Do you remember the now defunct exchange BTC-e? It had a simple 15m green and red candle stick chart, and a chat box on the side for just tracking the pricing of bitcoin. Ah the simple times when it was only bitcoin. Sometimes someone would scream, "OMG, it's finally crashing!" Very often a newbie trader would sell all his holdings. At the time crypto was under $100. I miss these simpler times.
This Thanksgiving I told my family my new career as a finance writer, I had an in-law challenge my new career choice. I was so upset by the veiled insults and shade being thrown across the table that I vowed to YOLO everything on calls the next day. If my bet panned out, I could retire.
It's great to have goals and dreams, but once you have a plan, it's important to stick to it. I already locked in my trade for a possible December rally. If the trade went south, I could recover in 3 months, but if it went well, I'd have 3 months of money to play with - well 1.8 months. Uncle Sam will tax the other 1.2 months. Anyway, I can recover from 3 months of losses, but I cannot recover from losing it all in a decent time frame. My in-law was the troll box. If I made that trade to YOLO, then I would be that noob making a bad trade.
Today, I'm proud to say I stayed the course, and didn't lose it all.
Don't let anybody make you troll trade, or rage bait trade. If your emotions are out of it, and you are a steely-eyed realist, cold and hard and without emotion, you will win. And this is where stoicism becomes the perfect philosophy for trading. More on stoicism in another post.