Author: adrankone

One of the key lessons new forex traders learn is the importance of putting together a solid trading plan. This involves using specific techniques such as technical or fundamental analysis to help you make well-informed buying and selling decisions, and to make the most of the lucrative opportunities offered by instant forex funding platforms.

It can take some time and experience to build an effective trading strategy, and even seasoned traders regularly review and make adjustments to optimise their plan. Nevertheless, it’s important to make any changes after evidence-based research rather than abandoning your plan at every setback, or halfway through a trading session. 

Here’s a look at some of the reasons why your trading plan might be underperforming, and the right way to introduce changes.

Overcomplicating your strategy

New traders often assume that the more detail they pack into their strategy, the more effective it will be. However, this is not always the case: sometimes very simple strategies can be just as effective as more complex ones. There is no need to try to anticipate every move in the market, as you will just get bogged down in information overload. 

It is possible to copy the strategies of more experienced traders that you hope to emulate, but chances are you won’t fully understand it. This is not to insult your intelligence, but rather because the trader will have probably evolved their plan over time, and it would be impossible to be familiar with all the nuances without fully knowing the whys and wherefores. 

The best course of action is to start off with a simple strategy that is straightforward to carry out, based on solid fundamental and technical analysis. 

You have unrealistic expectations

Many new traders set unrealistically high profit targets for themselves. This is understandable, as ultimately we are in this game to make profits and the allure of ‘get rich quick’ is strong. However, this is likely that you will put too much pressure on yourself and end up making poor decisions, or become so discouraged that you give up altogether. 

Instead, set yourself small achievable goals that are backed up by a clear risk management plan. Remember that successful forex trading is not about wild highs and lows, but a steady process of taking carefully calculated risks. 

You have not backtested your trading strategy

The best way to ensure that your trading plan is watertight is to test it out on a demo account first. This not only helps you to become familiar with it without risking any real money, but will also reveal any glaring holes. 

It is unrealistic to expect any strategy to return profits with every trade, but if after a run of two or three months on a demo account where you have made more losses than gains, you will know that the plan is ineffective. Make sure that you keep a trading journal and write down your reasons for making each trade, so that you can analyse your performance. 

This will help you to identify any weaknesses in the trading strategy and make the necessary adjustments. For example, if you are a very impulsive and impatient person who likes to get instant results, then you are probably more suited to day trading or swing trading. 

You are implementing the plan inconsistently 

The golden rule of successful trading is to follow your trading strategy. As we will discuss in the next point, a trading plan can, and should, change over time and to respond to the current market conditions. However, you need to stick to your plan consistently for a certain length of time to assess its effectiveness.

Unless the financial markets are rocked by a sudden catastrophic event, you should never deviate from your plan mid-trade as this could leave you exposed to excessive risks. A plan helps you to maintain a systemic approach to your trades, and avoid making impulsive decisions that might be led by your emotional responses rather than rational processes.

Do not underestimate the role of psychology in the success or failure of your trading strategy.

The strategy is not evolving

Some traders become fixated on the concept of the bulletproof trading strategy that will guarantee them wins, but there really is no such thing as the Holy Grail. Your trading plan should not be cast in stone, but treated as a live project that needs space to breathe and grow. 

The forex market is the most dynamic and volatile financial market in the world, and it is strongly influenced by a wide range of factors, from geopolitical events to the latest economic data releases. Therefore trading strategies are rarely a case of sticking rigidly to the same approach, of maintaining a system of checks and balances.  

This is not to say that you should deviate from the plan in response to every ripple in the market, but rather that a good trading strategy is always a work in progress. As a forex trader, you should also be a diligent student, continually expanding and updating your knowledge so that you can make the best trading decisions. 

If your current plan is returning steady profits and you are satisfied with your progress, you may not need to do any more than periodically review it and ensure that it is up to date with the current market developments. 

Your trading plan is incompatible with your personality and lifestyle

It may be that the trading plan is fighting against your natural tendencies and lifestyle. For example, if you are a naturally cautious person with a low risk tolerance, then a strategy that involves a high risk vs. reward ratio may not be suitable for you. On the other hand, if you are naturally quick witted and impatient, long term positions trading may be too slow for you.

Spend some time considering your personal traits, best qualities and weaknesses. You may even wish to take an online personality test to obtain a well-rounded and objective assessment, because we all have blind spots. 

You could also ask family and friends or work colleagues, but they may not be completely honest for fear of causing offence (or maybe a bit too honest: sometimes the truth can be hard to handle). 

