Make Trading Boring Again

 As people, we're always looking for ways to stimulate our senses. Eating, watching TV, listening to music, etc. Even working is a source of stimulation, sometimes feeding our intellectual needs, need for building something, or a need to "win" if you're say a salesperson or a professional athlete. 

Trading is no different, providing us with exciting highs and sometimes gut-wrenching lows. Definitely stimulating, though not always in ways that we had hoped for. Take a closer look into your big drawdowns, and I can almost guarantee you'll find that you, not the market, are the source of the "unexpected" huge move against you. Like a fish drawn to a moving artificial bait, we traders are immediately attracted to volatile price action, confusing it with opportunity. Unless preceded by proper forethought and/or analysis, the volatility can easily whipsaw you into a loss.

Sure, plotting out your game plan prior to a Fed announcement or earnings reaction is one thing (in anticipation of volatility), but reacting to sudden volatility without reason is often a sign of seeking excitement or just pure greed, much to our detriment (with an occasional winner that tells us it's ok to continue along this path). One is more inclined to behave this way either after a big win or a big loss. 

The most boring but rewarding thing thing is to simply be clear-minded, relatively unstimulated, and rational in your decision-making. This doesn't mean you need to be a robot- this objective state instead gives you greater space to enter 'the Zone', where intuition and rationality intersect. Also, any move against you can then be better framed within the context of why you placed that trade in the first place, giving you an easier time respecting your stop loss.

Filtering out volatility and seeking "boring, predictable" price action is actually no easy task, and almost counterintuitive to what you hear from many traders. If you actually trade volatility or sudden price gaps as part of your strategy, volatility becomes normal, and you know exactly what to do. For both types of traders, one is reacting to known/expected scenarios, which filters out excitement in both cases.