Trading, emotions and your fine selves

[tee-rex]

I can handle my emotions on holding but when trading it is impossible for me to always keep calm and be fine. Trading is much harder than hodling.

Yet it's looked down upon by these pinheads who think they're heroes getting caught up in some scumbag's pump.

I'd love to see the stats of people who got in a couple of years ago who did nothing but hold versus people who started trading two years ago. My suspicion is the vast majority of traders will be miserable failures.

That would be meaningless statistics. Yes, the prices in June 2016 were around $600 per bitcoin. They had been rising through the first half of 2016 but right before the halving, which occurred on July 10th (if I'm not mistaken), there was a major correction. That means that even with today's prices of $6k, profits are really good for a 2 year-long holding. These are solid figures and I don't expect anyone to challenge them.

Nevertheless, while they definitely are, there's the second part of the equation, which is traders. And thus you can't draw any definitive conclusion as some traders made a lot more than that (compared to simple holding), while the others couldn't probably even make it into the green zone at all. It means that even if the majority of traders failed miserably, which is itself a tricky question as no one would be trading for 2 years seeing only losses, you can't make such a comparison.

[Balmoon]

I think it is very important to control emotions in such trades because investing in crypto takes patience and risk, antrara holding or selling it must also have the right predictions.

[TanteStefana]

 I found for myself one useful thing in Trading, I just consider this digits on the screen as opportunity to have money, and not as actual earned money, and so it is easier for me to trade them.

[wuvdoll]

Emotions are hard to battle with when you see you are losing money. There are books about this which is mainly for foreign exchanges traders but have not read any for crypto traders. One thing that I always remind myself when losing money due to small investments that I did is that, I am an early investor in crypto, in time this investment of mine will grow and it don't matter when.

Emotions are not hard to battle if you are confident in your decisions and accepting that you cannot be right all the time as the market can move as it pleases.

All the above, with good knowledge and experience, it is something that can be discarded. Making decisions in the market out of emotion will never lead anywhere but mistakes, but making decisions based on knowledge of what you are trading and what to expect from your analysis and plotting out your strategies, will always give you that confidence and most of the time, you will be right and better than when you let emotion come to play.

[BabyBoss]

Who here feels they have a handle on their emotions when it comes to trading or holding?

I think it's an area that many people like to feel that they've mastered, but if they saw playbacks of their actions a while down the line it would be screamingly obvious that they haven't.

To give a personal example I have a few XEMs. A few months back I was looking to consolidate all the crypto threads I had lying around so looked into selling a sizeable chunk as they'd been pretty stagnant for a while.  

Being a bit dim and easily distracted I forgot about it and so stuck around for a 20-25x rise. Had my concentration held I probably would've gotten rid of them and would now be wailing and puking. In that particular case boredom and impatience nearly got the better of me.

There are countless examples on this forum of people declaring things dead or emphatically stating that such and such price will never happen again and giving up. Same goes for people going all in at the peakiest of peaks.

Have you yourself found your emotions tripping you up or are you an emotionless trading terminator?

Yes we can feel emotions when we finally take it as our lose. Like after selling it will go up more then you are on your emotion “what if it will never go back on low price?” So you will going to buy higher than what your price on selling it. Very wrong move when you are overtaking with your emotions. Wait and you’ll see.

[raven7886]

From my point of view ,we need more knowledge in trading then holding.Because in trading,we have to analysis the market very deep and buy at the maximum low price then the market price.Then only you will get more profit from it.If you have patience ,you can easily hold the bitcoin.

Knowledge actually helps a whole lot to help rule out any form of emotion when it comes to trading. I only got caught up in emotions in my early years of trading but as time goes on, when I realized emotion never helps in anyway and I would be doing better if I stick with what I know than trying to assume for the market, then I tend to do better.

As the confidence started building, emotion started becoming the last part of me when it comes to trading but in the first few year and when it comes to not having much knowledge, it is just one thing you cannot run away from.

[keystroke]

I kind of understand your approach but wouldn't it be better and more effective to find out where you fail exactly in your strategy and then focus on fixing the broken part in a right way? I mean, not by offsetting one bias by another bias. If your approach works for you, then certainly stick to it, but it may fail you one day. For example, when what you automatically consider a bias is not in fact a bias but actual representation of the market situation.

Absolutely. Correcting mistakes in your strategies is also crucial. But OP asked about controlling your emotions, and I believe (a) that emotions are unavoidable to some degree for human traders, and (b) that they can be seen as some form of statistical biases. If removing these biases is not an option, then countering them in the way I described seems to be the next-best option.

Since when do you have a new avatar, oda.krell? 

[foaman]

I can say that I everytime was trying to handle my emotions and feelings while trading, but almost every time I fail because when the time goes to your real money that you can lose it is hard to get rid of emotions

[naidray]

Trading is mostly about dealing with emotions. I found very helpful a book by Alex Elder called "Trading for a living". There is a chapter about psychology. 

