Stop Hunting for the Holy Grail of Binary Options
You have been trading binary options for a while. Maybe you have even been doing it well and pulling in some good cash. You have been starting to feel more confident in yourself and in your trading system, and then one day it happens:
You lose a trade and you cannot figure out why.
You feel like you have been doing everything right, so why would the trade go against you?
You chalk it up to unavoidable losses (they do happen after all), and go on trading. But the next day you lose another trade. A couple days later you lose yet another.
So you throw in the towel for a while, and go back to the drawing board.
Those who are dedicated to learning how to trade binary options for a living are going to find themselves in a situation like the one above sooner or later, and probably many times. When it happens to you, you will probably not feel too good about it. You will feel like you are backtracking, like you have un-learned your knowledge and need to start all over. You may wonder how that information fell out of your brain and where you left it, or if your entire previous success added up to nothing.
Business in any industry has its ups and downs, so why should trading be any different?
It all depends on what you do next.
Do You Search for the Holy Grail Of Trading?
The most common response to one of these “backtracking” episodes, especially among newbie traders—but veterans as well—is to go on a quest for the “holy grail” of trading.
What is the holy grail of trading?
It is the perfect system. It is the name that many traders have conferred on a mythic, imaginary system which will bring it endless profits and require little or no maintenance.
Sound absurd?
It might when you are doing well, or when you are still so early in the learning process that you have not yet hit the wall of frustration. But once you do, that imaginary holy grail of trading will start to look very enticing. You will look at your own trading system with all its shortcomings and foibles and start to think, “There has to be something better.”
If your system suddenly stopped working, it must be broken. So you set out to find a system that cannot break.
If you go on a search for the holy grail, you will be backtracking. The only learning process likely to unfold will be a painful one, and likely an expensive one too. You may start trying out dozens of new systems in search of the best. If you test them out live, you are sure to discover the same thing over and over again:
No system is perfect and all trading systems eventually fail.
You also might start to think that you can buy your way to success. Frustrated with the tedious quest, you might buy into a claim that someone else has found the holy grail of binary options trading. Tempted to believe in the impossible by your desperation, you might spend money buying other trading systems or signal services which are also imperfect.
Moving Forward “No Duh Tip”: Build Off What You Already Have
If you want to move forward instead of backtracking, the best thing you can do is build off of what you already have. If your trading system is or was working most of the time, that is already an edge, and it is a foundation for building a better trading method. This will feel more like “back to the drawing board” than searching for a new system in some ways, because you will probably literally have to go back to basics. But believe it or not, this is far more likely to generate real forward movement than searching for a new trading system.
Here are some key points to consider:
- There is no such thing as a perfect trading system that is effective and reliable 100% of the time. If there was, everyone would be using it, and it could hardly be kept a secret.
- Each element of trading you learn is a tool in your trading toolbox, something that can give you an edge, potentially help you win the game. If you have a trading system that already works most of the time, see if you can gradually add in some new elements that make it work even more often.
- Make sure you are making the best use of all the trading tools you are already using to plan your trades. Are you using those tools in the wrong situations? Are you paying attention to context or ignoring it?
- Nobody has ever achieved greatness or success by changing their game plan constantly, and that is true in general, not just in binary options trading. Staying focused and learning how to do one thing really well (applying your trading method, in this case) is generally the key to success.
So when you get the urge to go hunting for the holy grail, push distractions out of your mind and get focused again. The work you have done to this point has value. You just need to learn how to do even better trading what you already know, and see if you can give yourself more of an edge by maybe making some minor changes or additions. Keep enhancing your edge, and you should find yourself doing better again soon. Check this page for other mistakes you may also be making with your trading.
As a final bit of advice, it is best to make these changes without investing money. If you are losing money now, back off from live trading for a bit and get back to testing. Practicing with no risk using a charting platform and a demo account is a powerful capability. You do not have to wait for your system to break before you start improving it either. While you are doing well, take advantage of the time that gives you to focus on learning. Test improvements to your system with your charting software while you trade your un-modified system live. If you start achieving better results in testing, you can then implement those changes to your live, financed trading for even better results. Get started with charting software here if you do not currently have a platform for testing new trading strategies.
A few tips on tweaking your trading method can be found:
Use this youtube.com video to check your binary options trading system