The market has a funny way of humbling you whenever you feel like you are levelling up as a trader. The Forex gods may take notice after a good few months and say, ‘that’s enough, no more profit for you my friend”. This indeed has happened to me in June, after a great start to the year and coming off my best month of 2021, it couldn’t get any better right? Yeh that’s right, it couldn’t, it all came crashing down (not to that extend obviously, that’s just for dramatic effect).
Being confident is great for an individual trader, getting cocky is not. It takes time to be confident in your ability, I feel this because for most traders (myself included for a long time), all they know is how to lose, shifting that mentality of being a losing trader to a breakeven trader, then onto a winning trader takes some time, likely months of consistency and results before you truthfully feel like you have crossed that border into being a profitable trader. Even then, getting the voice inside of you saying “it’s all going to end sometime” may never go away, however, your success will be defined on whether you let that voice take control or not.
After coming off an 11% month, those gains have all been eradicated in June, frustrating, but its not the end of the world. Overall, I’m still up, overall, I’m still outperforming those traditional assets, overall, I’m much happier being a full-time trader than I was at my old job, no matter if I have a bad month or not. What’s the big deal? its only money, right? I’ll get it back, it only takes one or two big trades, and we are back on track for the quarter, watch this space. Does that mean it doesn’t p*** me off? Absolutely not, but as long as the risk management is there, then it can annoy me as much as its wants, its not taking my account again.
Having a poor month, when you feel disconnected from the markets, when you feel like a “noob”, will come and rear its dirty head from time to time, we just must accept it, every trader feels that disconnect at times, if you see anyone online who says they don’t, do yourself a favour and unfollow immediately. What will separate the good traders from the great traders is being able to pick bits and pieces as they go on. Even when they feel they aren’t sure what’s going on from a macro sense, they can still take a few percent out the market, that’s what I’m striving for.
Although I feel like I’m getting there, this month proved I still have a little bit to go, that’s ok, I always want to improve and get better, by no means will I probably ever say I’m the finished article, I want to keep increasing my winning trade percentage, as I know that is what my psychology wants, to win more trades. Whether that is even possible or not is a different story, maybe I must accept that this is part and parcel of the game, but it doesn’t mean I can’t try right? Messi doesn’t win a few Ballon D’ors and just stops playing because he thinks he can’t get any better. (Calm down Ronaldo fans, I could’ve said him, but he’s just not as good 😉).
The good news is like with everything in trading, everything you are feeling is emotional, the market doesn’t care, remember the law of large numbers, remember what industry we are in, remember those times when you got annoyed and blew your account. All that experience adds up to now, where the actual affect it has on you reduces every time it happens, it doesn’t go away, but it does fade into the distance.
A bad month sucks, lets not beat around the bush, but use it to improve, analyse what went wrong. Should you have been in the market during uncertainty? Should you have taken that EURJPY trade or that CADCHF? taking out just one loser per month will add up at the end of the year, so its not a bad idea to focus on small improvements every month, I do. Just please, don’t walk away and blame the biggest market in the world, learn how to beat it, one day you’ll thank yourself.
Good Luck and Trade SAFE!
Ryan