The reason why it is always good to rule out emotions completely is because they will never want to leave you and you will only have to get yourself to do what is best for your trade based on what you see and what you expect than what you feel. The thing with trading is that sometimes, you may want to use your discretion and at the same time, you will really want to trade based on your own knowledge and analysis, and that pretty much works better than feelings.

[btcdevil]

I can say that I everytime was trying to handle my emotions and feelings while trading, but almost every time I fail because when the time goes to your real money that you can lose it is hard to get rid of emotions

This is the reason why panic trading is happening in the market and the market fell more in this panic and big players always take advantage of this situation as they are motionless. I dont ignore that i never had done any wrong trading with emotions lot of time i had done wrong decisions through emotions and had loss and profit also. Even in gambling also when betting sometime emotion come in between and i bet on wrong bet and have got loss. So it is hard to control emotion because some time emotion act gets you profit also and when you dont react on that and see that it got profit and you missed it so next time when you go with emotion you make loss. So it is just a part of life.

[boynamnhi]

Who here feels they have a handle on their emotions when it comes to trading or holding?

I think it's an area that many people like to feel that they've mastered, but if they saw playbacks of their actions a while down the line it would be screamingly obvious that they haven't.

To give a personal example I have a few XEMs. A few months back I was looking to consolidate all the crypto threads I had lying around so looked into selling a sizeable chunk as they'd been pretty stagnant for a while.  

Being a bit dim and easily distracted I forgot about it and so stuck around for a 20-25x rise. Had my concentration held I probably would've gotten rid of them and would now be wailing and puking. In that particular case boredom and impatience nearly got the better of me.

There are countless examples on this forum of people declaring things dead or emphatically stating that such and such price will never happen again and giving up. Same goes for people going all in at the peakiest of peaks.

Have you yourself found your emotions tripping you up or are you an emotionless trading terminator?

I think the market is showing signs of strong recovery, you can see that bitcoin prices are adjusting and moving throughout today, and this is a very good time for you to trade altcoin.

Trading psychology also has a great impact on your profit and loss, it can be seen that if good psychology, you will be able to steadily and profitably cut losses when needed.

[tanjilrifat]

I just consider this digits on the screen as opportunity to have money.we have to analysis the market very deep and buy at the maximum low price then the market price.

[kakonhat]

You have discovered my thinking. This is the true emotions is a big fact in trading. When I was trading in forex then most of the time emotion tap into my mind and brain. But this is the truer that if we work depend on emotion we will lose your capital. So, We should skip the emotion for our trading time then we could be a good trader.

[hubballi]

When trading out of 10 only 2 or 3 persons use to handle their emotions and get profit in trade, balance all are trading with emotions and make loss. Even knowing that they are trading with emotions they trade and make loss and then cry that the site is scam etc.,. Controlling emotions is very hard as when you control you emotions and trade and when that trade gives you loss then you think that you should follow your emotions and on next trade when you go with emotions you make loss. Nothing can be done with it.

[BetadiNe]

we are all human and even the most veteran traders still have some emotions left in them that may affect their decisions

and as for me, i am no expert and i have been making lots of mistakes because of making wrong decisions in wrong times because of emotions like not holding because of the negative things i have been hearing or seeing on the charts and then regret selling.

although this mostly happens when i am trading altcoins. for bitcoin i am strong as a rock. i hodl.

yes it is true what you say, it is very difficult to control the emotions when trading, many fatal mistakes have been done by a classy trader though.

[Nicol3]

I think Im more of an emotionless person when it comes to trading and holding. I have practiced myself to control my emotions especially when the market is ugly. And maybe that was because I had experienced the worst when it comes to trading so I became numb.

[Rodeo02]

I think Im more of an emotionless person when it comes to trading and holding. I have practiced myself to control my emotions especially when the market is ugly. And maybe that was because I had experienced the worst when it comes to trading so I became numb.

well this is normal cause most of the time for real life deep inside of us we cant control our emotion how we can be able to make our trading emotion less that we cant be made to panic or even else to take some sadness on while we are doing to trade for.

[whirlcoin]

I can say that I everytime was trying to handle my emotions and feelings while trading, but almost every time I fail because when the time goes to your real money that you can lose it is hard to get rid of emotions

Yes it is not easy to control my emotion while we lose our hard earned money but it can be possible when we are invested very affordable amount for us and we don't need it anymore for now so in that case we don't care that much even if we face losing and that time we can be a holder.

[CCF_news]

Controlling your emotions during trading is possible only with the help of a well-developed trading strategy. If you have a strategy, no emotion will make you just enter the deal.

[k@suy]

I can say that I everytime was trying to handle my emotions and feelings while trading, but almost every time I fail because when the time goes to your real money that you can lose it is hard to get rid of emotions

You can handle of these emotions if you have vast experience on trading already. For newbies, its a roller coaster ride of emotions at first. Once you complete the whole trading cycle, you slowly adopt the market and emotions is slowly controlled.