Does your self-esteem rise and fall with your account equity? If so, your probably in for some difficult times ahead with you’re trading. For some traders, a trade is more than a 
trade, it can represent how successful they are as a person, how much status they feel, etc. When your self-concept is closely tied to your trading outcomes the result is a yo-yo effect in terms of your self-esteem and your internal state. And our internal state has a lot to do with how well we trade.
Trading already involves a lot of uncertainty, and tying one’s sense of self-worth to the ups and downs of trading is unnecessarily adding emotional volatility to the picture and is usually not a good idea.
Most traders need to work on being more resilient in the face of disappointment. Trading will always involve disappointments, its part of the territory. A delicate balance between being fully engaged in the trade with a ‘watchful curiosity’ and without being overly attached to the outcome, is how many successful traders describe their internal state.
As traders try to improve performance, the one piece of knowledge that is often overlooked, is self-knowledge. Most traders would benefit by simply focusing on doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t, which sounds obvious, but the reality is that most do just the opposite. Learning to identify which behaviors work and which don’t is not as fun or interesting as learning a new trading strategy or set-up.; and awareness of one’s internal state is just as critical, but that is typically not dealt with. As a result, most traders focus outward and ignore their inner process. And the way this often plays out for a trader is they trade their emotions and not the market.
is self-knowledge. Most traders would benefit by simply focusing on doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t, which sounds obvious, but the reality is that most do just the opposite. Learning to identify which behaviors work and which don’t is not as fun or interesting as learning a new trading strategy or set-up.; and awareness of one’s internal state is just as critical, but that is typically not dealt with. As a result, most traders focus outward and ignore their inner process. And the way this often plays out for a trader is they trade their emotions and not the market.
trade, it can represent how successful they are as a person, how much status they feel, etc. When your self-concept is closely tied to your trading outcomes the result is a yo-yo effect in terms of your self-esteem and your internal state. And our internal state has a lot to do with how well we trade.