However, there is no need to aim for perfection or try to correct any ‘weaknesses’. We are all naturally more able and skilled in some areas than others, so it’s an opportunity to identify and focus on what you do best. 

Another factor to consider is how much time you have to devote to trading, and whether you view it as a side project to earn a little extra cash, or if you are working towards the goal of a full-time trading career. Determine your risk tolerance and make sure that this aligns with your trading plan. 

It should take into account your personal financial situation, how comfortable you are with taking financial risks, your profit targets, and your current level of knowledge and experience. Be honest with yourself about your current situation: you do not want to compromise your ability to pay for life’s essentials. 

If the thought of losing the amount of money you are risking on each trade is keeping you awake at night, then you are obviously not comfortable with your trading strategy, and will also be harming your psychological wellbeing. It may be that you could benefit from discussing your financial situation and investment goals with a financial advisor. 

Furthermore, you need to consider how much time you have to devote to trading, and how you will maintain a satisfactory work-life balance. If you are fitting in your trading around a full time job or other commitments, then your trading plan would work best with long-term trading that is less time intensive than day or swing trading. 

Conclusion

If your forex trading strategy has so far returned disappointing results, then it’s time to review and adjust. Very often, new traders try too hard with overcomplicated strategies that are copied from more experienced traders, but it’s never a one size fits all approach. Start simple, which can be just as effective if it’s carried out properly.

Find a balance between having the discipline to stick to your trading plan consistently and revising it in the face of changing market conditions. Successful traders are emotionally intelligent and do not allow fear, greed, panic, or anger cloud their trading decisions. 

The most effective way to do this is to always have a well-optimised trading plan and stick to it during stressful trading moments. Do not be tempted to deviate from your plan mid-trade; revisions should be made when you are in a calm and objective frame of mind. 

Refining your strategy is an ongoing process, and learning to adapt in the face of challenges is all part of the learning curve. Educate yourself and learn from others, and over time your patience and persistence will begin to pay off. 

The most important decisions that we need to make in life and in work are not always in the easiest of circumstances, and many of us have stories of how the heat and pressure of a situation got to us.

In an ideal world, we would take as much time as we could to consider every single action, its consequences and every alternate action possible, but this is seldom the case.

Much like how if you wait for the right time to get started you will never get done, if you wait too long for the right time to make a decision, it will often be made for you, not always to your advantage.

However, pressure has a demonstrable negative effect on how we make decisions, and too much pressure in the wrong place at the wrong time can be disastrous when a lot is on the line.

A prop firm portfolio with significant amounts of money in it is a particularly notable example of this in action, and there are countless stories of investors under huge amounts of pressure who saw their investments plummet due to fear or greed, action or inaction.

Because pressure and stress are such a personal part of investing and affect everyone differently, here are ten top tips and strategies for navigating difficult decisions when the heat is on and you need to act now. 

Take A Deep Breath

There are two speeds in investment: stationary and warp-speed. There will be many points during a trader’s day where they are waiting for action, and then when it comes time to make a decision there is such a breathless rush to do something that it is not always the right choice.

Even in a frantic situation, there is time to take a breath, pause for just a moment and give yourself time to take a view from a wider perspective.

This is an effective way to avoid emotional investing or falling into standard trading habits, as well as calm your mind.

Front-Load Your Decision-Making

Investors will often talk at great lengths about the value and virtues of having a robust trading plan as part of your investment setup and trading strategy, and whilst there are a lot of other reasons why you should make a plan, one of the most immediate benefits is when it comes to decision making.

A trading plan allows you to front-load the decisions you need to make and give yourself the time you need to make the right choices, allowing you to execute as quickly as you need to when the time comes.

Rather than agonise about whether you should get into or out of a position, check the trading plan, the conditions and whether these are the right circumstances and go from there.

It also means that rather than having to think about decisions every time you make them, you only need to consider whether your plan needs adjusting.

Ask If A Decision Needs To Be Made At All

In investing, a lot of the situations where you are under pressure to make a choice might potentially be illusionary, or examples of the random noise of the market spooking traders into making impulsive decisions.

Most securities and forex currency pairs oscillate up and down thousands of times a day but retain the same general value once the market closes. Look for the trend rather than the price action.

In particularly volatile markets, it may be best not to make any moves at all. Make sure your Stop Loss orders are set to avoid losing too much on your investment and wait for the market to settle.

Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play, but do not use this to make an excuse in situations where you have to make a choice.

Ultimately, not doing anything is a choice, and if a decision does need to be made, procrastinating on it could potentially lead to a worse outcome.

Focus On The Long Game

Ultimately, the goal for a funded trader is to hit their profit targets, which are usually far enough away that outside of a market meltdown, a constant string of losses or a huge miscalculated gamble, no individual trade is going to prove ruinous.

Instead of focusing on which trades made or lost money, look at the bigger picture and whether you are trending towards your goal or not.

Don’t Dwell On The Best

There are so many choices to make when on the market that it can cause inertia and paralysis. The biggest reason for this is that people want to make the best decision possible, but in a fast-paced volatile market, this might not be possible.

Much like with a trading plan, if you need to make a decision and make it quickly, move quickly through different stages.

If you cannot make the best course of action, make one that is good enough. If good enough is not possible, go for the least worst. Taking a loss now is far better than waiting for the market to rebound unless you have strong, objective reasoning to believe in a recovery.

Perfection is a luxury that requires a lot of time. Keep moving forward.

Seek Advice From Peers

The acute pressure and stress that comes from having to make a decision quickly often make us believe that we need to make this same decision alone, but that is not necessarily the case.

Keeping a network of friends and peers around can be really helpful if you are struggling to make a decision, and it is always worth asking whether something you are uncertain about might be a bad decision.

Even friends who are not in the industry can help simply by acting as a sounding board; you do not necessarily need to take their advice, but putting it into words and communicating it can often be enough to get your synapses working on a solution.

Start With A KISS

The market is complex and your wider trading strategy will often be complex out of necessity to factor in the millions of factors that shape the market every day.

However, when it comes to the actual decisions you need to make, the best advice is the old American aphorism “Keep It Simple, Stupid”.

In the original context of aircraft design, “stupid” means to keep it straightforward and effective 

so that any mechanic can tweak it and repair it, and that principle applies to decision-making.

It is easy to tie yourself in knots trying to think too far ahead, especially if you are pressed and under pressure, so avoid overthinking and making a worse decision as a result.

Do Not Take It Personally

You are not your record, and absolutely no investor gets it right every single time. In fact, the one trader who claimed to have an almost bulletproof record of “winning” trades went bankrupt and ultimately spent time in prison.

With that said, seeing the line go down and a minus next to your portfolio’s balance for the day can be deeply dispiriting, the result of us being wired to be averse to losses. We are made sadder by a loss than made happy by a gain of the same worth

However, assigning your ego and worth as a trader to each trade you make is asking for trouble, so instead of seeing each position as a contest, look towards the prevailing trend.

Many established traders will have a really bad day, feel completely thrown off but then check their long-term targets and remain above target. Taking a loss is sometimes the right move.

Making the wrong decision under pressure is not failing, it is learning, and the more you work under pressure, the more learning experience you will get.

Avoid Piling On The Pressure

Much like how a trading plan is important for many reasons beyond pressure relief, risk management protocols are not only important for self-evident reasons, but they can also help to avoid unmanageable levels of pressure in investment situations.

The most stressful situations are those where there is a high price for failure, but in reality, there should not be a situation where a single bad move or swing of the pendulum wipes out a portfolio’s value.

Diversify, factor in the most likely outcomes as well as the most potentially impactful ones, and avoid certain types of investment such as short-selling, where a badly-timed squeeze could potentially lead to infinite losses.

Trust Yourself And Commit

Once you make a decision, act on it earnestly and wholeheartedly, because ultimately the people who make the best decisions in high-pressure scenarios are those who trust their instincts, decision-making and skills in relevant fields.

Some of the best decisions we make in life come from intuition, based on the subconscious processing of information, and used in combination with a trading plan and as much research as you can access can lead to some highly positive outcomes.

It is, however, important to know the difference between intuition and trading based on emotions and practice in trusting yourself and committing to trading tactics will help you parse the difference for yourself.

The trader’s mindset is just as crucial to their success as technical analysis and strategy, yet this aspect can sometimes be underestimated by new traders. Successful forex trading calls for the ability to perform well under pressure, bounce back from failure, and have strong focus and discipline. 

This winning attitude has a lot of parallels with sports psychology, and as we have just enjoyed the spectacle of the Olympic Games and look forward to the Paralympics, it’s a good time to be inspired by and learn from this sphere. 

