Trading is quite simple:
➣Analyze.
➣Validate your analysis.
➣Manage your risk: know exactly how much you’re willing to lose.
➣Execute.
➣Then allow price to do its thing.
The moment you click buy or sell, the only thing within your control is your risk.
You can’t control whether or when price hits your TP or SL.
Control the risk. Let the market decide the result.
I have some time on my hands today, so I’ll teach you something about how expectations can ruin trading for you in the long run.
Imagine two traders.
Trader A enters every trade expecting 10R.
Trader B enters the same market comfortable taking 3R.
Now both traders catch a good setup.
Price moves +3R.
Trader B closes his trade. His job is done. He got exactly what his system was built to extract.
Trader A is only getting started.
He watches +3R become +5R and starts calculating what 10R will pay him.
Price gets to +7R.
At this point, he isn’t managing a trade anymore. He’s managing an expectation.
Then the market reverses.
+7R becomes +5R.
He doesn’t close because he has already mentally spent the 10R.
+5R becomes +3R.
Still holding.
Eventually, he gets taken out at breakeven.
Now here’s the interesting part:
Both traders correctly predicted the market.
One made +3R.
The other made nothing and probably feels like he lost.
Do this repeatedly and Trader A eventually starts forcing trades, holding winners too long, moving targets, increasing risk and becoming frustrated with perfectly good setups because they aren’t producing the returns he EXPECTS.
Meanwhile, Trader B keeps collecting his boring 3Rs.
This is what expectations can do to you in trading.
Sometimes the market is giving you enough to build wealth, but because you expected more, enough starts looking like failure.
There is nothing wrong with targeting 10R if your data supports it.
The problem starts when 10R becomes something you believe the market owes you.
Trade what the market gives you, not what you already calculated in your head.
Target Draws on liquidity‼️
Hope you understand now ??
Privilege is such an interesting thing I often find myself thinking about. We do not ask for the life we have, and that is why I'm very mindful of it. You often find it a lot in my writing.
Last week, my cleaner told me on Monday(2 days ago) was her birthday. I asked her what age we are celebrating and she said 33. Epiphany hit me that my agemate is my cleaner. I wore a wry smile as I nodded my head and told her to remind me on Monday so she could get her gift.
I then went to my room to deal with the epiphany of privilege. In another universe, that could easily have been me.