The "I Wish I had syndrome"

Some weeks ago I referred the “I wish I had syndrome” in one of my articles assuming this expression was a sort of invention of mine. As I googled before starting to explain my ideas about it, I discovered that there's actually a book with this tittle, that doesn't seem to be a best-seller... I never read the book (nor intend to) but the way I see it is very simple:

Life is all about making decisions.

You already know that... Each day you make basic decisions: what to wear, what to eat, which products you have to add to your shopping list, who will you call for a glass of wine… Normally, those are “no-brainers” and they don’t take more than 2 minutes of your time. But then you have other decisions that can change your life, like which degree will you take, who will you date, what job offer will you accept, when will you buy a house… Those can take months, years or even a lifetime… Sometimes you can never decide or you decide when it's already too late. Regardless of what you do, most of the times you'll be driving forward always looking to the rearview mirror.

When you chose option A it’s almost inevitable that you wonder what would have happened if you had chosen option B, or C or D... This is where the “I wish I had syndrome” begins: when you regret not having taken a different road.

The thing with trading is that when you start, you tend to think your investment decisions can be made with the same litheness you decide if you’ll have a cappuccino or a caffe latte for breakfast.

But in trading you are risking your own money, and although sometimes you have little time to decide, you still must think thoroughly before you act. And if you don't have enough time to deliberate it's better if you sit on your hands and do nothing.

Beginners luck might make you feel like trading is easy.

But, as you start to lose money, you begin to understand that thinking is a must. But you also learn that overthinking can be dangerous, leading you to a paralysis that doesn't deliver profit. So firstly, you have to discover the length and depth of the analysis process that works for you, and secondly you must be prepared to a reality check: you can be right but miss the right timing or you can be wrong in your interpretation of patterns.?

Yes it's true... you can be wrong and when that happens you either acknowledge it (if you’re humble) or you develop some kind of conspiracy theory to transfer responsibilities to a third party, sometimes the market as a whole.

Humbleness is one of the most important features of a good trader.?

Only when you are humble are you available to learn. And only when you have such capacity will you look at a trade where you lost money to scrutinise your decision and identify why your rationale failed.?

The “I wish I had syndrome” can be a good thing in trading because it's not only about regret; it’s about regret and learning, studying harder, enhancing your checklist, improving analytical skills, building a mental framework of patterns and scenarios that will ultimately make you more cautious and unbiassed in future trade decisions.

Conversely, the “I wish I had syndrome” can be a toxic condition for trading, and for your life in general, if you look at past decisions with a feeling of sorrow that tastes like anger and keeps you trapped in the past, not allowing you to move forward.

Accept the fact that you will always lose money when you trade.

Sometimes you are absolutely right in identifying the trade but, as prices moves in waves, you can be stopped out of a deal because one single candle hits your stop loss level in a fraction of seconds. When this happens, you might wish you had defined a wider stop loss level, but when you have broader stop loss levels you magnify the possibility of losing a greater amount of money, and when that happens you wish you had been stricter in your risk management strategy.

Other times you are so right that you hit your selling price target but prices continue moving favourably, and then you wish you had stayed in the business longer so you could multiply your profit. But it can also happen that when you stay for too long you miss the timing to exit and you watch your profit decrease to nothing, and then you'll be wishing you had stopped the deal earlier.

Traders are not fortunetellers. So you'll never know what the future holds (even if that future happens within the next five minutes).

So please don’t be so hard on yourself and don’t be so furious against the market. Just keep moving on, because learning how to deal with disappointment will give you strength and that power will improve you as an human being, and consequently as a trader.