By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer Averaging down a losing trade rarely feels like a mistake while it is happening. It feels like conviction: the analysis was sound, the price is now better, and adding is what a confident trader would do. The difficulty is that the same feeling is present…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer Trading while tired is usually treated as a minor inefficiency — slower reactions, a missed level, a sloppy order. The more expensive effect is harder to notice from the inside. Fatigue changes which outcomes feel likely, and it shortens the interval between a market event…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer Prop firm challenge psychology is usually discussed as a matter of nerve: stay calm, follow the rules, do not overtrade. The advice is sound as far as it goes, but it skips the part that makes a challenge different from ordinary trading. A challenge adds…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer Trading decisions under market stress are not weaker versions of ordinary decisions. They are produced by a different process — faster, more habitual, less sensitive to what the screen is actually showing — and the written plan can be sitting a few inches away and…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer Moving the stop to breakeven too early is the one rule-break that looks like discipline. It removes risk, it is recommended in countless trading guides, and on the day it costs a trade nobody can point to a mistake. The position was simply stopped out…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer Being profitable on demo but not live is usually read as proof of something unflattering: that the strategy only works when nothing is at stake, or that the trader is the weak point in an otherwise sound method. The first reading is occasionally true. The…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer Overconfidence after a winning streak is the one trading-psychology problem that arrives disguised as evidence. The account is up, the last four calls were right, and the conclusion — that the read has improved — is the most reasonable thing available. It is also the…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer Mindfulness-based trading presence is usually sold as calm, and calm is the wrong target. A trader who is calm when the position is moving against them is not regulated; they are either numb or not yet paying attention. What presence actually changes is narrower than…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer | thewealthmirror.com Most lists of meditation apps for traders are lists of meditation apps with the word “traders” added. The ranking underneath is the one written for sleep, stress or productivity, and it answers a different question. A trading session makes three specific demands of…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer Analysis paralysis in trading produces a record with a distinctive shape: a small number of entries, a large number of charts examined, and a folder of screenshots of setups that were valid and never taken. The experience from inside is of being careful. One more…
