Part 2: Envying Other Day TradersProvided By Ultimate Trading Systems Laziness And Inattention From Day TradersLazy day traders are certain to become losing day traders. Inattentive day traders neglect to research and monitor their positions and markets, so they dont have a good sense of what strategy to employ. Lazy day traders dont have a concrete plan, and trading without a plan is one of the surest ways to lose in any market. Lazy day traders might buy a stock because they see that it's been going up steadily for a week and a half. They don't know why, but they do know the experts say its a "strong" stock. They buy it in the morning, it goes up a few percentage points, and the day traders assume theyve made a winning trade. To the day traders surprise, the stock does a falls in the afternoon and starts going down as steadily as it went up in the morning. The lazy day traders can't figure out what went wrong. Why did it fall? If they'd simply bothered to check the earnings calendar, they'd have seen that the company was scheduled to report earnings that day after the market closed. The steady run-up was in anticipation of the earnings announcement, and now day traders were taking profits and getting out of the stock in case of a negative reaction to the earnings results. What should day traders do in this situation?
Here, the rule is simple that all day traders should know: If you're sick, emotional, or cant properly focus due to outside events, don't trade. Take a break. The reason is simple. If day traders trade when they're not feeling well, physically or emotionally, they won't trade well. They'll just lose money. At the very least, they'll be too distracted to trade successfully. Day traders must learn that knowing when not to trade is an important form of discipline they must learn. This discipline is also necessary on days when the market is so directionless and choppy that no trade is going to go anywhere. But the main point here is to be in good enough touch with your emotions that you can recognize when youll be unable to focus properly. In any case, it's healthy to get away from the market for a day or two, or even a few weeks, from time to time. The time away will help you regain perspective about what things in life really matter. And if you need to trade every day, it may be a sign of an unhealthy addiction.
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