Trading seems so cool to do, but it is not that way most of the time. It is exciting to see prices move, but at times it can be boring to sit behind the financial screens for hours per day. This boredom brings along a danger and that is the danger of wanting to do something (=action) and thus place a trade while it is not (yet) opportune. As a entrepreneur and business-owner it just doesn’t feel good and right to me to just do nothing, but that is exactly what I have to do most of the time. It is one of my weak points in trading as I subconsciously have a tendency to come to action.
A first remedy could possibly be to acknowledge this possible pitfall to begin with. Something else that can help, would be to work with ‘limit- or stop orders’ instead of ‘market orders’. With ‘limit orders’ you have to think the order through and calculate your entry point in a more ‘calculated’ way. There is less emotion and impulse-action involved as can happen with placing ‘market orders’.
Another remedy against “overtrading” as they also call this urge to do something and trade, is to move from the 5 or 15 minute chart to e.g. the 30 minute chart. The slower timeframes give you more time to think and you are less inclined to open a trade by impulse.
One author worth mentioning here is Alexander Elder. In his book ‘Trading for a Living’ he discusses the psychological aspects of trading and gives good suggestions on how to deal with them. Definitely worth the read. Many traders believe that the psychological aspects of trading are way more important than technical knowledge or insight into the intertwining of all the financial markets or anything else. In other words, get to know your weak spots and work your way around them.