Psychology, psychology, psychology

[dreambig]

I always struggle with the same pattern.

When I trade on a demo account, I follow my strategy, stay disciplined, and the account grows slowly at first, then faster and faster. Eventually, I can achieve 200% profit within three weeks. Sounds great, right?

Then I switch to a small live account.

At the beginning, I trade cautiously because it's real money. The balance starts growing slowly, and with every successful trade, my confidence in the system increases. I take positions, close them for small profits, and by the end of the day I realize that many small wins add up to a surprisingly good amount of money.

The next day is the same. Then the next. My confidence keeps growing because even when I lose, I'm mostly giving back a small part of my profits. Trading feels calm and controlled.

Three days later, I'm up 45%.

At that moment, something changes in my mind.

I'm no longer afraid of losing money. I feel like a hero. I start thinking, "Why not push harder? Why not double the account?"

And that's when everything goes wrong.

A trade moves against me, but I don't want to close it because I can't accept losing all the profit I've worked so hard to make. I keep holding. I stare at my phone all day. I become nervous and emotional. The market keeps moving against me.

Eventually, all my profits disappear.

Then the account is gone.

And I'm sitting there thinking: "F*** trading. I'm an idiot. Once again I thought I had mastered the market, and once again the market proved me wrong."

The frustrating part is that this scenario repeats itself over and over again.

On a demo account, I'm a hero. On a live account, I'm a hero too... at least until I reach around 50% profit. Then I start feeling invincible, stop respecting risk, and everything falls apart.

To be honest, I don't think my strategy is the problem anymore. I know that when this "hero feeling" is gone, I'm actually a disciplined and profitable trader.

This feels like the last major obstacle in my trading journey, but I genuinely don't know how to overcome it.

Have any of you experienced something similar? How did you deal with it?

How do you stay disciplined after a period of success and stop your ego from taking over?

I'm really stuck and would appreciate any advice.

[PTScalper]

I always struggle with the same pattern.

When I trade on a demo account, I follow my strategy, stay disciplined, and the account grows slowly at first, then faster and faster. Eventually, I can achieve 200% profit within three weeks. Sounds great, right?

Then I switch to a small live account.

At the beginning, I trade cautiously because it's real money. The balance starts growing slowly, and with every successful trade, my confidence in the system increases. I take positions, close them for small profits, and by the end of the day I realize that many small wins add up to a surprisingly good amount of money.

The next day is the same. Then the next. My confidence keeps growing because even when I lose, I'm mostly giving back a small part of my profits. Trading feels calm and controlled.

Three days later, I'm up 45%.

At that moment, something changes in my mind.

I'm no longer afraid of losing money. I feel like a hero. I start thinking, "Why not push harder? Why not double the account?"

And that's when everything goes wrong.

A trade moves against me, but I don't want to close it because I can't accept losing all the profit I've worked so hard to make. I keep holding. I stare at my phone all day. I become nervous and emotional. The market keeps moving against me.

Eventually, all my profits disappear.

Then the account is gone.

And I'm sitting there thinking: "F*** trading. I'm an idiot. Once again I thought I had mastered the market, and once again the market proved me wrong."

The frustrating part is that this scenario repeats itself over and over again.

On a demo account, I'm a hero. On a live account, I'm a hero too... at least until I reach around 50% profit. Then I start feeling invincible, stop respecting risk, and everything falls apart.

To be honest, I don't think my strategy is the problem anymore. I know that when this "hero feeling" is gone, I'm actually a disciplined and profitable trader.

This feels like the last major obstacle in my trading journey, but I genuinely don't know how to overcome it.

Have any of you experienced something similar? How did you deal with it?

How do you stay disciplined after a period of success and stop your ego from taking over?

I'm really stuck and would appreciate any advice.

Hi DreamBig,

i got it. Its psychological problem, which i had too.
Thats why i advice to every trader start on demo for short period of time, just to start understand how to open, close trade and setup Take Profit and Stop loss.

Main reason for that is, that for example me, i have more than 60 percent of my trading rules based just to have cool head under pressure, because during some time in trading
you will understand, that plan was good, but always there was some issue with focus on your strategy, your rules.

What i would do in your position:

1) Do not use demo accounts anymore.
2) Open small real accounts, like 100-200$, just affortable ammount, which you can loose and try to trade in first place at that account with just same linear trade size 0.01 lot.
3) Once you will start to have better results apply my trading money management:

3.1) Deposit your own money.
3.2) Risk it small and linear.
3.3) Once you will be at some reasonable profit, withdraw that deposited ammount.
3.4) From this point start to scale your account 'risk free'. (I mean risk free in my mind, because profit are not my money until i will withdraw them)
3.5) Time to time withdraw and once you will hit your goal withdraw everything, for part profit buy something to get energy back and rest for 4-6 weeks.
3.6) Repeat.

4) Advantage of risking more only profit is that you will feel less pressure plus in long term from money management perspective is the only way, which i know, that works for me.

[PTScalper]

And forget about perfect traders and perfect trades .. to become profitable trader you have to be consistent and have plan, which way you plan to trade.
And what to do in some case.

On another hand it is still important to be able to scale, because in my mind that is the biggest advantage of forex spot market trading, that you can scale from smaller ammount to bigger within weeks, not years like on stocks .. but on another hand, it is not easy and it is full of stress.

[PTScalper]

Another important thing why to use Stop loss and use it properly is that at begining of your trade, you will be accept your risk.

For example if i have fresh day, 5000$ on account, im willing to risk 300-400$ per some trade or idea.
Thanks to stop loss i exactly know, what i risk. The problem of many traders is, that they will start with "mental" stop loss, after some time, when
the market goes against them they will open second, third, fourth position and after that, when actual risk is too high they will decide to define
stop loss, but in situation, when they do not want to accept such risk.

So remember, open position and setup stop loss at begining and if you are not cool with risking that money, make that position smaller.
Plus first point is, that you should select stop loss level on such place, which is really good. I prefer to risk 2R-5R but with combination of scalping strategy,
when i have profit rate of 90-95 percent of trades.

Plus another cool secret hack, which works for me:

Time to time there is a time, when everything in that day goes well and i allready made some profit.
In such day i willing to open bigger positions and risk my classic risk setup + extra money allready made that day in profit.
Thanks to that, your day will end with incredible profit or with normal loose.

[FXS HongKong Scalper]

That pattern of adding positions before setting a stop is exactly how a normal loss turns into a large one. A stop placed at the start also makes the decision to add a second position much clearer. If the original stop is still valid, there is no reason to add, and if the stop was hit, the idea was wrong. Writing the money amount at risk in the order notes before entry, as you describe with the 300 to 400 dollar range, keeps that number visible during the trade.