Forgetting About The Larger Players

I'd like to share with you one of my biggest trading mistakes, and what I learned from it. Mistakes help us grow. Maybe my experience can be of interest for others... so here it goes.

I would constantly see perfect setups in front of my eyes and my training would kick in to get ready. Everything seemed right: my read of the market, the overall flow of the trend - basically all my requirements were met. So like most aspiring traders, I did my money management to calculate my risk followed by looking for the perfect spot to get in to have the least amount of downside. 

I opened the trade....

I've done this type of trade hundreds of times, my inner confidence is soaring high, while my training is constantly reminding me in the back of my head, "Don't forget, you can be wrong, Don't forget, you can be wrong."

Trade begins to go in my favor, my confidence now locks in. After a small short run in positive, it retraces and I'm back at breakeven. However, due to my high confidence, I'm considering this to continue to go in my favor - I hold on...

The trade takes longer than usual. During this whole time, I'm thinking to myself, maybe I entered too early? Maybe the market is just waiting to fill up more orders?

The retracement slowly inches more and more into negative until it eventually stops me out. Now I'm left in a state of confusion because I've done this trade hundreds of times, all my analysis was triple checked to make sure everything is correct, my money management was strict as well - what could possibly be wrong?

The market bounces right back! I'm now thinking, "I did enter too early!!" 
I do my money management again and I re-activate my trade. The trade again, goes in my favor a little bit and begins to slowly retrace little by little until it eventually stops me out again. Now my frustration has increased. I'm down -2R ( 2 x my risk amount per any given trade ) and whats worse is, everything still looks correct as per my requirements and my technical analysis however it's just not going. 

I'm now at a crossroad, money management tells me you've had 2 hits on this trade - "Back off!" 
The other side of my mind tells me "This is your Edge, this is where you thrive, you've seen it plenty of times where it just needs a build up and then it takes off" a sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) starts to settle in. 

Repeating everything above, I now take my third hit and this time I stand aside. "I'm done. This trade is not for me."

Within a few candles, the market goes as smoothly as expected. At this stage, unlike most individuals who spend this time to go out on forums and tell their friends "I told you so." I'm a bit more grounded and confused because I'm trying to look for the answer - Why? What did I miss? I honestly don't care if I was right in the direction, if I didn't make money on it, I can care less who was right or wrong. Even the boy who cries wolf is eventually right once :)

It is after rigorous tracking and testing, I was able to pinpoint, my trades work to ultra perfection at times and then at times, it takes longer to activate. This was a major problem for me. While my environment tells me, "Your market edge is fantastic" I'm sitting there concerned, that when my edge is NOT fantastic, I end up giving away 2-3x my risk because of all the attempts. This is a major major MAJOR problem. 

I had to take a step back for a few weeks from my love and passion for trading and just observe my charts and monitor the places where I would normally trade. Now that I'm not involved in the trade - my mind is a lot clearer and is attentive to focus on the little things. I started marking down when my trades were perfect and when they were mediocre. 

The answer always came out to the same thing: Presence of the Larger Players.

My trading setup was of that of the larger players however my trading was not being done together in sync WITH them. Once I started to adjust and adapt to this, I was quick to increase my profits and decrease my losses dramatically. A concept so simple yet so easily overlooked by me in the past for years on end. This would continue to be my biggest Ah-Ha moment I have got from Post Analysis.