How to Become Emotionless

I don't think it's possible to become emotionless about something you care about.
It is possible to control how you respond to those emotions though, and I think the only way to do that is with enough experience.

I'm not convinced you can become totally emotionless.

That said, becoming "emotionless" in forex trading—or any form of trading—essentially means learning how to manage your emotions so they don't impact your trading decisions. This is important because emotional responses, such as fear and greed, can lead to poor decisions and significant financial losses.

What I do is use clear objectives and guidelines that I follow. For example, I have specific limits as to how much I will invest in any one asset class, etc. Additionally, I have my own entry and exit rules for trading.

Using proper risk management tools also helps avoid knee jerk trades.

The main thing though, is that you have to practice discipline!

Becoming 'emotionless' in trading might not be entirely achievable, as emotions are a natural part of the human experience. However, it is possible to reduce the impact of emotions on your trading decision.

Emotional trading often stems from uncertainty and doubt, which in turn can be attributed to a lack of confidence in one's trading strategy. When traders are unsure about their approach, they are more susceptible to being swayed by market hype and emotional impulses.

The key to overcoming this is through the development and refinement of a robust trading strategy. Confident traders, who have spent time honing their strategies, understand their approach's strengths and weaknesses. They have backtested their strategies and have a clear plan for various market conditions, which reduces the inclination to make impulsive decisions based on short-term market movements. ThinkMarkets traders, for example, have maximised our exclusive backtesting tool Traders' Gym to build their strategies.

Additionally, implementing risk management techniques can help mitigate the fear of loss, which is a common source of emotional trading.

At ThinkMarkets, we support traders in building their confidence through education, offering resources, guides, and tools to develop, test, and refine their trading strategies. By becoming more confident in your strategy, you'll find that your decisions become less influenced by emotion and more grounded in rational analysis and planning.

I admit i get very stressed and do all the wrong things:

- close my winners very early
- Let some losing positions run for far too long

Last week, I had more winners than losers (about 6 out of 10) and made a loss of about 3% overall

I wonder if I should be strict with my stop losses and take profits or close trades manually

Are you just rewriting my response?

What are the best tools to train your "mental game" of trading?

The cue is.. humans are irrational beings. We dont become emotionless...

But what we can do.. is finding out what makes us the most COMFORTABLE.
If you dont feel comfortable during a trade then there is no way you will be able to stay "emotionless" either.

You need to find a Trading style and create a Trading Plan which will make you truly comfortable and confident in your Trading... and this goes beyond watching a youtube video about "this strategy made me 100k in a day" and then go trade it the next day.

You need to do intensive work on your plan.

And ask yourself WHY do use what you use.
WHY do you use support and resistance?
WHY do you think it's the best for you?

And the list goes on.

Only then you will be able to be comfortable enough not to worry anymore and react too emotionally.

Most wont do the work... most wont even after reading in.. most will go "yea that makes sense" and go do something else.

But that's what it takes to get profitable

Wash Rinse Repeat until it numbs the fuck out of you and u don't care no more.

I just had a series of brainfarts that once upon a time would have had me putting fists through doors.

3 pulled trades, that would have went on to be BIG winners, and then got run right over in a trade I took that actually went against my market bias, but was in favour of my *need* for the market to swing back up and give me a fill in the actual direction the market wanted to go in. All that time spent glued to charts. All the brain work. All the missed sunshine and fresh air. All a total waste of time, that cost me money in the end.

Once upon a time, I would have been seething and foaming out the mouth at this sort of thing, which lets face it, occurs time and time again in the markets. Now, I am just mildly annoyed. Not a single raised voice. Not a single punch of a door.

There is no easy route to nullifying emotional reactions to trading, especially if the said trader is a bit of a fire cracker anyhow.

The only way to do it, is to do it, have your emotional meltdowns time and time again, until the penny starts to sink in that you simply cannot allow the markets to have that effect on you. Eventually, you will just get kind of bored of losing your shit all the time, over something that really is essentially, just vacuous meaningless bullshit.

Equalising emotional reactions and egoic reactions (cos both lead to trouble in the markets) is like training muscles in the gym. You got to do it regularly, and take the pain to achieve the 'results'. No easy short cuts. Don't waste time trying to read your way out of it either.

