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 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…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer| thewealthmirror.com Emotional trading is the most-used phrase in this field and one of the least useful, because it names a symptom that four different mechanisms produce. A trader says they trade emotionally and means, variously: that they size up after wins, that they cannot close…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer | thewealthmirror.com Trading journal psychology has a well-documented problem: most journals are kept faithfully for months and change nothing. The entries are honest, often insightful, and frequently very well written. The behaviour they describe continues unaltered. Traders who notice this usually conclude they are journalling…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer | thewealthmirror.com Ego in trading psychology has exactly one piece of standard advice attached to it, and the advice is: get rid of it. Leave your ego at the door. Trade without ego. The market does not care about your ego. It appears in every…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer | thewealthmirror.com The neuroscience of trading under stress has become the most confidently cited body of science in an industry that rarely reads it. Three claims do most of the work. Your prefrontal cortex shuts down. Your amygdala hijacks the decision in milliseconds. Cortisol makes…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioural Finance Writer | thewealthmirror.com Tools to track emotional trading patterns are usually chosen from a feature list, before anyone has settled what actually needs to be captured. The result is predictable: a complete record of trades, no record of behaviour, and a conclusion two months later that…
By Sofia Harchich | Trading Psychologist & Behavioral Finance Writer| thewealthmirror.com Why a big trading loss feels personal is a question with a specific answer, and the answer is easier to see across six hours than across six months. What follows is a reconstruction of a single session, built to show why a big trading…
