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When Trading is Breaking Bad: 6 Tips for Turning Things Around

We’ve all had moments where life seems to be getting the best of us, where things appear to be going in the wrong direction. Health, family, money, trading…any one of these can test our confidence and make us doubt what we are doing.
Sometimes the waves of life come faster and harder, like you are struggling just to tread water. Perhaps you are going through one of those times this year with trading (or life).
Below are six tips to help you turn the ship around when trading (or life) is breaking bad.

1. Do Something to Help Someone Else

One snowy winter day around the age of 12 when I was feeling quite down, I was wondering what I could do to shift my state from a negative one, to a constructive one.
I walked outside my house and noticed my neighbor (Mr. McDonald) who was in his early 60’s shoveling the heavy snow which had been falling all day. I’d helped others before, and noticed how I generally felt better after doing so. Thus I grabbed my shovel, walked over to his house, and started helping. 1.5 hours later, the task was done and I wished him a good evening.
Walking home, I noticed something shifted. I felt better, and wasn’t so absorbed in my personal situation.
This is what helping others does – it lifts us out of our self-absorption. It gets us focused on uplifting our energy while having a positive impact on others. Often times, this method alone can help shift your state, so try finding someone who could use your help.

2. Comedy Can Change Your Genes?

In a research experiment by Dr. Hayashi in Japan, he studied diabetic patients for changes in health by having them watch an hour long comedy show (vs. patients that didn’t).
Fascinatingly, the patients watching this program had up-regulated a total of 39 genes, 14 of which directly impacted the natural killing cell activity of the body (thus boosting their immune system to fight the disease).
On top of this, even though the 39 genes had no direct correlation to blood-glucose regulation, patients who watched the comedy showed improved blood-glucose levels (key for fighting diabetes). Simply put, laughter not only helped increase their immune system, but also change their genes (up-regulated them).
Try spending 30 minutes a day watching something you find funny and see if it shifts your mood. My personal favorites are The Daily Show with Jon Stewart & Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

3. Fix Something that Needs Fixing, Clean Something that Needs Cleaning

When I was a kid, I wasn’t a big fan of ‘chores’, and I’m guessing many of you felt the same. Now, I have the opposite view. If I ever feel like some aspect of my life isn’t moving forward, or the way it should, I usually go find a project to work on.
This could be something in my house which needed cleaning (a closet, patio, office…) or something I needed to go fix or buy for the place. By fixing or cleaning something, we accomplish two major things; 1) we move our bodies, which helps increase our energy, and 2) we uplift our environment.
Try cleaning your office (desk, floors, unnecessary objects) and don’t stop till you are done. Then notice how you feel.
Anytime you increase the energy of a space, you create a more conducive environment to work and live in. This the very reason every house, spa and travel magazine shows really clean and well organized places – nobody likes to visit a messy house, but everyone likes coming to a space that is taken care of.

4. Get some Exercise, Do Yoga or Practice Meditation

With thousands of scientific studies validating the benefits of the above to our body and brain, anyone of these can improve your neuro-chemistry, raise your energy, or help you feel more calm and relaxed.
If it’s the first one (exercise), try doing it outside as nature tends to have the best environment for resetting our energy. With the latter two (yoga/meditation) try finding a calm space to practice these.
If you are feeling down after several failed trades, movement is generally more helpful. If you are feeling more agitated, stillness is preferred. Simply feel what is most relative to your case, and apply the remedy. More than likely you’ll notice a difference, even if it’s for a short moment.

5. Be An Optimist vs. a Pessimist

Yep – attitude affects our health and performance. The Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Yale (and others) have conducted experiments across decades studying thousands of people who were considered optimists or pessimists.
The results: optimists were more energetic, happier and peaceful. They lived 7-11 years longer on average, had lower blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and a healthier body weight.
Contrast this to the pessimists who not only lived less (on average), but had a 5x greater chance of getting coronary heart disease.
The lesson being: if you want to have a greater chance of turning your trading challenges (and life) around? Be an optimist. This will help you keep the right perspective when trading.

6. Keep Moving Forward

Whether it is learning how to trade forex successfully, martial arts, archery or sports, you will experience periods where it feels like there is no growth. These can run for long periods of time, and may seem like you are going nowhere.
The problem is, you cannot really predict when your growth will increase. Sometimes your learning process will just consolidate for weeks, months, maybe years, and then all of a sudden – you experience that spike in growth.
These spikes are often not tied to one event, but many, so we cannot try pinning our success on taking one specific action. We have to do as many things right as possible for longer than we think, or you may miss that huge leap in growth.
Just keep moving forward towards your goal of becoming a profitable trader. More than likely, with enough effort – you’ll jar something loose which allows you to take that next step.

