Emotional Trading
Making buy or sell decisions based on how you feel rather than on pre-defined rules and objective market conditions.
Emotional trading is the broad category that covers every trade placed because of how you feel rather than what your plan says. Fear, greed, boredom, excitement, overconfidence after a win, desperation after a loss — all of these generate trades that your sober self would never approve.
The insidious part is that emotional trades feel logical in the moment. You always have a reason. "It was breaking out" — no, you were bored. "The risk/reward was good" — no, you were trying to recoup yesterday's loss. The post-trade journal exposes the real reason.
Systematic traders are not emotionless — they are disciplined. They acknowledge the emotion and check it against the rules before acting. The pause between feeling and action is where real skill lives.