Yesterday

I picked the right time of the day to work with TNA considering my goal to put up losing trades in order to learn to accept losses . I was attempting to place trades during a tight consolidation range of roughly 35 cents. This range continued for about four hours from 10:15 through 2:15 pm. Oddly, I felt very much at ease when my goal was not to win, but rather to lose. I can't help but wonder if that feeling is because I may have designed an exercise that really didn't test my fear because there was no expectation of winning when I placed the trade. That's how wierd it felt to have a trade on and not feel anxious about the outcome. It bears repeating: I'm not sure if the test was helpful or not because I am not sure I cared enough about trying to win! I have to continue this exercise for a number of days to see if I have found a way to trade without emotional discomfort or if I have set up a test where lack of concern about the eventual goal of winning trades has been abandoned. All I know is that it was a joy to click the mouse , stop out for small losses and react to it with the same concern as putting on a belt or walking through the frozen foods section at the supermarket.

As I write this, I wonder if what I experienced yesterday is analogous to when some beginning traders don't believe they are learning to trade when on a simulated trading platform. I've read often of beginners, or experienced traders refering back to their beginning days, expressing that there is no way to learn without real money on the line because they didn't feel the pressure of trading with real money. Personally, I have always been able to "feel" the anxiety of trading while on a simulator. I experience wins and losses as if real money is on the line. I know this because I traded a number of weeks using high five-figure real money positions and it felt no different to win or lose with them as it does with simulated positions; everyone has a different emotional makeup, I suppose. But back to my point... it was wierd to put on trades yesterday without any stress and I am trying to figure it out.

As to the two winners yesterday that ran counter to my goal of exiting only on stops outs or close of the market: the first one was because of the arrival of our niece after her cross-country drive from Idaho. I exited the trade to welcome her for an hour or so then got back to the computer. Later while I was in a trade, it was decided that we would take our visitor for the traditional rite of arrival in Maine: the lobster dinner! So, that was the reason for an early exit on what turned out to be my last trade of the day. This last trade would have eventually been a stop out, given later price action. I left the market before the best trend of the day, the drop that occured from 2:15 pm through EOD.

Takeaway:

I must continue with this expect-to-lose exercise until I can get my head around the odd (lack of) feelings it generated yesterday. I have to figure out if my lack of concern is a breakthrough as to how to mentally approach live trading or if the absence of anxiety is more about being emotionally removed from the trades I'm placing such that it is only about clicking a mouse and not placing and managing actual risk. I think time will yield the explanation.