Trading Psychology
Trading Psychology
S.K TRADING
TRADING
PYSCHOLOGY
2024
"Consistency is More Important than
Perfection”
TABLE OF CONTENT
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INTRODUCTION
PSYCHOLOGY STEVEN SALEH
PSYCHOLOGY
Before progressing, I want to make it very clear up front that “this book is
for those who are willing to put the work in”. My aim is to give you a
framework, a blueprint, and actionable methods help solve psychological
problems and everything else that can affect a trader’s mindset.
But this will be useless, unless you apply the methods presented in this
book. You must make the decision right now to be willing to be open-
minded and take responsibility.
In this book, I am going to share with you all the things I learned and
applied to my trading which helped me personally succeed.
WELCOME
TRADING PSYCHOLOGY
Trading psychology refers to the mental and emotional factors that influence
a trader's decisions and behavior while trading. It plays a crucial role in
determining a trader's success in the forex market, as it can have a
significant impact on their ability to analyze and execute trades effectively.
If you don’t know why you want to trade, then you will always be susceptible
to emotional trading. That’s why the ‘why’ is so important it will literally be
the strongest emotion out of all emotions, therefore, beating all the other
trading emotions like fear, greed, ego, etc. Why? Will be your driving
emotion that will help you win the game of trading...
‘’If you want something badly enough, nothing can stop
you.’’
9
This is your turning point. Took some time and consciously asked yourself
every day.
Why do I want this?
Am I willing to do what’s needed no matter what?
If you are tired of losing money, tired of switching strategies and tired of
constantly repeating the same old mistakes over and over, When you took
some time and really thought about ‘why’ I wanted to do this? It will shift in
your thinking. If you wanted to be successful, provide for your family, and
live the life you knew you deserved then start trading the right way and
knew it all had to start from why you wanted this.
Many traders don’t know ‘why’ they want to trade. Some people just don’t
want it bad enough, but if you are having a burning desire and why to keep
you going then you will make it.
10
Knowing what you want, will be what gives you the fire to trade better.
Exercise
1. Write down as many reasons why you want to trade
2. Narrow down the most important that really resonate with you
CONCLUSION
What you have just discovered is the difference between successful and
unsuccessful is simply the way they think. It really is that simple. To break
through the threshold to consistency, you need to find out which beliefs are
helping & which are self-sabotaging.
13
Exercise
Spend 10 minutes just writing down why money is an important tool to
yourself and other lives.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR
PSYCHOLOGY
YOU’RE ENEMIES
To be a consistent and profitable trader, you need mental stamina and a
razor sharp mind. You can have the best strategy and still blow your
account, like any endeavor, forex should be treated as a business, it's not a
casino where luck rules the day, its 80% mindset and 20% actual strategy,
so your mindset must be in the right place
People who approach the market looking for a lucky often end up
experiencing bad luck. Dealing with your mindset early on, is the first step
you need to take. You also need to approach the market with a clear
focused mind free from stress and other issues.
Every forex trading book will say that you must trade on a demo first, this
book presents a different view. It encourages you to start trading on a
real account as soon as possible because we know that is where you will
learn mastery over your emotions and understand the psychological side
of trading quicker.
1) Fear
Fear is one of the two most frequently talked about emotions in trading
(greed, which comes next). Fear can be the cause of many trading mistakes
and manifest itself in a number of ways in trading:
Fear of missing out on potential gains, FOMO can lead traders to make
impulsive decisions based on the fear of missing profitable
opportunities
Fear of losing money,
Fear of making mistakes.
If you find yourself among the following points, FOMO trading plays a role in
your daily routine:
POINT REASON
Missing a trade seems like leaving money on the table. Now, let’s take a
look at the three scenarios around FOMO trading.
You enter early because you don’t want to miss out. This often happens
when you create a trading plan and wait for everything to align. Just before
your setup completes and the price reaches your entry level, it starts to rise
without you. You then enter early, breaking your trading rules. Entering a
trade too early means that your risk is completely off because your stop loss
2. You wait for price to show the perfect setup and then miss the
trade
Missing a trade that leaves without you because the entry signal happened
too early and without really showing you all the criteria is painful. Traders
who are in a “missed a trade” mindset tend to chase price or enter the next
trade earlier – we just saw why this is a bad idea. Traders who miss trades
interpret the event completely wrong. In the end, it wasn’t a setup based on
YOUR rules after all and you have your rules for a reason. Your rules will only
enable you to engage in some of the millions of opportunities that exist
every day
In you trading plan you map out potential trade scenarios so that, once your
trading sessions start, you only have to wait until your entry criteria are met.
