Can’t Pull The Trigger on Your Trade Setups?

We’ve all been there, you’ve done your homework and research and everything points to a “sure thing” but of course it might not happen just the way you thought but you know deep down within your heart that it’s going to happen, a winning trade!

You set your stop loss just in case something unforetold were to happen but that’s just a formality you’re positive this trade wouldn’t be in the negative for long, maybe you did place your stop just a little too tight but you don’t expect price to move south far enough to stop you out. You’re all set and ready to make some money now!

Everything starts out alright, price ticks as expected but suddenly without notice price starts to turn against you and you feel yourself holding your breath as the price rapidly and relentlessly marches towards your stop loss.

You know there is no reason for this to happen and the confidence you’ve built thus far starts to fade away you actually get weak in the knees frantically trying to figure out what went wrong with your analysis.

To give yourself sometime to find out the reason for this unexpected turn of events you loosen your stop to accommodate the move. After sometime you reassure yourself that there’s nothing out there, the currency is only correcting and this should be over soon.

But when you check the profit and loss window in your MT4 platform you suck in like someone punched you in the stomach, you lost the trade, your shoulders slump and you gently pound the desktop thinking to yourself “How could this happen? It’s not fair!”, you did everything right and followed your system.

You were wrong and just like almost all of us you hate to think of yourself as being wrong, as being incompetent.

A few days pass and you review the trade to see what exactly went wrong. You feel a little bit better because price moved just as you had prognosticated but your moment of pride turns bitter as you have to accept the fact that you lost the trade, you’d panicked and lost a lot of money. You think about why you violated the rules you had established with regards to pulling the trigger, why didn’t you move your stop instead of taking the hit?

You analyze yourself, was it the fear of loss because you placed too much emotional value on money? Was it because you were protecting your ego from the fact that you just aren’t cut for this? That you’re just pawn to the able traders?


Not being able to pull the trigger to get out of a trade is a clear indication of problems either with the trader or trading system.
Let’s consider the typical problem involving most losing forex traders. We’re all raised with the notion that losing is a bad thing and it reflects on us. Losing equals shame which in turns equals pain.


A natural response to pain is flight from the situation causing it which is probably the main reason why novice traders leave forex trading. For most of us it is much easier to deny responsibility and avoid the situation and the risk of pain. As Human beings we’re frail creatures. Mental and psychological pain hurts us much more than physical pain.


Another typical case of not being able to pull the trigger has to do with trade entry. Maybe the trade doesn’t exactly fit the laid down by you trading system and you get that subtle push to jump in, which is countered by the emotional fear of not being fully informed and this causes sort of like a gridlock act stifles decisive action.


In the world of random walk X doesn’t necessarily equal Y. As the trade setup you’ve been waiting for nears the entry price you’ll likely feel the pull of the subconscious emotional fear of being wrong and losing money. The usual decision is to follow the anecdotal “if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it!” and the trader holds off on the entry.


Only for the trade to turn out to be a stellar winner leaving the trader standing at the station as the train pulls out. It’s not as painful as actually losing money but this being left at the station syndrome may force the trader to plunge right into the next trade with little caution and reckless abandon getting him hammered which in turn multiplies the frustration of missing the trading opportunity on the first trade.


If this whipsaw effect happens several times it can cripple a trader and bring them to their knees, several back to back losses can indeed force an inexperienced trader throw in the towel, considering that only 2% of forex traders are actually successful the rest usually just write of trading in their bad make money experience.


This is the main cause for new traders’ disillusionment and abandonment of the exciting potentials promised by a successful forex trading career.


Most traders do not know the fact that these mental and emotional aspects of trading are just as important if not even more important than a good forex trading system. A lot of money is spent on advertising trading systems and softwares to make trading appear easy, if you do not have a good grasp of trading and the psychology needed to sustain yourself through the rough bumps which will happen by the way, trading can be a surprising and often disappointing experience.


What separates the losing traders from the winning traders is being able to deal with losing trades, period, as this happens to be the dividing line between successful traders and ex – traders.


The ability to maintain the proper mental and emotional discipline and understanding the psychology behind trading gives the seasoned trader the advantage of taking the higher ground. 

One of the intangible benefits of learning how to trade the forex successfully is the fact that you become an honest and introspective person, you learn to honestly appraise your performance and probe any weaknesses you might have, you learn stay humble, focused and accepting of things you cannot control.


These things don’t just make for successful trading, they make for success and fulfillment in all of lives endeavours.

When a trader can’t pull the trigger to get out of a position it’s because they just don’t know the principle behind a successful trading career. The objective of trading is that you should win more trades they you lose and that the profit margins on the winning position should be larger than the losers, this results in net profits over time.


On a deeper level failure to cut losses can be indicative of the arrogant and insecure attitude that you just can’t be wrong. To be wrong is to be flawed, so losing a trade doesn’t only cause financial torture but also psychological damage to the tender ego.


On losing like this, fragile egos begin to doubt themselves thus they get defensive, negative and take on self-fulfilling losing attitude. 

Aggressive anticipation and hope turn into little joy and much fear.
This happens to everyone, and this also the critical moments that makes or breaks a successful trading career. If you’re able to overcome the fear of being wrong and loosing something of value with your internal drive to succeed, good things would surely come out of your trading activities.


Another common cause of inability to pull entry triggers is the lack of discipline in sticking to the rules of the trading strategies in your forex trading system. If your system has too many poorly defined rules you should probably consider looking into that, take as much time as you need to plan your risk management rules, this is very important.


Trading should be mechanical, either it’s go for the trade or its not and a confluence of events help make this clear.


Never trade with money you can’t afford to lose as this puts even more pressure on you being right. This is why you should only trade with risk capital (money you can afford to lose). 

Set a predetermined drawdown level where trading stops until you make real changes to your mental and emotional outlook, only practice trading on a demo account for the time being.


Establish a framework of not only how to trade your system but also how to manage your emotions and mental discipline. You need to establish some sort of procedural constraints (rules defining what you should and should do when certain things happen during trading) and then learn how to match your feelings and thoughts to the whole trading process.


One way to start placing emphasis on the mental – emotional aspects of a successful trading career is to keep a detailed trading journal which you log into after every trade is completed; almost all successful traders review and grade their trading process.


A mentor program comes highly recommended but this depends on your financial and educational commitment to becoming a successful forex trader, although this might be somewhat costly having an experienced and insightful mentor to teach and debrief you of trading activities can be very effective to providing the objectivity to help mold your entire approach to trading.


Having trouble pulling the trigger on a trade indicates the lack of confidence a trader has in his system or himself, learning to handle this stress isn’t actually easy for newbie and struggling intermediate trader who do not even understand how trading works.


To be a successful trade you need to learn exactly how to trade and learn how to manage your emotional and psychological approach to the market.


Hope you learned a thing, don’t forget to share this with your friends, if you have any questions or comments, and be sure to drop them, I’ll always be glad to help.


Cheers…

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