TPS E20: How Greed affects your trading skills?

It’s so easy to be greedy in this business. It’s easy to think whatever you get, it’s not enough. If you have 200 points profit in a trade, you want 300 points. If you have 300, you want 400. The lack of being satisfied is a big reason why many people have trouble succeeding in trading.

Maybe the way to avoid being greedy with your trading is to find out why it’s so easy to be greedy with the markets. Greed stems from a belief that there is never enough or there won’t be enough. When the market is continually moving, isn’t it always possible to get more out of a trade? A greedy person will never be satisfied, they will always want more no matter how much they have. It seems the reason people are greedy when trading is because they take non-market factors (like how badly they need the money, what they need it for, can they afford to risk it, etc.) and apply them to the market and their trades.

But it doesn’t really make sense to do this because those non-market factors have nothing whatsoever to do with which direction the market is going. So to take those factors like I want to use this money to buy a bigger house or I need this money to pay my bills. While those things may be true, they don’t have anything to do with which direction the market is heading. So letting those things control your trading decisions makes you greedy. It makes you want more than the market may be offering, and it influences you into not acting in your own best interest.

Thus, you can easily be tempted into thinking there is a lot more in a particular trade just because you want more money and that pushes you into wishing and hoping. And, as we discussed a little while ago, that is also not acting in your own best interest. Wishing and hoping will not make you any money.

In my opinion, being greedy will shorten your trading career faster than any other mistake you can make.