Do you take responsibility for your trading? We know that you will when it goes the right way, your analysis went well, you knew the movements of the markets on that one. What about when they go the wrong way? We know that some news events come out of nowhere and there is nothing you can do about it, but the reaction and what you do after the news events you certainly can influence. Following a trade loss, do you blame the markets? Your broker? Or the charts? Well you shouldn’t, the news is out fo your control, but everything after that was your doing.
It is easy to blame others or outside influences, but how is that going to help us improve? If we simply blame others, we won’t be looking at it as a learning opportunity, you should already be using a trading journal where you jot down everything you do, using this will help you understand where the trade went wrong and what you can do differently, a far better alternative to just blaming something else.
It is also human nature to look to others when something goes wrong when you make a mistake, you will naturally look for something to blame as this helps prevent you from the psychological strain of a failure, but again, blaming someone else won’t help you improve, you need to take responsibility for your own reading.
If we take a look at traders who copy trading signals or use a copy trading service, they are simply ignoring any form of responsibility for their trading. If a signal goes well, that trader will claim that they chose a good signal to follow if it goes wrong, they will shrug off the loss and put it down to a bad signal provider, after all, it was their trade, I just copied it. They will then go on and look for another signal provider to follow. The trader has no idea what the trades are made and no idea why they won or lost. It is all about having none of the stress and responsibility of losing.
There are others that will simply blame the markets outright, put in a trade but it then gets stopped out, it is the economic news falt, it is the whales stop loss hunting, it is everything but their fault, not a great way to trade and certainly not a great way to learn.
There are then those people that use Expert Advisors (EAs) to do their trading fro them, any losses from the EA are obviously the fault of the EA and its bad programming, nothing to do with the choice to use it or to give all responsibility to he robot instead of yourself. What are you earning fro musing the EA, how has your knowledge of trading improved?
You should never try to avoid the responsibility of a loss, by taking it onto yourself, you are giving yourself the perfect opportunity to learn and develop yourself to be a better trader. While it doesn’t always feel great to take responsibility for a loss, it is paramount that you do it, much like anything in life, a loss is a learning opportunity and the only way to improve is to fail.
