Getting Back on Track & Adding Friction

Learning to stop the bleeding and shift back to profitability is key in this game.

I’m a big fan of the concept of identifying bad habits and then “adding friction” to avoid them in future. Habits are like water, they take the path of least resistance. Once they take hold, habits are the things you do on autopilot if there’s nothing stopping you. 

So with bad habits we need to create friction, a dam to block that path of least resistance. If your autopilot has gone rogue and is making poor decisions, fix that quickly. Change something in your daily processes or systems to ensure that any mistakes you make were at least a conscious decision. 

For me, trading on my phone while on holiday was the core of my issues last week.

Back on Track

After the terrible week last week, and some negative emotion that bled into the start of this week, I’ve started turning it around and put up 2 green days on Thursday and Friday.

A new $100k evaluation with MyForexFunds is currently at $101,714. We need to reach $108k to pass through to stage 2 so a nice start there. Also pulled my live funded $20k account back into profit (by $50) after taking some drawdown there last week.

Green days go such a long way towards fixing the negative mindset that can take hold during a drawdown or after blowing an account. 

Adding Friction

This is also one of the reasons that journaling is key. When you get into a drawdown it’s important to reflect on the “why”. Are you making mistakes, or is it just normal variance? If you’re making mistakes, what are they and how are you going to fix them going forward?

In my case this week, I’ve identified the problem – trading on my phone – and added friction; I’ve removed MetaTrader from my phone. Good trading doesn’t happen on my phone, it happens on desktop or laptop. I’ve added “fluffy” rules to trading on my phone in the past, reducing my lot sizes, always setting stop losses and profit targets immediately after placing the trade, but they’re too easy to break. So I’ve identified that I don’t want to trade on my phone, and added friction by deleting the app. 

I encourage you to do the same. I’m not saying you should delete the app, but look for your weaknesses and bad habits. Once you find them, look for ways to add friction to eliminate the problem. Here’s some examples:

You get the idea. Identify your problem, find a solution. But find a solution specifically that adds friction – it should slow you down, removing the mistake from the tree of possible outcomes altogether.