Hey Guys,
It's been a quiet morning so far. We had four crazy roller coaster days in a row, and then today things just suddenly slowed way down. It certainly doesn't mean we're out of the woods with the volatility just yet though.
I picked up YNDX stock today. I haven't seen any qualifying options setups in the last couple days, so there's nothing new on that front. I also didn't close any positions today. I don't have a position reaching a time limit until Thursday, so the only way I'll exit a trade before then is if it hits my profit target or stoploss.
I bought an MES futures position yesterday. When the price goes down and hits the lower Keltner channel, I wait for the price to have one full day "off" the lower Keltner channel and then I go long. That's the trade strategy that was triggered for this one.
Last night the thought flickered through my head again about how it stinks that I just took so many losses. That thought generated a feeling of mild anxiety. That was followed by a thought that I wished I could have had more positions open for the big drive up in the market yesterday so that I could have recovered more of the losses. That thought seemed to intensify the anxiety a bit.
Here's how I handled it. I noticed that my sense of urgency to recover the losses was based ultimately on wanting to escape the feeling of anxiety. So many of our decisions in life are based on chasing or avoiding particular feeling states. So rather than run from the anxiety, I chose to let the anxiety in. I dropped all thoughts and focused just on the feeling of anxiety inside my body. I rolled out the welcome mat and gave it the space to be there! I had no resistance to the anxiety. I fully accepted and allowed it. And interestingly, the anxiety ended up dissolving (although that wasn't my intention).
The experience served as a reminder that for many people, the reason they want more money is because they expect it will deliver an emotion that is pleasant (happiness, peace, etc). And if they lose money, they feel an emotion that is typically considered unpleasant (anxiety, fear, etc). So if you boil it down to what they're really after, you might say they're chasing one emotional state and trying to avoid another. Is that what this money chase is all about? Emotions?
And if so, what if we don't run from the negative emotions? What if we embrace those feeling states and allow them in. Perhaps that makes us less dependent on the outcome of the money chase. And almost paradoxically, perhaps that gives us better odds of making more money in the stock market, because then we can make decisions based on rational thinking and academics rather than emotions.
I don't know where this journey will take us, but I think having an awareness of how our emotions impact us might be a healthy way to give us better odds of benefiting from a back-tested edge.