The athletes have trained intensely over several years to reach the pinnacle of physical fitness, but winning is about much more than being the fastest, jumping the highest or throwing the furthest. 

When Keely Hodgkinson won gold for Team GB in the 800m, she said that winning the race was 90 per cent about mental tactics, from learning to pace yourself and place yourself within the pack, to building up resilience and believing in yourself even when you are behind. She has also spoken about her battles with mental health after the Tokyo Olympics. 

It’s fascinating to listen to the often emotional post-event interviews with the athletes, whether they have won or lost: we gain an insight into the human struggles behind their superhuman achievements, and understand the highs and lows, self-discipline and sacrifices they have made to get where they are.

All this provides food for thought for forex traders: although immensely different spheres, there are many parallels between the world of elite sports and forex trading psychology. Here are some valuable insights that cross over the divide and can help you get the most from trading with instant forex funding.

Be wary of peaking too early

The eager sports competitor might shoot out of blocks like greased lightning and stream ahead of the pack, but this early lead can soon fizzle into burnout, or generate a false sense of confidence and security. 

Forex traders can also learn from this mistake: remember that it’s a long learning curve, and if you aim too high too early in the game, you are likely to become overwhelmed or be too bold and overconfident in your approach. Good forex trading is mostly about managing risk rather than making big flamboyant moves. 

Learning to embrace losses

In forex trading, learning how to handle losses well is crucial to long-term success. New traders can take losses personally, and allow themselves to become discouraged and lose motivation. However, as in sport, losses are all part and parcel of the game, and successful athletes know how to pick themselves up, learn from the experience, and try again.

The sports player will analyse their performance to understand what went wrong, and refine their strategy so that they can bounce back stronger. Forex traders also need to cultivate this kind of mental resilience to allow them to make steady progress. As in the 800m, forex trading is all about consistency over time rather than a sprint to the finish line.

Even experienced traders will continue to make losses on a fairly regular basis, but they view these simply as expenses on a business account. What is important is that you are making consistent profits and take more wins than losses over a longer period of time, such as three or six months. 

You may not be at this stage yet, so be patient and give yourself time to develop and grow your skills. Do not beat yourself up about being a failure, and do not be tempted to act recklessly in an attempt to make up for your losses. 

New traders can sometimes feel angry, anxious, or even ashamed about a bad trade, and will rush into more trades in an effort to make up for it. 

However, this will result in poorly researched trading and only perpetuate the problem. Instead, step back until you are in a more neutral state of mind, and then work out what went wrong. By treating the loss as a learning opportunity, you will not only strengthen your trading skills but also your mental fortitude. 

The power of maintaining discipline

Self-discipline is at the core of athletic achievement, and it is also a cornerstone of successful forex trading. Athletes must stick to a stringent training regime, a controlled diet, and carefully worked out performance strategies. Similarly, forex traders need to develop a daily routine to keep on top of the fast-moving forex markets.

They also need the discipline to stick to their trading plans, and not let themselves fall into emotional trading. That means not being driven by fear, greed, panic, pride and so on, but always making rational decisions that adhere to their risk management and trading strategy.

Admitting it’s OK not to be OK

Perfectionism can be the enemy of success in the sporting as well as the trading world. Even elite athletes have off days when they find it hard to drag themselves out of bed and go to the gym, or even question the point of it all. The key is to accept that you are not perfect, and it is human to have these ups and downs.

Success in forex trading comes after a long learning curve, and you need to build up your skills as an athlete builds up their physical fitness. Think about it as training for a marathon: it’s fine and even necessary to have rest days as long as you don’t completely take your eyes off the prize. 

If you are struggling with motivation, reassess your work-life balance. We all need time to spend away from our screens to mentally, emotionally and physically refresh ourselves. This is not self-indulgence; it also enables us to perform to the best of our abilities. 

Aim to exercise or get outdoors at least two or three times a week, eat a healthy balanced diet, and make sure you see family and friends on a regular basis. 

Mastering focus and concentration

The ability to maintain laser-sharp focus is crucial for sporting success, as even the tiniest of mistakes can mean the difference between a podium finish and going home empty handed. This can leave years of training in tatters, and also mean missing out on potential future earnings or prize money.

Forex traders have to get used to performing under similar amounts of pressure, and this calls for excellent concentration. Athletes often use mindfulness meditation to help them stay anchored in the present moment rather than let their mind wander to past mistakes or future possibilities that could cloud their judgement. 

