Your instincts are powerful things, they can take hold of us when we are doing pretty much anything in life, out in the wild, our fight or flight reactions, playing sports and it most certainly rears its head when we are trading, in fact, everything that we do when trading has an aspect of our instincts in them, or at least in the back of our minds. We have often been taught when trading that we need to go with facts and not our instincts, but is this really the case? We are going to look into your instincts and how they can actually help with your trading.
We are going to go against that trend and state that you should indeed listen to your trading instincts, there are a few catches, we, of course, are not referring to simply ignoring all the research and then just trade whatever it is that you think is right.
We are sure that there have been times when you are trading where you have done all the analysis, it all looks right and good for a trade, but there is something at the bottom of your stomach or the back of your head that is telling you not to take that trade, but why? Everything seems to be pointing to it being a good trade, so why shouldn’t we take that trade?
More often than not, you would have read something or heard something somewhere which you did not register at the time, so are not entirely sure what it was, but you did, and now your mind and body are telling you not to take this trade due to that. Seems silly not to take the trade still, but how many times in life have you just had a bad feeling about something and so did not do something, only to then later find out that it went wrong and should you have done it, you would have been in trouble.
So in this regard, it is good to listen to your instincts when you feel that you should not enter a trade, after all, there is no harm in not taking a trade based on it, the worst that can happen is that you miss out on a profitable trade, but you can always get the next one that comes along, so in reality there is very little harm in it.
There are also times when we can look to our instinct when putting on trades too, sometimes you simply feel that something will go up and down, but this does not mean that you should then put on the trade. Instead, it should be an indication that you should then do the analysis and check on that trade, if everything you analyse and look at confirms your feelings then you should by all means put on the trade after all the analysis confirms it.
What you should not do is put on a trade simply because you think it will work without doing the subsequent work to confirm it. This is basically gambling, the same as betting on a sports team because you think they will win. Listen to your instinct but do not act on it solely by itself.
People will always tell you that your instinct has no place in trading, this is simply not true, listen to it, use it as a tool, just make sure that you are not using it to choose your trades without doing the rest of the work that is required.
