Last week's Emotional Mastery for High-Performance Trading webinars were a huge success! A big thank-you to all the traders who showed up and played full out with the determination to resolve their trading challenges. You playing full out made these sessions so powerful.

Because you brought your A-game, many of you started breaking through those persistent old trading challenges and brought in new better habits.

Emotional Mastery webinar success
Here's to continued growth

Here is to continued growth and mastery on your trading journey!

Why This Trader Could Not Take His Loss

During the webinar I worked with a trader to uncover why he could not close a losing trade—even after his exit strategy was clearly triggered and he knew there was no recovery in sight.

Logically, he understood it was time to exit. But emotionally, he felt stuck—hoping, resisting, frozen. Together, we got to the root of what was really going on beneath the surface, and that is when the mindset shift began.

The Slippery Slope of a Profitable Trade Turned Emotional Trap

In the 5-minute Dow Jones chart (see screenshot), this trader nailed the long entry—perfect timing, strong profit early on. But when price pulled back, he convinced himself it was just a retracement and the uptrend would resume.

DJIA 5-min chart showing perfect entry and initial profit
Perfect entry — then the slippery slope begins

Never average into a losing position.

Jesse Livermore

Despite knowing Jesse Livermore's golden rule, he added to the trade. The market kept selling off, but he clung to his bullish bias. He began shifting his stop loss, and then removed it entirely.

✓
Perfect entry — strong profit early on
↓
Pullback — convinced it's just retracement
↓
Added to position — broke Jesse Livermore's rule
↓
Moved stop loss — clung to bullish bias
↓
Removed stop entirely — that was the moment things started to unravel

Price flushed downward. He was now deep in a losing position—logically knowing he had to exit, but emotionally he could not get himself to do what he knew he had to. In his mind the loss had grown too big to accept, so he held on, hoping for a miracle bounce where he could maybe get out break-even.

DJIA chart showing deep loss and eventual exit
Deep in loss — hope doesn't help

But as we all have learned at some stage in our trading career—hope does not help! Eventually, the emotional pain of holding the loss outweighed the fear of closing it. That is when he finally exited.

The real issue

This is the kind of self-sabotage that happens not from lack of knowledge—but from old conditioned emotional patterns. Recognizing it is the first step. Reprogramming it? That is where the real journey to mastery begins.

The Core Emotional Drivers

He did not break his rules because he did not know them. He broke them because of what was driving him underneath:

🧊
Mental Freeze
The break of his support area caught him by surprise and the move was so fast, that his mind completely froze.
😰
Fear of Missing the Bounce
Every time he thought of closing the trade, the fear that the trade would turn the moment he took the loss and skyrocket leaving him behind in the dust kicked in.
🙏
Bargaining and Prayer
He started praying: Please turn around! If it turns around this time and I will get out break even, I promise I will be good next time and always take my losses. (Of course, it is an empty promise as long as the root cause of this behavior has not been resolved.)
😔
Shame
On the surface level he wanted to avoid the emotional pain of taking the loss. But what was underneath was that loss felt shameful for him.

Through guided coaching, I helped him bring to the surface the exact emotions, thoughts, and even past experiences fueling this self-sabotaging behavior.

How I Helped This Trader Overcome This Pattern

Step 1
Identify The Core Emotional Drivers
We brought to the surface the exact emotions, thoughts, and past experiences fueling this self-sabotaging behavior. Once conscious, we could address them directly.
Step 2
Interrupt and Rewire the Pattern
Once the emotional triggers were clear, we started reprogramming his mind:
Identifying ways to deal with unexpected market moves: We worked through different scenarios where he used to get caught by surprise and consequently froze in the past, and practiced several new ways of how he could respond with the situation from a place of empowerment.
Reprogramming his automatic thoughts: Instead of allowing his mind to entertain thoughts of his trade turning around without him, I helped him redirect his focus to what truly matters: What does the price action tell you and what is your risk management? Always focus on protecting the goose that lays your golden eggs, aka your capital.
Somatic anchoring: Helping him build emotional safety around taking losses.
Mental rehearsal: We practiced rule-following scenarios to retrain the brain.
Continued growth and mastery

I hope you find this newsletter helpful for your own trading journey.

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