The checklist holds you accountable and visualizes the trade progress.
Violating your trading rules becomes much harder if your plan and checklist
tell you to stay out and you have to convince yourself why violating your
trading rules is the right thing to do.
This emotion can paralyze traders, causing them to hesitate and miss out on
profitable opportunities or exit trades prematurely.
Hope, fear, and greed often go together in trading. Traders who are losing
might feel hopeful and refuse to accept a loss, hoping the trade will turn
around. They might also try to recover past losses by taking bigger
positions than they should, breaking their own rules.
Excitement / Anxious
Overconfidence.
The minute you are overconfident, you will start over trading and from there
it's only going to get worse. From over trading to revenge trading -this is
when the ego is completely taking you for a ride -it doesn't want you to
accept a loss, so it keeps going back in and in again, until you are bust.
Frustration
Frustration often comes from mistakes caused by emotions like hope, fear,
or greed. When traders miss opportunities, break their rules, take too much
risk, or lose money, frustration builds up. This frustration makes the
negative behaviors even worse, creating a cycle that makes it harder for
traders to stay disciplined and make good decisions.
HOW TO IMPROVE THE PSYCHOLOGY IN
TRADING
Many forex websites and companies that claim to sell "magic courses”
indicators will never tell you anything about psychology. Mindset, is the key
Most people who try to trade forex lose. There is a rational explanation for
this: Most people assume that this market is a financial market to get rich
quick. Many dreams are sold related to this industry on social networks and
the Internet. Many people enter the markets with unrealistic expectations,
thinking that they can drop their jobs after a week or a month or even
thinking they will multiply 1,000 euros and turn them into 100,000 euros or
dollars in a few weeks or months. This is absolutely the wrong state of mind!
The foreign exchange market is an investment, not a gamble! Trading aims
to build wealth trough time. Hence the myth that some people think the
market is like a casino, it's because people are so greedy they think they
can make a fortune overnight and end up losing all their money and have a
bad image of forex. Such unrealistic expectations will undoubtedly work
against you and only give a state of mind conducive to blow an account. You
will feel pressure and you feel a "need" to make money on the market as
soon as possible, which inevitably force you to make irrational decisions.
Trading should be absolutely clear, the mentality must be cold. You cannot
allow stress to dominate your actions, whether in the field of Forex and any
other area of your life. When you start to trading there is a subconscious
pressure and the need to make money driving a trader to start doing trading
irrational and sentimental way, and this error is fatal. The trading is not for
everyone, and it is 100% sure that it is not for people who believe in
enriching easy and have a short-term vision. Like any field, trading takes
time to master and once mastered, it can offer both geographic and
financial freedom. Just imagine having the skill to make 1% per week day,
month. You can eventually compound your money and eventually live
through your means. Trust in the process!
PSYCHOLOGY STEVEN SALEH
PSYCHOLOGY
Trading examples:
• In trading you will feel the pain that you experienced from that previous
loss and that will make you feel afraid for the next decision. You won't be
able to execute once the edge appears in front of you.
• If we had a major win, then these neurons will start to associate
themselves to the pleasure that you experienced from those profits.
However, neurons do not have a mind of their own, and they are
simply doing their job by transmitting information. That Information
can either be right or wrong! We can develop false or negative
neuron-associations throughout life.
FOR EXAMPLE:
• Smokers will associate pleasure to the inhalation of a cigarette, instead of
the pain that could be caused by cancer.
• Some people associate pain to falling in love if they have experienced a
bad breakup, and the begin to create negative neuron-association to
entering into a new unique relationship.
• Some will associate fear to every dog they see in the street if they have
experienced a dog attack before.
FOR EXAMPLE:
• Is the market retracing? Do not associate this with 'the market is taking
my profits back!' but rather 'the market may be presenting me with an
opportunity to add to my position'. This is a change in your neuron-
associations; a negative one to a positive one.
• Do you have hope when a losing trade runs and you want it to turn back
into profit? Do you feel desperation when the market is redistributing your
profits with one single retracement? Then change that and do the opposite.
Feel despair when a trade is running in loss and feel hope when a trade is
running in profit. This is a change in your neuron-association; a negative one
to a positive one.
• Did the market hit your stop loss? Do not associate this with the pain of
losing money, but rather associate it with the fact that the probability of the
next trade being a winner will stay because of your profitable system. This is
PSYCHOLOGY STEVEN SALEH
PSYCHOLOGY
a change in your neuron-association; a negative one to a positive one. Do
you feel great after a massive win? Then change that and feel protective
about what you collected. This is a change this is a powerful process that is
difficult and requires a lot of practice, years! But it can be used to change
almost anything or anyone. Hope this post was helpful.