You Will Have To Do This Trading

The Rosy Picture
I know the idea of being a professional trader will seem like a rosy picture, but the fact of the matter is you are going to face some tough times as a trader. You will have to do many things to be a successful and professional trader (or successful/professional anything for that matter), but the most crucial things you do will be the little things in the big moments of time.

Bottom line is – you will have to deal with making mistakes that cost you money, and a lot of it. You will have to deal with some really tough losses, whether they be 4, 5 or 6 figures. Yes, you can make 5, 6 or 7 figures, but that will be totally dependent upon you remaining completely focused, confident and disciplined while you are going through the good times, as well as the really tough ones.

In Trading…
You will have flat periods, draw-downs, losses (perhaps several in a row), but regardless of what you face mentally, emotionally, or physically, you will have to keep proper money management.
You will likely have to take a trade shortly after getting hit by the market only minutes before. You will have to deal with getting stopped out by a pip or two, only to see the market move 100+ pips towards your target. You will have to be patient and sit on your ass, even though you want to get in.
And you will have to do all of this while the market is moving in real time, while there are large profits to be made, while your emotions are working completely against you, while you are experiencing fear, or worry, or impatience, or frustration, or absolute un-clarity.

You will have to make tough decisions in real time that may not be so evident as they unfold before you in a live trading environment. It is very easy and completely common to miss the best setups happening in real time, that follow your rules, or your price action system, because in real time all of the toughest things about trading are present.
The Mountain
I know it may seem like you are pushing up against something larger than yourself, like you are moving a large boulder up a mountain, but you are actually pushing up against yourself – not the market. There is a powerful, self-reflective & insightful quote from Sir Edmund Hillary (1st to ever reach the summit of Mt. Everest) which goes;

“It is not the mountain that we are conquering, but ourselves”

This is exactly what trading is, as you are not conquering the market – but yourself.

Safe Distance & The Monday Morning Quarterback
Hindsight is a free zone, a safe distance to evaluate things as there is no emotion involved, with no live triggers to activate your unconscious or limiting beliefs. When you look at a trade after the fact, there is always clarity, and it looks like the setup was literally put on a golf tee just waiting for you tee off.

However, the reality in trading is, the clarity so available in hindsight is often barely present when trading in real time.
You wouldn’t believe how many ‘authorities‘ or ‘masters of all things price action‘ (ironic considering no peer calls them that), talk about all these great setups after the fact.
They boast how it was ‘widely discussed in their members forum’ only to find out it never was & they never traded it themselves. This is despite the fact it was an ‘obvious’ pin bar setup, or engulfing bar setup, or some other ‘obvious‘ thing they didn’t trade, but lauded after the fact.
Anyone can be a Monday morning quarterback, but can they be a trader in real time is the question. This is why lately I have been almost weekly posting my actual setups here, here, here, here, here, and here of how I traded them in real time.
This is with all the success and mistakes made while managing that live trade, with my actual entry and exit from the brokers chart, based on all the thoughts, emotions and decisions that are involved in them.
Actual Trades
If they’ve only shown you one trade in the last year, or a few in the last few months, without actually even showing you the entry and exit from their broker chart – then run away as they are hiding from the fact they do not trade. They should also be showing you successful trades from their students which you can find here, here, here, here, and a ton more here.

But make no mistake, there are many things you will have to do while trading, particularly managing, and managing two things which require practice and precision to do well. They are;
1) Managing Risk
2) Managing Your Emotions
Hopefully you already have a set of rule based systems that you follow to get in and out of a trade, so there is little management in that part. It is the two listed above that require most of your mental/emotional/psychological management and capital.
In Summary
To repeat, you will have to endure tough times as a trader, with some tough losses, flat periods, draw-downs, making expensive mistakes. And you will have to do this while not investing all of yourself and success / failure in the last trade. You always have to be trading and thinking in probabilities.
Losses are inevitable, but how you deal with them is not. If you can learn to remain focused, confident and disciplined – regardless of what just happened in the last few minutes, hours or days, then you can find yourself back towards a winning trade. But more importantly, you can experience first hand a valuable lesson, which can pick you up after you fall, carry you towards winning trades, and feed your trading career for a lifetime.

Forex Strategies, Trading Mindset & Risk Management

What Limits You From Trading Profitably?

The Question
I was recently talking with a student in one of my trading courses who is an eager beaver. They definitely have the desire to trade for a living, but I noticed something of a repeating pattern for them. They would constantly not trade the system as is, make modifications to it and adjust the risk parameters.

