You’ve put in the work:
- Backtested your trading strategy
- Optimized it so you’re taking the most profitable set of trades
- Responsibly put it into production with small size at first
But you still find yourself wanting to override your system.
“I think that stop should be looser.”
“This trade doesn’t make sense because of $REASON, so I’m going to close it early.”
“If I give this one more time, surely it will work.”
All these doubts you have during the day are normal.
However, acting on them can erode your entire trading process over time.
When you override your system, you’re telling yourself that the work you did to prepare wasn’t good enough.
You’re not respecting it.
All those thoughts you had listed above could be tested.
Next time you have those doubts, instead of overriding your system, make a detailed note instead and add it to your research TODO list.
And then see what would happen if:
- You used a looser stop across all your trades
- You added $REASON to your backtest as a column to see if it really has an effect
- You held all your trades a little longer
Tracking down those answers outside of regular trading hours makes your trading process stronger over time rather than eroding it.
Amateurs use their doubts to override their work, but pros use them to get better.
-Dave
