Sticking to a routine and strategy is challenging, but watching the markets during the times when you are not actively trading can also be challenging. Why? Becase of FOMO!

FOMO: The fear of missing out. An unreasonable fear for disciplined traders. A fear that plagues new traders, and often results in deviating from a plan. May also cause strategy hopping.

If you’ve been trading for any reasonable amount of time, you’ve surely had a winning trade that kept on running if you held it longer, or got stopped out of a losing trade that reversed and continued in the direction you were hoping it would go. These situations are dangerous, because they can lead you to take trades that are not part of your plan, or even cause you to search for a different strategy that would either help you not get stopped out as much, or help you to hold on to winners longer.

Part of the trader’s journey is realizing that they will almost never catch an entire move from top to bottom, nor will they have a perfect stop loss that minimizes drawdown and maximizes risk. If you do manage capturing a move perfectly, you can assuredly call it luck.

battling FOMO

So how do you deal with FOMO? One strategy is to simply close down your charts when you are finished your trading session or routine. Keeping the charts open will tempt you to keep looking for more trades.

Essentially, you need to accept that FOMO will creep into your mind, and you need to learn to ignore it. You need to consciously choose to NOT act on it, knowing that it will be detrimental to your performance and profitability.

I liken the mindset required for trading to the mindset of a monk. Monks are taught to be disciplined and in a state of zen. This means that external distractions will not affect their mindset, and this is the kind of mindset traders can benefit from. The emotional attachment to profits and losses are a topic for another day, but meanwhile, you can control the FOMO by trusting your routine and choosing how to react to FOMO.