunch of garbage product update lists that sizzle you on Clickbank or Clicksure Binary Robot Garbage with a paid actor and robot that’s really just supplied by an insider that’ll help you profit for a week or two, and then wipe out your account over the next two.

I think I got the point across by now.

8 Steps To Reseting Yourself After Overtrading and Losing

Now here’s what I’d suggest you do.

  1. Close your computer
  2. Go get some fresh air.
  3. Re-read, or re-watch your trading method tutorials
  4. Analyse why you lost.
  5. Make TWO winning trades.
  6. Take a break
  7. And then come back and win another two.
  8. Start coming back each time with a humble 2%-5% goal. Or say, “I’m getting $30 and I’m out.” $50, $100, $500, whatever is relevant to your account balance.

By practicing these steps, you will not only gain better mastery of your trading method, you will also reprogram within yourself, that feeling and state of mind of what it is like to win again.

What it's like to win again

Understand that you won’t recover your loss in a session, but you might in a few.

If you’ve ever broke your leg, it doesn’t mean you can’t ever walk, but you got to get by limping first.

Back to basics. Same with your trading account. Demo trade for the meantime if you can’t immediately top up your account to a safe balance for trading.

It’s true that you worked yourself into a setback, but let it me a lesson that sets you right for the mini-victories that lie ahead.

stress quote

Good trading,

Julian Wong
Founder, The Binary Lab.
https://thebinarylab.net

P.S. Feel free to share this article with your friends if you found it helpful to you!

P.P.S. All these are words of experience. You can only imagine what I’ve been through, just to get to where I am today!

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