Dear fellow traders, I need your help.
I've been struggling with the psychological side of my trading lately. The problem is that I can't pull the trigger. I have perfect plan thanks to looking at charts for over a year. I know what stocks can or cannot do at certain price levels and I have my stops set properly but I can't pull the trigger.
For example yesterday on $CLSN I was looking for breakout of 4.60 and I saw the bounce from 3.80ish. I haven't seen any proper entry level until 10:00 where 4.30 set nice support level and the stock bounced off of it 2 times in a row. I had my order set on 4.30 and knew that if it can hold for the third time that there is a big chance of breaking the 4.60 and potentially going to 5 in a few minutes because volume started growing up quickly. But guess what - I just couldn't press the "submit" button! I just couldn't. My next support level was at 4.15 so I was looking at nice risk/reward ratio but I got somehow scared and got really mad when I saw the play happen almost the same as I predicted - breaking 4.60 and touching 4.96.
Another one happened today. I was trying to trade $EGLT. Nice pre-market gapper. My buy level was 3.00 becuse it acted as a resistance multiple times in the past month and my support was at 2.80 due to the same thing - acted as a support multiple times recently. I knew that there is a resistance at 3.25 and the second one at 3.38 so basically 2/1 risk reward. In premarket $EGLT was trading with pretty decent wolume so getting in or out of the stock wouldn't be a big problem so I prepared my order to 3.00 when I saw the price getting close to it. But when it broke through my level and then made pullback to 3.00 I panicked and again - couldn't pull the trigger. So I ended up watching the stock break my first and second resistance levels just to watch it touch 3.48.
These were just the two most recent "fails" but I had another like 5-6 perfect trading opportunities that I let come to me instead of forcing trades and every single time ended up without taking any action. I think that the problem is that I work on my plan pretty hard and then, when it comes to action and I got real money on the line I start thining about "what if" possibilities which are mostly "what if it doesn't go my way?" even though i have my mental stop losses set all around the place.
If any of you had this struggle and somehow could beat it or if you have any advice, please help me because my mental health is going down really fast with every missed opportunity.
Thank you!
In struggling With The same on cutting losses - dont seem to want to get out of an stock - Thats bad ! But use smaller positions or maybe papertrade some ?
Read any of Mark Douglas's books on Trading Psychology or watch his videos on Youtube. Good Luck!
@Torkers Or just practice cutting losses and getting out of trades that go against you.
Thank you guys. I'll definitely try to take smaller positions - it sounds logical.
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