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Before we hosted this discussion, our guest from the community, “Zep” (same name in chat room), sent us a lengthy email that had me quite nervous. I don’t want to offer up any spoilers, so all I’ll say is that while we as traders certainly need to strive for the best and hold ourselves accountable, we also don’t want to go “too far” in accountability. It’s a fine line for sure and an interesting gray area of the market and personal growth as a trader. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation as it allowed us all a deep dive into trader psychology and the angle of personal accountability.

Notes:

• Today we catch up with community member Zep. We start off talking about his current trading issues, mainly being his consistency. With his schedule as a musician it makes it difficult for him to maintain a normal schedule.
• Zep wanted to focus on directional trading but the problem was the hours he works. After talking with some community members he had his eyes opened up to the practically 24 hour futures markets. This gives him the ability to trade past normal trading hours.
• A problem Zep has been dealing with is taking his profits too soon instead of letting them go to a logical target or trailing his winners. His goal is to make fewer trades and stay in longer.
• Most of his current problems come from his mental state. He knows how to trade well but the emotions cause him to make costly mistakes. Now he has a certain rule set regarding when to stop trading for the day.
• Another thing Zep has to work on is accepting that there is no 100% hit rate in trading. He needs to be more accepting of the uncertainty that trading entails. His trading strategy is sound but he is continuing to work on the mental side which does take everyone a different amount of time.

Quotes:

• My overall problem has been consistency. There’s a variety of reasons for that but consistency is what I’m going for.
• I like directional trading because you can make good gains.
• I’ve been trading more to survive than to grow. Not that I don’t want to grow…
• If I start out red, it’s a different mindset. It’s a lot harder. It’s a total mental thing.
• I had to go through this… The first couple of days I was beginning to question my ability.

Links:

• https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode040/