I have often wondered why a developing student who wants to learn how to trade, but hasn’t made it on their own, make all of these decisions which would hurt their trading.

I am certainly guilty of this in my early days, without a doubt. But like in Archery, I trusted my teacher, and decided to practice the technique he taught me. Originally, this was not the case, but he told me that when I can shoot consistently and the technique is 2nd nature, then I can bring in my own style. Until then, I followed his technique.

But the question has been with me for some time, as to why traders like myself (back in the day), or others would make decisions that obstruct them from the goal they so clearly want – to trade profitably and for a living.

The answer to this mercurial piece of the puzzle came together this past July.

A Weekend of Training
For about 6 weeks this last summer, I was on vacation in the US visiting family and friends. But for one weekend, I was in a training that helped me answer some long lasting questions about trading, for myself and my students as to why some do things which hurt the learning process.

The training was a QRA Level 1 intensive. QRA stands for Quantum Reflex Analysis and it was a weekend where I was pounded with information. QRA is based on Biophysics, particularly on the work by Fritz-Albert Popp, an award winning physicist with hundreds of publications.

QRA is mostly focused on the healing of physical illnesses, but also works on a psychological/emotional level.

Although I remember many things from the weekend, one moment stood out amongst the rest.

The trainer was talking about someone who had cancer that came to see the Doctor and head of the QRA program. They were wanting to get cured of their cancer, but the Doctor kept running into strange ‘blocks‘ in trying to help with the healing process. It dawned on him that the client actually had underlying psychological or limiting beliefs that were interfering with the healing process.

The Answer
Imagine – someone has cancer and they have tried everything to cure it, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and going through tons of painful treatments and surgeries. They obviously want to live and want to be free from the disease. But the whole time, there was something interfering with the healing process – and it was them the entire time. It turns out they actually had a sub-conscious belief they did not deserve to live, and this program was running in the background the entire time.

Suddenly, the light went on and it all came clear to me – this is what happens to traders who use improper risk management even though they know the math is against them. This is what happens to traders who don’t trade the system, even though they know it makes money. This is what happens when;

-a trader jumps in too early, before they get a signal
-or chases a trend when they know they shouldn’t
-trades out of emotion, trying to get losses back when they have no signal
-overtrades
-adds to a losing trade
-gets over-confident and thinks they ‘got it’ after just a few months
-trades way beyond their position sizing
-takes profit before hitting their target
-doesn’t accept their risk and panics, exiting too early only to watch the trade run to their limit
-fails to pull the trigger when they do get a signal

You know the story, because it has happened to you, just as it has happened to me.

Have you ever wondered, why you make the decisions you do, even though you know they are not helpful to your trading?

Is it your fear that overcomes your clarity? Is it your impatience that overcomes your discipline? Why do you not prepare for your trading day when you know how challenging trading is?

Whatever it is, it is currently in you, in your psyche and wired into your brain, causing you to repeat many of the patterns that has held you back.

You have known this in some way (hopefully), but it is very possible (and likely) you have a program running in the background, which is interfering with you trading successfully and reaching your goals.

You Mean I Don’t Want to Be Successful?
It is actually possible (like the patient), some part of you does not want to trade successfully. It is actually possible, some part of you is afraid of being successful, of being wealthy, of being a disciplined trader, of reaching your goals. If any of these, or many other programs and unconscious beliefs are there, then they will always short circuit your process and efforts to trade profitably.

The good thing is – you can change all this. The brain has an ability to learn new things. It has neuro-plasticity, meaning it can be re-wired with amazing flexibility. You can learn new things at almost any age, you can increase your IQ, you can develop skills regardless of your background and training. Thus, regardless of what patterns and behaviors are inhibiting you, they can be re-written.

I have actually trained in both QRA and ERT (Emotional Repolarization Technique), doing dozens of sessions designed to re-wire my neural connections, to function in a more optimal state, in a whole-brain state, to remove any unconscious programs which would interfere with my trading, along with many other things.

If I could have started my entire trading career over, I would have started with this training from the very beginning. If I could recommend one thing to build a successful trading mentality, for those having psychological issues interfering with your trading, to combine with your learning process while working with a mentor, it would be this.

Two Questions
With all of that being said, I would like to end with two questions;

If you could watch yourself trade, like an observer, what advice would you give yourself?

and the other…

What would you do, study and train in order to trade successfully?

I hope you enjoyed this forex trader tip article, and that it has brought up some intriguing questions for you. Please feel free to share, along with your thoughts on the article.

Kind Regards,
Chris