Due to the fact that he is afraid of being wrong and he created expectative
from the market he will unconsciously build self-protective mechanisms that
work on an unconscious level. This trader can potentially quit his stop loss
because he is convinced about his trade idea= that will lead you to take a
trade with uncontrolled loss or hedge his position.348 without any
expectancy the situation would be different. Let’s see the same example
below from a trader that trade without fear of losing money and without any
expectative.
Do you see the difference? It’s up to you to start trading with a different
mindset. Apply the same risk management and focus on execute your plan
In order to build a series of trades approach the following list will help you:
• You know which behaviors do and do not serve your purpose
• You are not picking individual trades, therefore no one trade has anymore
or les significance than the others.
• You will gain a sense of freedom to flow in and out the market without any
single internal conflict because you are not living or dying on the outcome of
any particular trade
• By truly accepting that the outcome of this trade could be different you are
managing your expectations
• You won’t perceive the market info as threatening
• You will be aspiring to trade without fear
PSYCHOLOGY STEVEN SALEH
PSYCHOLOGY
• You will reduce the potential to make toxic trading
CONCLUSION:
The work and progress in trading should be done to condition the
subconscious mind so that trading skills will be considered a genuine long-
term business. If we apply our trading plan properly, we respect the risk
management, and we remain disciplined, there will be no problem to make
trading a new source of income. Although one thing clear, in 100 trades,
even with a success rate of 80%, there will always be a chance to see a few
losing trades in a row. The best way to make psychological progress is to
write every feeling and emotion felt before a trade, during a trade and after,
that way you will establish a direct relationship between strategy, risk
management and you will eventually find the way of success. As we always
say with psychological improvement, we can do less of what it doesn’t bring
us results and more of what if bring us results How to build a proper state of
PSYCHOLOGY STEVEN SALEH
PSYCHOLOGY
mind? 350Forging a winning mindset is what will determine much of the
success. Apply all that this book teaches you and you will see how the path
of progress will open you the doors. Choose your trades carefully and trust
in simply price action the hardest battle is the battle you carry with yourself.
Believe me that the combined compound with the desire to get from point A
to point B through the
Trading is very powerful. Keep your mind clear and focused on long-term
goals. The following sections are actions that you should apply daily to your
routine to take advantage of the market.
DISCIPLINE
Discipline is the backbone of successful forex trading. It involves sticking to your
trading plan, regardless of market conditions or emotional impulses. Successful
traders have the discipline to stick to their trading plan and strategy, even in the face
of market fluctuations and challenges. Maintaining discipline requires patience, focus,
and consistency. A disciplined trader follows their set rules for entry and exit, risk
management, and position sizing. This consistency helps in avoiding impulsive
decisions that can lead to significant losses. Developing discipline requires a clear
understanding of your trading strategy, setting realistic goals, and maintaining a calm
and composed demeanor, even in volatile markets.
RISK MANAGEMENT
Managing risk is an essential part of trading psychology, as it can help traders protect
their capital and avoid large losses. Traders should set clear risk management
guidelines and stick to them to avoid emotional decision-making.
COMMON PSYCHOLOGICAL BIASES IN FOREX TRADING
POSITIVE MINDSET
RISK MANAGEMENT
Understanding and Managing Risk for Each Trade: Evaluate trade risks
against overall tolerance levels. Maintain risk-reward balance to protect capital and
support growth.
Utilizing Stop-Loss Orders and Position Sizing Strategies: Use stop-loss
orders to limit losses and safeguard investments. Also Optimize trade size to
prevent overexposure and minimize losses.
Protecting Your Capital for Long-Term Success: Prioritize capital preservation
for sustainable trading. Focus on long-term growth over short-term gains for
consistent profitability.
OVERCONFIDENCE
Recognizing the Dangers of Overconfidence after Successful Trades
Awareness of Overconfidence Bias: After a series of successful trades,
traders might develop an inflated sense of their abilities, leading to
overconfidence. This bias can make them underestimate risks and ignore
warning signs, increasing the likelihood of significant losses.
Objective Evaluation of Trades: It is crucial to analyze both successful and
unsuccessful trades to maintain objectivity. Understanding the reasons behind
each outcome helps traders avoid attributing success solely to their skills and
recognize the role of market conditions.
CONFIRMATION BIAS
Understanding the Tendency to Seek Information That Confirms Existing
Beliefs
Definition of Confirmation Bias: Confirmation bias is the tendency to
favor information that confirms one’s existing beliefs or hypotheses while
disregarding or undervaluing information that contradicts them. In trading,
this bias can lead to skewed analysis and poor decision-making.
