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Hello again! It has been a good while since I have written anything on here, and now feels like a good time with the BTC market traveling with the S&P 500 (it's going down, if you hadn't noticed). Coming back with more trading psychology from learned experience.
And tonight I am brought to the topic of when to keep your eyes on your own paper, and when to get a listen to other people. I have written in the past about getting coaching and mentorship from folks as you are entering into the trading world because it is a high-performance skill, and needs to be treated and trained as such.
That being said, you will reach a point to where you are proficient in your knowledge and strategy to go it alone and trade by yourself. All good and well.
Today, I checked in with my old trading group (didn't separate on bad terms or anything of the sort, my life and my projects just took my focus elsewhere and I did not have that kind of time to dedicate to teaching others in a group setting). and caught a video doing some analysis. All good information there - however, I glommed onto a little nugget that I had no business going into. I found myself traveling into the worst territory for an active trader, that of hopefulness. The next worse one is of course, . I'm just going to say this as bluntly as possible, if you are experiencing elevated emotions with "excited-ness" as the undercurrent, you are over-leveraged.
Whenever you feel yourself getting hopeful or clinging to that state of hope, it is time to cut and back off. Did I cut when I was supposed to? No. Why? I was hopeful, of course.
Did this hope betray what I actually knew to be true about what the market was doing? Yes. Yes, in fact it did. I am thankful that I have the presence of mind to cut my position when I did, protecting capital is the name of the game and all. Thankful that I was not overleveraged (that is almost guaranteed to get you liquidated, which leads you down the winding road of acting like an addict) so I didn't destroy my account. Corrected (or rather, went back to the original) course and am regaining my losses.
What is the point of all of this? Had I just stayed in my lane, and watched the market I as I was watching it (successfully, been making money all the way down this bear crawl) I would not have taken such a loss. Still taking in stride daily trading psychology lessons. Confidence in what you see and your confluences makes you profitable. Allowing little glimmers of hope coming in from outside sources that contradict what you know to be true right in front of you, is a recipe for potential disaster.
This all in mind - strap in. If you are trading BTC, there really aren't great support levels in this current region, and I speculate that we are going to dip even further. Don't allow me to detract you from what you are doing and what your strategy is, eyes on my own paper and all.
Best of luck, traders! Trade with me on