Similarly, traders often use mindfulness or other meditation techniques to help them mentally prepare for a day’s trading and ensure they are not prone to distractions or a wandering mind that could lead to unnecessary risks. 

Being ready to adjust your strategy

Athletes need to constantly evolve in order to maintain their competitive edge, whether that’s learning to deal with different climates and environments, new opponents, and their own changing capabilities. Sometimes they may even need to adjust their tactics midway through a performance if it is not going the way they expected.

Traders also need to master this mental agility in order to thrive in the dynamic forex markets. Too rigid an approach can mean you miss out on opportunities, or stick to an outdated strategy that is no longer working for you. 

The market sentiment shifts in response to geopolitical events and economic conditions, and you need to be able to keep yourself well informed and be ready to respond and adapt if necessary. 

This doesn’t mean allowing yourself to be buffeted about in the breeze of every economic data release, or following the herd, but remaining vigilant and independent minded. Over time, you will hone your instincts for when it is time to pivot and when you should leave well alone. 

The importance of continuous learning and improvement

When Keely Hodgkinson won a silver medal in the 800m at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 aged just 19, she was as proud and astonished as anyone. She said that she was unprepared to be thrust into the limelight so unexpectedly, and some of the pressure led to a period of depression.

Keely picked herself up and refocused for the next challenges. However, at the next two World Championship events in 2022 and 2023, she won silver medals: an amazing achievement by anyone’s standards, but Keely revealed that she was gutted not to have beaten her former Olympic rival from Tokyo. 

She vowed that her next medal would be gold, and through intense training and mental toughness, she achieved her dream in Paris this summer at the age of just 22. Keely’s self-belief and willingness to evolve has carried her on to greater heights.

Similarly, forex traders should recognise the importance of investing in continuous training and development to help them fulfil their potential. This will arm you with the skills to continuously adapt and set yourself up for trading success. 

The difference between success and failure for many people in a wide range of fields is
mindset, and the long-term success of traders working for proprietary firms is no exception to
this.

A golden rule of trading is that whilst anyone can hit the jackpot once, making consistent, strong
gains based on a fundamentally sound trading strategy is much more difficult, and central to that
success is the mentality you bring to the trading floor.

This does not simply mean taking a disciplined approach to following a trading plan, although
having a trading brain can certainly help in some respects.

Instead, it is about understanding how mental health and your state of mind can affect your
portfolio, how to develop your mind and your body in a way that helps build the best possible
trader, and why focusing on yourself and your needs is critical for making money.
This guide aims to provide some practical tips for developing mental fitness, as well as
explaining why it is so important to be mentally and physically ready before you take to the stock
market.

Why Does The Market Hurt Us?

Everyone has a story like this. They start the day with the intention of making some trades, so
they hit the markets and look for potential action.

After doing the research, they put together a plan of action, make some investments and make
a few small gains. This is good, positive work and on its own might make a trader feel fairly
positive.

Then one trade goes badly wrong. Maybe it was a miscalculation, maybe it was some terrible
shocking news or an announcement that did not go the way anyone expected or wanted, but
regardless of the reason it is trading at a much lower price than anyone expected.

Despite the other trades doing cumulatively well enough to offset it, that loss stings and can be
particularly distressing for a relatively new trader to the point that it can possibly cause long-
term damage to their career if they learn the wrong lessons from it.

Whilst everyone tries to trade objectively, the pressure of hitting targets, the desire to build a
portfolio and the pressure of significant amounts of money being on the line can lead to feelings
of stress and anxiety that only magnify when trades do not go your way.

Everyone reacts to these negative emotions in different ways, but it shakes your concentration
and confidence, which is not only negative now but can lead to a domino effect of bad
decisions.

How Does Mental State Affect Trading Performance?

Whilst a lot of economic models like to believe in the idea of a perfectly rational homo
economicus that always has the facts at their command and trades consistently and rationally
within the bounds of their own self-interest.

In practice, few people are like this, and not every automated trading system is completely
rational depending on the strategy it is programmed to follow.

The entire school of behavioural economics has tried to explain the specific aspects of how
psychology and the mental states of everyone who interacts with financial markets shape them
in some way, but for the most part, the ways in which mentality affects financial performance are
much easier to see.

