Go ahead, try using empty positive self-talk to prevent you from making impulsive trades. If that prevents you from making impulse trades, that’s great. You can ignore the rest of this post.

But, the reality for most traders is the impulse trades keep happening, no matter how much positive self-talk you engage in. The urge to put on a trade will easily overpower the positive self-talk, your post-it notes, etc.

Your intellect, logic, etc may drive your thinking, but in the heat of the moment, it will be emotion that drives your actions.  The reality is that humans are fundamentally emotional creatures.  Leading brain scientists like Antonio Damsio tell us that emotion is involved, even required, in every decision we make.

One of the things I teach my clients is to anticipate the urge to put on a trade. Anticipate the feeling that comes with the urge.  Acknowledge it. Label it. Analyze it.  And you will find that you have additional ability to control your actions.

And that’s what it comes down to. Controlling your actions.  Emotion is not the enemy, emotion is information. Re-direct some of your attention to analyzing your feelings and you’ll probably notice that you put on fewer impulse trades.

You have a choice, you can keep doing what your doing and continue to get the same results, or you can address the issue head-on. My self-paced Advanced Course goes into this in detail. At minimum, sign up for my free email newsletter that gives you new trading psychology tips every two weeks.