Impact on Trading Decisions: Traders influenced by confirmation bias
might selectively gather information that supports their views and ignore
data suggesting otherwise. This can result in incomplete analysis.
Trading psychology
Psychology is a significant part of trading. You can have a really good trading system
but when you aren’t able to follow a plan and stick to your rules, then even a winning
system will not work for you.
In this chapter, I will give you some psychology tips but in the end, it is all about
experience. You need to learn it yourself, you will probably need to reprogram your
head a bit.
The first step to start learning trading psychology is to open a real account. Demo
won't do. The money needs to be real. If the money is real, then your emotions are
real. Even with small amounts of money, you will experience all the emotions that go
with trading. You will experience greed, temptation, fear, despair, failure, triumph...
these are emotions that demo account will never give you. The best thing about it is
that even a small trading account will do. Even a small trading account with 0.01 lot
trades is a hundred times better than a demo account.
Usually, people who start winning start to feel like they are invincible, they start to
risk much more money, they enter more risky trades, they don't do their market
analysis and trading preparation as properly as before, they start to bend rules, etc...
Before they know it, they start losing money quickly and they are back where they
began, or worse – they find themselves in enormous drawdown. People usually take a
break after such experience and after few weeks or months, they start anew. Again,
they start humble and hard working. When they start being successful and profitable,
they repeat their mistakes and they become careless and they start feeling invincible
again. Then they fail. This cycle repeats until the person quits trading, often blaming
markets or the strategy for not being consistent. The trick is to stay humble and hard
working all the time. When you have a winning streak or when your trading is going
really well, then you need to be most vigilant and extra careful. Do your analysis
properly, don't overtrade and most importantly, don't start trading with too big
volumes! You may raise your trading volumes a little bit, but you need to do it little by
little. When a losing streak hits you (this will happen sooner or later), you need to stay
in the game and survive. Not to blow your account just because you have just doubled
your positions because you felt invincible.
statistics from your real trading to it. Statistics based on data from your real trading is
much more valuable than statistics based on backtests.
How to deal with a standard drawdown
When you are losing, it best to take a look at your own statistical data and see if such
a scenario has happened before. You need to see if this is still "normal" or if
something bad is really going on. If you are just in a regular drawdown, then seeing
the statistics will reassure you, because you will see that this is still normal, that it
happened before and that the strategy will most likely work just fine again. In this
case, I suggest you just continue with your trading as usual and try not to freak out
too much. Remember that all strategies have their ups and downs. It is important that
you do not change your strategy nor your money management.
Good statistics and trade screenshots will help you when struggling.
If the risk is not controlled in each individual trade, you open the door to bad
emotions. This will affect the psychology, your action and therefore the results. The
worst way to trade is to do it with emotions. Once you start trading emotionally, it can
be very difficult to stop. You can eliminate the possibility of becoming an emotional
trader just by risking only an affordable portion of money per trade then just set and
forget. Just put your mind up so that once the trade is opened, the loss will not hurt.
Tracking personal metrics requires that we collect a range of information about those
personal factors that are most connected to our trading successes and weaknesses
and P&L.
▪ Emotional status—How does our trading performance (profitability, risk
management, decision making) vary as a function of our emotional states? Keeping
track of key emotional variables (frustration/calm; confidence/fear; unhappy/happy)
and seeing how those vary with gauges of performance can provide information about
the emotional factors that contribute to and detract from performance.
▪ Physical state—in our physical state we can be energized or depleted, rested or
fatigued, comfortable or in discomfort, healthy or sick, toned or out-of-shape, keyed-
up or relaxed. Very often our physical state sets the stage for our cognitive
performance, as we make different decisions and maintain different levels of
concentration when we are in a positive versus negative physical state. Tracking our
physical states and knowing their impact on our performance can help us stay mindful
MONEY EXPECTATIONS
A big problem is that we want to stop working as soon as we know it is possible to live
from trading. This will cause us two problems: the first is that we will stop having a
monthly salary. The second is that we will try to create a monthly salary with trading,
and this is not how it works. Forcing us to get a monthly return will cause anxiety,
frustration and greed. Given the fact that we need a monthly wage will force us to
operate forcibly, violate our rules and leads us to risk more than normal. However,
many people living comfortably trading as their primary income. The key lies in the
perseverance and patience, because forex is a very powerful art can enrich
abundantly only those able to persevere, to be disciplined and have patience. There
are multiple hedge funds and investor that are willing to give you money only if you
prove them you have the right skill.
