Trading GBPJPY – Frustration and Trading Psychology
The GBPJPY trade. I went long GBPJPY the other day and initially, we got a great move.. up 50 pips. I expected the movement to go up much more and 50 pips is a relatively small move in the GBPJPY market. In the afternoon, the price action stalled and fell and then bounced. I felt that the price action wasn’t clean and as a result I closed off the trade with an approx 50 pip loss as I anticipated uncertainty.
This morning, there were further falls and I felt great that I had got out of the trade.. however, all of a sudden when the price had hit the support level at around 14450, the market bounced aggressively and hasn’t looked back since. If my trade was still open, I’d be in a very healthy profit of +100 pips.
Trading is one of the most frustrating endeavours that I’ve had to do…. There is no set method that works and the markets are a game of probability. Yesterdays trade would have been a nice earner and today, the Crude Oil trade which was 50 points higher, has now fallen and I’m at where I entered the Long.
In terms of trading psychology, compared with my previous post, the emotional feelings which I have now are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Frustration and despair almost.. in trading, it doesn’t matter if a scenario seems similar to a previous one as there is no guarantee that it will behave in the same way.. which is what makes it so difficult. There are times when you spot a particular price pattern when it was a great opportunity to get out before markets crashed but other times, the markets can do the complete opposite. You just don’t know what will happen next.
I’ve found it does help my trading psychology to keep telling myself that it’s not possible to know exactly when to get in and out of a trade, that there are always opportunities every day etc. You really have to believe these statements else you’ll find that you are left with frustration and the possibility of burnt out and never want to see the markets again.
