Don't Let FEAR RUIN Your Trading Career

Hi, Brian McAvoy here with Inside Out Trading. And today I want to talk to you. It's an aspect of trading psychology that I think is worthwhile. And this came from a guy who's not in the trading space, but he's like an expert in psychological matters and from a military background, which is cool. But anyway, what he was talking about is related to fear. And as traders, we have to deal with fears. Fears of missing out, fears of failure, fear of losing money. A lot of different fears that we have to deal with as traders. And one of the things that I love getting across to people, and there was a lesson that I learned, fortunately, after not too long had passed, but long enough, I lost a lot of money in the process. But anyway, what I learned was overcoming fear. The best way to overcome fear is by instilling confidence in yourself by earning confidence. And confidence counters fear. What if you think about it, what is fear anyway? Fear is not being able to deal with a situation in a manner that's satisfactory. That's generally what fear is. When we're faced with a situation, we feel that there's some threat of some sort and we're not really adequately ready to deal with it effectively. That's where fear comes from. Because if you think about it, if it's a situation where you know you're adequately prepared to deal with it, it's not a problem. You drive down the road all the time in your car. All kinds of danger there. People die on a road all the time. Every day, there are thousands of people that die around the world in cars. But you hop in your car, you go about your business without any big deal, without fear, because you know that you know how to drive your car. And so you have that confidence that you know how to operate your vehicle, you know how to navigate the roads, you know how to get where you're going, so you don't have fear in getting in a car and going somewhere. With trading, we want to have the same kind of confidence in our abilities and who we are and in our system and everything. But what this guy, Chase Hughes, what he had to say, and I really liked it because it was extremely succinct. But if you come to how it's like really at the very core of confidence, said confidence is security in yourself. You can have confidence in the things around you. You can have confidence in your car, you can have confidence in your trading system, your method, your strategy. But for you to really have true confidence, you got to have the confidence in yourself in operating it. That's where true confidence comes from. That's where fear goes away, is when you have that true confidence to take your strategy to the market and trade it effectively and deal with the uncertainties that are related to trading, the dynamic environment that it is. But you have the confidence to go to the markets every day and know that you're okay, you know that you're going to survive, you're not going to get crushed, you're not going to have all these problems that our fears like to throw at us. No, you don't have that because you know that you're skilled up, you know that you're good, you know that you're good with this. Again, it's a well founded confidence and it's a confidence in yourself. There are strategies all over the place. You don't, you won't gain confidence from a strategy. Having a decent strategy helps. You don't have to have the magic strategy, you know that will always let you win. No, that's a fear based thing. All you need is a decent strategy and the ability, the confidence in your strategy and in yourself to execute it consistently. That's when you know you're good as a trader. And it really, it again it comes down to confidence in self, that self security. That's when your fears go away. When you know that no matter what the markets are doing, that you're okay, that you're going to be fine, you're going to make money this month. That's when you have true confidence, not false confidence, not overconfidence. You have true confidence because down in your bones that you know what you're doing, you got a solid handle on this, you know how to respond to whatever the markets may throw at you. Doesn't matter what the economic climate is, doesn't matter what's going on the news, doesn't matter what the latest news announcements come out of D.C. or potential war, whatever. It's a socioeconomic climate, doesn't matter. You know that you're okay as a trader going and trading with your strategy or portfolio of strategies and that you know what you're doing, you have the skill to execute them well and execute them consistently and without making errors. That's when you have true confidence. When you know, yeah, what I've got works and I'm solid trading it, I can go execute it consistently. That's when you have real confidence and that's really what you want to shoot for is again, not false confidence where you just do everything. I am a good trader, I will stick to my rules. Where you try to convince yourself that you're solid. No, that's not going to work. You have to actually earn it. And there's a specific way to do that. That's what I teach in my course. And the training that I offer is how to establish that confidence properly. My background is quality assurance. And so what I had to do, I had. I was responsible for 183 people in my plan, plus other plans. But in my plan, 183 people, seven different departments, four different shifts. So I had a wide range of individuals in this place, tons of different activities going on. And it was my job as quality assurance manager to make that everybody did things the right way and everybody did them consistently. So a lot of my time was spent in defining processes for people to go do things and do them well and do them properly and efficiently and effectively, and setting up the training for all this.