Whenever I read someone’s advice about trading without emotion I know the advice may be well intentioned, but not realistic. And, unfortunately, the advice can even backfire. After unsuccessfully trying to ignore emotions, you can easily think there is something defective about you if you can’t lock them down or ignore them.

You’re going to have emotions when trading. Even those trades when you operate with clarity and you’re in the zone and trading well, you may not realize it, but emotions are still present; either you’re experiencing positive emotions, or negative emotions like anxiety are outside your awareness – subconscious. Emotions associated with the fear of missing out or handling loss usually point to deeper, possibly subconscious conflicts, with their own emotions.

When you try to lock down your emotions, ignore your emotions, or fight your emotions, you’re essentially trying to disown or battle yourself. Trading is hard enough; engaging in a intra-personal battle will only sap your mental energy and your willpower, eventually leaving you even more vulnerable to acting out on your emotions. The name of the game is to control your actions, not your emotions.

Emotions play an important role in human functioning. Emotions are internal messengers, one of the primary ways our subconscious mind communicates with our conscious mind. Rather than battle yourself, it’s much better to learn to use your emotions to your advantage. That is where you finally learn to control your actions. Will power will not help you, it is finite and subject to depletion, and emotions will trump will power very easily. Emotions will also trump your intellect. You don’t need to go far to see the evidence. To see the proof that your emotions are stronger than your will power or your intellect, you only need to look back at all the times you veered from your plan, broke your rules or chickened out on your high conviction trade ideas.

In the past year or so I’ve noticed a slight shift among some trading educators as they come around to the idea that you can’t eliminate emotions, but the field of trading psychology in general has a long way to go, especially in teaching traders how to deal with emotions.

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