Stress and anxiety have clear physiological, neurological and psychological effects on people,
including, but far from limited to:

● Direct and indirect effects on physical health due to the effects of cortisol, poor sleep,
lack of physical activity, poor diet and so on.
● Increasing impulsiveness and reactivity to the market. Every trade that is down for the
day can feel devastating and lead to overcorrections.
● Damaging logical reasoning and the ability to judge decisions, largely due to creating a
rather narrow approach to potential solutions.
● Creating a warped interpretation of market information and what it means, which further
affects decision-making. A tiny loss is a sign to jump off the sinking ship when it could
easily be a minute-to-minute market correction.
● Damaging self-esteem, which reduces the motivation to trade and affects the belief that
we are traders capable of making good decisions. This can lead to poor decisions and
accentuate the other four factors.
● Shortening memory and attention span. If you cannot focus when doing your due
diligence, you are more likely to invest without all the relevant facts at your command.

Most of these factors of stress affect people in other walks of life as well, but because the
pressure of trading is so high, the effects of stress are so acute that it is far more noticeable
here than it would be in other fields of life.

Everyone is guilty of falling into the trap of trading emotionally, but the best traders find ways to
ensure that they trade in a healthy, disciplined way that emphasises mental fitness.

How Do You Build Mental Fitness?

Much like physical fitness, something that can also help, mental fitness is not an innate state of
being but a toolkit of skills and exercises that when regularly practised will build into an overall
state of mind.

There are many elements that form part of the complete picture of mental fitness, but the three
most important and the ones that can be trained for the better are confidence, emotional
intelligence and mental resilience.

Confidence And Positive Self-Talk

Everyone needs a degree of confidence to succeed in any endeavour they embark upon. At the
very least, someone needs to believe they are able to learn and develop their skills to create a
foundation for success.

A secret weapon in this regard is positive self-talk, which is a consistent set of affirmations that
help to counteract the negativity that can happen during a bad day.

Bad luck can turn a good trade into a losing one, but rather than allow the corrosive idea that
you are responsible for elements outside of your control, focus on your process and method,
that you have made successful trades before with this strategy and will do so again.

Emotional Intelligence

Everyone gets emotional. That is not necessarily the issue. Where the problems come in is
when these emotions are left unchecked and unobserved. If you are mindful of your own
feelings you can notice them start to develop, how they impact your decisions and avoid
impulsive decisions.

In this regard, a trading journal is an invaluable companion. Not only is it useful for keeping track
of trades, but it also helps you understand the reasoning behind these decisions and how
successfully they worked.

Resilience

The vast majority of your decision-making when trading should not be on the platform itself. It
should be in the development of strategies and trading plans, which are robust, comprehensive
and well-researched enough to remove a lot of the stress from moment-to-moment trading.

The less you have to think, the less stressful these decisions will be, and it pays to front-load
those big decisions in a situation that is less time-critical and without the many pressures that
are associated with trading.

Trading plans are often adjusted on much slower turnaround times than an impulsive trade, and
generally only needs to be examined and altered a few times a year at most. It also includes risk
management plans so you do not have to worry at all times about being caught in a severe
losing position.

It is not completely objective, but it allows you to worry about the higher-level parts of the trading
plan when you are in the headspace to do so, rather than having to make big decisions every
time you enter and exit a position.

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind, Healthy Portfolio

Those three elements are at the core of mental fitness, but there is a lot more that goes into
building up mental fitness in trading, including improving your physical fitness.

The mind-body connection is an increasingly important part of mental health explorations. Whilst
psychology was previously considered largely siloed away from physical health, the connection
between physical activity and mental health cannot be ignored and should be harnessed to
make a better person and a better trader.

Fear and stress are mind-killers, figuratively and literally, and if regular exercises can help
reduce that stress, they remove a barrier that is in the way of your success, take away a voice
that tells you that you cannot do what you know you can, and help improve your focus.

Whilst something of a truism, regular exercise also helps improve sleep quality. Sleep
deprivation has a wide range of effects and the better your sleep, the more energy you will have
to focus on the important decisions rather than being distracted.

Beyond this, it is always best to take breaks from your trading terminal. Being hunched over a
computer is not a healthy position to keep for hours at a time.

Whether you go for a jog around the block, go to the gym or do a few stretches and have a
breather.

As well as this, avoiding processed, high-energy foods such as fizzy drinks, fast food and
sweets in huge quantities can help reduce accentuating and augmenting the stress you can feel
in certain situations.

Finally, if you are having a difficult trading day and it all feels too much, it is absolutely fine to
turn off the terminal and try again tomorrow. In many cases, the worst decision for your mental health, physical health and portfolio health is to react to bad news by making worse decisions.