Q: Why do you trade?
A: To make money.
This is a hard earned successful realization for short term trading that significantly and consistently keeps you in the direction of your goal to make a great income by being a lazy ass.
It has to sit as the governing layer to your successful entry points in set ups you recognise and is the most important reason of why you're trading, but due to the human thought process strangely often takes a back seat.
For the majority of novice private traders their losses exceed their earnings often by 100% over any given time frame.
They blindly trade like they're playing a slot machine in Vegas, pure gambling, the house always wins.
Odds start to increase as they learn technical analysis, understand indicators and find the vehicles they like to trade.
However overall their losses still exceed their profits.
People trade for two reasons and one of them is simply the thrill of gambling for the fix of a big win, usually at the expense of many losses.
To make a living from trading or a consistent supplementary income you have to change your focus to increasing the percentage of profitable trades - well duh! Yes duh,
The longer you stay in a trade the greater the risk.
Early profit taking increases your profits by lowering your risk, simply increasing the amount of green figures versus red figures in your p&l log.
We have all been in trades that reverse violently, making us regret not getting out earlier.
Closing early guarantees profit at the expense of tears for missing maximum profit.
GET OVER IT. There's always volatility in another vehicle.
Be like the tortoise and win the race.