Conclusion:
As we have seen in this chapter, the psychology of trading is not a secret recipe. The
psychology of trading is related to knowing what to do and expect every moment. This
is given by the good habits that every trader should have:
1. Treat trading as a business.
2. Have real expectations.
3. Have a simple Good trading plan or trading system356
4. Keep daily updates in your Trading Journal.
5. Consistency in terms of risk rewards
If one of these elements fails, it will lead us to reflect on what we do, and it's in these
moments that the current starts flowing our emotions and we begin to lose our
nerves. If we know what to do at each moment, it is impossible for us to hesitate, and
When talking of being profitable and consistent, it does not mean in terms of the day
or week, we talk at least 3 months. That said, you are ready to open an account and
apply everything you've learned to start making money. Just a tip, treat the demo
account as if it were real.
Passion:
Let's be honest with you. You will only become a successful trader if you like trading.
If you are here just for the money it will be difficult, because the learning process
STRATEGIZE
Successful forex traders develop and implement strategies that boost their activities
and success in the markets. They understand how important developing the right
strategy is and when they develop one, they work to implement it. Apart from
PSYCHOLOGY STEVEN SALEH
PSYCHOLOGY
having the talent to do business, forex traders approach trading professionally.
Trading currencies requires consistency, attentiveness, and discipline.
Successful forex traders understand these factors and they work with them. you must
have a solid understanding of what the markets are doing and how to navigate
them, forex traders become successful by taking note of the following components:
They work within a strategic timeframe: Strategizing according to the timeframe
focuses on the traits and business acumen of the trader. This indicates the sort
of trading suitable for the talents and experience of the trader. And if they
maintain this, there will be few occurrences of losses. This is what it means to
get prepared according to the timeframe.
They create and work with a practical system: Successful forex traders work
with a methodology. Once they have established their favorable timeframes,
they choose a consistent methodology. This is one of the secrets of success.
Having an established system or pattern of trading. For example, some traders
prefer to buy support and sell resistance, while others prefer to buy or sell
breakouts or trade using indicators like MACD (moving average convergence
divergence) and crossovers.
3. They work with the best market: Successful forex traders test their system on
tones of instruments for a reason. This is to determine if their system's style is
compete- blue with the instrument they are trading. For example, if Trader B is
trading USD/JPY currency pair in the market, they are likely to dis- cover that
Fibonacci support and resistance levels are more reliable and compatible with
their instrument than other system styles. In line with the strategies taught in
this book recommend you trade the major currency pairs: EUR/USD, USD/JPY,
AUD/USD and GBP/ USD (my favorite).
Preparation is one of the key ingredients of the Winning Psychology Recipe that
makes forex traders successful. It enables them to choose the most reliable and
compatible system style for their instruments. If a trader understands the financial
trends in the markets but they pair their trading instruments with the wrong system
style, there is a higher chance they will be less successful.
RISK MANAGEMENT
In business, your ability to manage risk is reliant on emotional intelligence. The
process of identifying, understanding, analyzing, accepting or judging
uncertainty in investment decisions is known as risk management.
OVERCOMING NEGATIVITY
Everything about growing a big business is based on mindset: the psychology of a
winner. Learning how to overcome negativity is no different. Being self-disciplined
helps businesspeople tackle negativity. Negativity can come from internal or external
factors. And there are times when both factors influence negativity.
HOW TO OVERCOME NEGATIVITY
1. Acknowledge your plans aren’t fool-proof: Most times, people work on their
vision but they fail to understand that their goals need to be flexible .Anything can
happen to what appeared to be foolproof plan. When problems are not anticipated,
it’s easy to get thrown off balance. Just remember, just as one plan can fall apart, a
new plan can come into play.
2. Be your own cheerleader: Successful forex traders make it to the top by being
self-supportive. They find strength in themselves before they look for
encouragement and support from others. Once they establish that a venture is
profitable and have done a quality risk assessment, they go ahead and invest.
3. Start small and gather momentum:. As a forex trader, you should pay attention
to the markets, fall under the mentorship of expert traders, and be open to act
when your system says it's right. This was exactly what George Soros did. He was
persistent and consistent. He monitored the markets. And he moved in for the kill
when the opportunity was right. Moving step by step until you get to the apex of
your career is the easiest way to maintain positivity.
Successful forex traders do not create room for negativity and certainly do not take
mindless risks. They understand the pros and cons of their trade and, even though
a business can take a downward turn when you least expect it, they trade
according to what they know. They do not actively engage in known oversights and
they never give up.
THANK YOU