Its all in the mind, apparently!!!

Hi Folks,

Well not much trading to talk about tonight as I was out this evening. However, I did manage to trade a bit on the Tennis when I got home from work. I hedged out for a nice profit of £4.42 in the Tsonga Vs Soderling game. However, I did a bit of trading in the Belluci Vs Murray game and when it became apparent that Murray could not find a way through, I hedged out before the end of the first set for a small loss of £2.73.

So overall for the evening I made a small profit of £1.69.

Anyway, recently I have started reading some trading books about the mind, and how to control emotions and be disciplined. They are quite old books by Mark Douglas. I also started reading a book, called 'The Way Of The Turtle' which was also interesting. I was reading a section on probability and stats and it got me thinking.

I record all my trades on a spreadsheet, including my entry odds and stop losses. Now as I have mentioned before I sometimes get greedy and stay in beyond my stop losses. So after reading the probability section of 'The Way Of The Turtle' I went back through my spreadsheet and added an extra column which calculated my losses/profits if I had obeyed all my stop losses. The result were very surprising.

For example, the main strategy I use is, Laying the draw. Over the last month I have completed 129 trades and I have made a profit of about £60. However, if I had used my stop losses correctly, I would have made £141. That is one big difference. It made me realise, just how important stop losses are and it also gave me faith in my selections for ltd.

Maybe I do need to think more about the marathon and not the sprint. Maybe I should dust off them jogging shoes. lol

Happy Trading