You risk something you are comfortable to loss without troubling your sleep.

The best way to become emotionless (or as close as possible), in my opinion, it to be a consistently profitable trader so that you know if you have one go against you that you can make up the loss easily. That is where the peace of mind really is....

it's all about developing discipline

im pretty sure its been said already, but to be honest its experience in my opinion, experience and normalizing it after years of practice makes u kinda emotionless, more like used to it and less distracted when making decision

I believe meditation has very good effects

That isn't emotionless! You meditate to control your emotions and embrace them, not remove them.

Experience certainly helps. But, the best way to become emotionless is to automate your strategy. When you are designing your strategy you typically are not having emotions. The emotions only start once you are in a trade. By using automation you can remove those emotions and let your strategy work the way it was intented to work.

repetition, simply normalizing the loses, and getting used to it, after enough loses, u just tend to get less affected. just push through

I think the goal is not to be emotionless because it is impossible. It’s more about controlling our emotions when trading. Maybe this video can help:

https://insights.primecodex.com/achi...otion-control/

I believe we are human because we have emotions. It’s difficult to be emotionless unless certain people are born that way. Some people are more emotional than others (stereotypes suggest that women are more emotional than men). So, do traders have to train themselves to become different people, to become emotionless? Do women, in general, need to harden their hearts? I don’t think so.

Certain emotions are helpful in trading, such as fear. If we don’t fear the money we could lose, we might end up losing our house, car, and other assets.

Looking at this from a different perspective, we can retain our emotions in trading and be who we are, but we must plan in advance to prevent harmful emotions from flaring up, such as revenge trading or risking more than we can afford to lose. Here are some tips:

• Have a trading plan with logical risk management: If we trade small sizes, like 0.25% - 0.5% of the account balance per trade, we can handle losses more easily than traders who risk 3%, 5%, or even more per trade. Think about it. If you place one trade and your total balance drops to 95%, and on the next trade, you continue to lose, your balance drops to 90%. How can you remain calm? Risk management is crucial.
• Walk away from the screen after a losing trade: It’s okay to have emotions. You can feel bad after a loss or happy after a win. But just walk away and not take any more trades until your emotions calm down. For some, it may take one day; for others, it might take a few days, depending on the size of the loss or win.
• Meditation helps: Meditation can calm the mind and clear distracting thoughts, allowing you to be your best self every day, not only for trading but also for other areas of focus.

Remember, trading is only a part of life. It doesn’t define who we are. Even if we enter a losing streak, it doesn’t mean we are bad; it just means we are learning. Conversely, even if we have a winning streak and feel accomplished, we shouldn’t let it go to our heads. The market is unpredictable. Be happy for the win but don’t become overconfident and start thinking we can predict the market with every trade. This way, we can maintain our emotion in a healthy way.

Well, to be fair, you cannot eliminate human emotion, but you can eliminate human reaction.
The best way to train your mind to do this is to...trade! I eliminated my human reaction for trade losses during my demo trading, as the weight, for me, was not on winning the "money" on the demo account but on being correct.

I cared enough about being right about my trading strategy that even winning a trade could be disappointing to me if I didn't follow my strategy 100% as laid out, so by keeping that same energy for winning and losing it made both outcomes a natural thing. When I got back into live trading, I was finally best prepared to incur profit and/or losses. That mindset already eliminated revenge trading as I cannot be satisfied with a trade won outside of my strategy/rules. Sometimes I get stopped out only to re-enter and win the trade two-fold from that re-entry, just by sticking to my trade idea firmly (whenever it is strictly within my rules). A strict adherence to my rules is important because any deviation could produce an unpredictable result within an already volatile and unpredictable environment. Not applicable to all strategies, but that's the beauty of foreign exchange trading.

Tl;dr Although there are many strategies to manage this, I've found that trading for a reason that helps you reach your trading goals, instead of simply for money, helps keep your non-logical brain in check. Not 100% fool-proof...unless you have a bot lol

Its very hard to become emotionless. From my experience, try not to look at the chart once entered a trade. Set your tp and sl probably with higher risk to reward and make sure do not risk more that 5% of your balance.