Traders strive to become "emotionless" to eliminate fear, greed, and impulsive decision-making, which are the primary causes of trading losses. By adopting a rule-based, objective approach, they can protect capital, ensure consistent execution of strategies, and avoid the destructive "boom and bust" cycle. This detachment helps them focus on long-term goals rather than short-term market noise.
Emotion Disrupts Discipline
Emotion clouds your strategy. If you've built a plan based on analysis but break it because of “gut feelings,” you're no longer investing—you're gambling. Emotionless investing = sticking to your rules, whether it's a stop-loss, profit target, or dollar-cost averaging plan.
The 84% Rule in trading is a concept where traders re-enter a trade at the same key level with identical parameters (stop-loss, target) after an initial stop-out, expecting an ~84% success rate for the second attempt, especially after a fake-out or liquidity grab, leveraging the idea that the market often respects the original level despite the initial false move. It's a trade management technique to recover losses or capitalize on high-probability setups when price returns to the original thesis, often involving identifying market imbalances like Fair Value Gaps (FVGs) for confirmation.
Emotionless option trading is a disciplined, rule-based approach to options trading. It is designed to minimise emotional interference, relying on data, predefined rules, and automation. This approach applies equally to traditional and crypto options.
The 2% rule in trading is a risk management strategy where you risk no more than 2% of your total trading capital on any single trade, calculated from your account balance to your stop-loss price. It protects your capital from significant losses, allowing you to stay in the game longer by ensuring even consecutive losses don't wipe you out, as it dictates position sizing based on risk tolerance rather than fixed dollar amounts. For a $10,000 account, the maximum loss per trade would be $200.
Most traders don't fail because they're incapable. They quit because progress in trading is quiet, slow, and uncomfortable. In the early phase, mistakes are obvious. Losses are frequent, and feedback is clear.
1-Minute Scalping Trading: Basics
Traders using this approach rely on 1-minute charts to make quick, multiple trades throughout the trading session. The primary goal is to accumulate potential small gains that might add up to larger returns over time.
No, scalping trading (extracting small profits from frequent trades) is generally legal and a legitimate financial strategy, not illegal in major markets like the US or UK, but it's heavily regulated and some brokers restrict it due to high risk, while illegal "scalping" often refers to reselling tickets or using bots for consumer goods. While financial scalping is allowed, regulatory bodies monitor it, and broker rules on high-frequency trading can affect its practice.
In summary, if you want to make a living from day trading, your odds are probably around 4% with adequate capital and investing multiple hours every day honing your method over six months or more (once you have a method to even work on).
Winning traders do not hesitate to risk money when they see a genuine profit opportunity based on their market analysis and trading strategy. However, they do not risk money recklessly. Always aware of the possibility of being wrong, they practice strict risk management by putting small limits on their losses.
The 'Sunk Cost Effect'
A sunk cost goes up when there is a decrease in the value of a stock. Therefore, when a trade is losing, we may tell ourselves that the “true” value is nearer to the original cost instead of the present value and, as a result, we don't understand why we would trade at a loss.
The "24-year-old trader making $8 million" refers primarily to Jack Kellogg, a successful day trader who reported over $8 million in gains from trading in 2020 and 2021, starting with just $7,500 and leveraging key indicators like VWAP, support/resistance, volume, and linear regression for simple, adaptable strategies. His story highlights achieving significant returns by weathering different market conditions, learning from losses, and sticking to core principles rather than overcomplicating things.
The "90-90-90 rule" in trading is a harsh reality check stating that 90% of new traders lose 90% of their money within the first 90 days, highlighting the high failure rate due to emotional decisions, poor risk management, and lack of education/strategy. It serves as a cautionary tale, emphasizing that success requires discipline, a solid trading plan, continuous learning, and strict risk control (like risking only 1-2% per trade) to avoid the common pitfalls that wipe out most beginners.
This may sound real and good, but the shocking reality is that a massive 99% of people fail to be profitable traders in the long run.
Trading becomes the main activity of daily life and the investor who uses trading compulsively does not possess a rational mastery of the behavior adopting, but feels uncontrollably driven to invest and continue to do so and more especially, in the case of financial losses, in the illusion of being able to restore ...
Takashi Kotegawa, also known as BNF, is a legendary Japanese day trader who famously turned an initial capital of around $13,600 into an astounding $153 million in approximately eight years.
I just crossed + $500,000 in profits after 1 year of full time day trading. In that time, I have had a maximum cumulative drawdown of only — $6,419 with an average drawdown of -$1,000. This article is my holistic approach to risk management that any trader can apply to their own strategies.