Every day we get tons of emails from course members, coaching students, and people interested in our services. One of the most common questions contains a chart as an attachment and the question of "Why did this position go against me?".

Let's step back to look at the world's best trader with the world's best trading strategy. This trader has the fastest, greatest trading platform, a brand new computer, multiple trading monitors, and is in the perfect mindset to be trading. This trader knows more about markets than virtually anyone else in the world. Yet sometimes, this trader is wrong. Sometimes this trader enters into a losing position. This trader sometimes sees red on their P&L screen just like you or I do.

Trading is by far an art, not a science. There are going to be times that we are just wrong, and sometimes we will be able to explain and understand why we are wrong and where we went wrong, but other times the market will do things that we simply don't understand and don't know how to explain. This is a completely normal event. Most traders only enter profitable trades about 60-70% of the time. The other 30-40% of the time they find themselves either in a position that is just going no where or in a position that is working against them. It happens. It's part of trading. Does a good basketball player make every free throw? How about baseball-- if a player was batting a .400 batting average they would be the highest paid player in major leagues. We all see quarterbacks in football that end a game completing less than 60% of their passes and they make millions a year.

So let's apply this same logic to our trading. As traders we aren't expected to be perfect and bat 100%. We're expected to win more than we lose, so enter winning trades at least 50% of the time, and we're expected to use our money management to make sure we make more money than we lose. Putting ourselves in a position where we expect to be right 80, 90, or 100% of the time only hurts our trading more than it helps. It's extremely important to look back on our trades to understand where we went wrong and learn from our mistakes, but at the same time we are going to have some trades that we just simply can't understand. It's just part of trading. So next time you find yourself in winning trades 60% of the time, instead of being overly critical of yourself and hurting your trading psychology, give yourself a pat on the back and realize that you're doing better than most traders out there. Your mindset is everything in trading, and by being less critical of yourself and your trading you will not only feel better about your trading but chances are you'll do better too.