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Did you notice any apprehension, anxiety, or fear? Make a note of it if you did. If not, notice if your thoughts changed as you actually made the trade. Did your heart rate change at all? Did you notice any sensations in your body as you made the trade? Any excitement? |
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Now, I understand that a certain amount of your attention is going to be focused on the mechanics of simply making the trade. But there is plenty of awareness that may still be focused on what is going through your mind and any bodily sensations. |
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Notice any reactions after you place your trade. What thoughts come up? Any feelings? Write down key words that are enough for you to remember when you come back and review your journal entries. Keep trades by date and write down the time the trade is made. Then leave spaces to fill in your internal process under the headings "before," "during," and ''after." |
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If you can manage to stay with this exercise, you will most likely discover certain patterns begin to emerge. You may, for example, have a similar thought or feeling come up just before you place the trade or just after it is executed. |
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Should you use any triggers or anchors, make note of what they were and how they worked. For example, an entry might look like this: |
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Was feeling some excitement but then had negative thought that I might be paying too much. Neutralized this thought by using trigger of shifting chair to left and looking out window to garden. Neutralizing thought kicked in: "Big deal, so if you pay a little too much what are you going to lose? If you think the stock is going up from here, that's all that matters." This allowed me to go ahead and make the trade feeling more positive. Noticed I felt good after trade made and was glad to own this stock after watching it for so long. |
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Review your entries every week or so. In keeping a journal of your trades and the mental processes that accompany them, you not only begin to see patterns of thought that are useful but also patterns that are interruptive. Journal keeping itself is an anchor in feeling more confident of your ability to know your own mind while trading. You end up feeling more able to control the trade rather than have the trade control you. And that's exactly what makes more disciplined online investors. |
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Visualize the Chart Before It Happens |
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The problem with charts, even real-time ones, is that they are being drawn after something has happened. The chart is always lagging what is happening right now, even though it tells us the trend of the last few minutes or more. Some good traders try to visualize the |
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