Last week's episode 8 on handling trading losses is an important topic that impacts all traders. It's one of the most challenging aspects of trading to accept, handle, grasp, manage, and overcome.
Not only it can be financially draining, but also psychologically draining. But many traders can't help but continue to "react" to the losses and trading results by "revenge trading" or not pausing and reflecting to learn from the losses before putting on another trade.
“Instead of focusing on the trading results or outcome, focus on arming yourself with building a solid trading process and continue to improve your process because that is what you have control over, not what the market does to your trades.”
EP 009 Transcript
Welcome to the Affirmations for Traders podcast, a special space created, especially for you to listen to affirmations that make a positive impact to support you in your trading journey. I'm Tessa your host, like many of you as a trader, I understand the struggles of this journey very intimately. I believe that by adding the power of affirmations to your toolbox, it can be the game changer that you're looking for to help you improve your trading potential and to develop yourself into a better trader. You're listening to episode 9 of the Affirmations for Traders podcast.
You've been listening to the show, thank you for coming back. If you're new to the podcast, welcome! I'm so happy that you're here.You can listen to this podcast on nearly all the podcast apps out there, such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Amazon Music, and more. And if you love this show, let's help keep it going and help by subscribing. Obviously it's free. Please help spread the word by sharing the podcast with others. I appreciate it. The show appreciates it. And the trading community appreciates it. And if you've already done so, thank you so much.
Last week's episode number 8 was on handling losses, and I would love to hear your thoughts on which affirmations from that episode really spoke to you. Let me know. You can email the show directly at hello@affirmationsfortraders.com. Again, it's hello@affirmationsfortraders.com, and I look forward to hearing from you. This week's affirmations are related to limiting losses by focusing on our trading process rather than trading results or outcome. Of course trading results are important, and it's the reason why we trade. Who doesn't want a consistent positive outcome? So, what do I mean then? What I mean is we cannot control the markets and what it does to the individual trades placed. But, we can control how we react to what the market does to our trades and positions by building a strong trading process. This part takes the longest in our trading journey. But it's worth spending time on.
What might a strong trading process look like? A strong trading process includes systemizing and automating tasks within our process for more efficiency. It includes having trading strategies for different scenarios. It includes testing, back testing. It includes risk management. It includes having a trading plan that is updated and being able to follow that trading plan. It includes not making mistakes while placing an order. It incudes short and long term goals. Having an exit plan and how to recover if you're stuck in a bad situation. It includes building and learning time to constantly improve. Develop your mindset. I think you get the picture now.
An analogy I like to go back to often is related to health. When we build a strong immune system by maintaining our health and doing the best we can to have a consistent routine of eating healthy, having enough essential vitamins and applying regular exercise and stayin
g active. That's similar to having a solid trading process, if we're using that as an analogy. That is the part that we can control. The part that we cannot control is what hits us out of the blue, such as a cold, flu, covid, etc. Although we can try to limit the exposure to a certain degree, it can still hit us at anytime and that's similar to the markets.
We cannot control how the market moves. But when we have developed a strong trading program for maintaining our health, we have a very good chance of fighting what comes our way, and to be able to bounce back with resilience. The result that we aim for in having this solid bill of health is a positive impact on our physical, mental, and emotional well being, doesn't it? So, going back to trading, when we have a solid process in place, we can feel confident to face the unexpected turns in the market and survive the challenging moments and to be ready for the upside. If we keep focusing on the trading results and outcome only, then we're not focusing on the wrong thing.
Our trading process is an important part of our trading journey and it does take time to build.
So, are we ready for affirmations now? Okay, let's go.
Before we start, let's prepare ourselves. Take a moment and close your eyes. Give yourself permission to be open to the affirmations you're about to hear. And feel free to repeat along with me.
Let's begin.
Trading results are beyond my control, but I have complete control over my trading process.
I focus on fine-tuning and perfecting my trading process, rather than my trading results
Building good habits and having a routine is part of having a solid process
I focus on developing my trading plan because it is a critical part of a trading process.
My trading strategies are well defined and documented in my trading process.
I look for ways to systematize and automate steps in my trading process
My trading process includes a block of time to consistently study my trades.
I value preserving my capital by incorporating a solid process for risk management.
My trading results reflects positively, due to the fine-tuning of my trading process
I build in time to pause, reflect, and taking a break from trading in my trading process
Developing my mindset for trading is an important part of my trading process.
During the week, reflect on these affirmations and repeat them with deep intention. Feel free to add any of your own to this week's affirmations.
You were listening to Affirmations for Traders. Thank you for listening and I look forward to doing this again with you next week! Take care.