Is ego getting in the way of your trading?
After gaining a few successful trades under your belt, there is a tendency for you to think that you will no longer fail while trading. Your ego builds and you feel very much invincible. But if you want to have a long career trading Forex, you need to leave your ego behind.
A trader with an excessively big ego is likely to be unable to separate the trading process from the need for ego glorification or ego protection. A series of winning trades can cause the trader to feel invincible and then he can become careless which will result to mistakes and losses. The ego is soaring one minute and then it is devastated the next.
Likewise losses are too painful for traders with a swelled ego. Rather than continually working on improving trading skills, the trader with the immature ego is likely to either deny the reason for his losses or just hide them hoping that he will get “lucky” again. The, trading becomes a constant fight to win a battle against the market. One minute the trader is reveling in glory. And then next, he is furious and looking forward to take revenge on the market.
Humility enables a trader to maintain respect for the unknown aspect of the future direction of the market. By staying free of the need to be “right”, a trader can focus on making money rather than solving a puzzle or making a prophecy that inspires awe in others.
In our trading community we always look at the current pattern and determine the most likely completion of that pattern. Then we acknowledge any other possibilities such as the second or third most likely outcome. Next we devise a trading strategy for the current pattern that will work for both or all three of the possible outcomes.
Especially in the world of Elliott Wave, traders all around the world reduce their chances of winning often to 50% or less by feeding their need to be “right” about solving the puzzle. When a trader is more concerned with making money than being “right” he will see how easy it is to let go of that need and enter and exit trades that are profitable regardless of whether he can boast of having the correct answer to the market puzzle.
