How often do you approach a trade with a “win or lose” mentality? What does it do to your psyche? You’re setting yourself up for an emotional struggle that will affect your productivity. It may even cause temptation to break your own trading rules.
You must change the definition of success.
Usually a trader will define success as “making money”.
A good trade is one that you do according to your system.
Did you stop out? That was a good trade.
Did you take your profits when you were supposed to? That was a good trade.
When you begin to think this way, you have a way of making a trade a good trade every time, even if it doesn’t do what you want it to. Even if every trade isn’t profitable, there’s something in your head that will flip when you do this.
When you stop thinking about a trade going against you as a “loss” and you start to look at the fact that you’ve traded your system as a good trade, something in your psyche will flip.
You have to change the way you think about a stop out. If you can’t stop out, you won’t be a trader for very long. Change your mind.
Ben Russell