Revenge Is A Dish Best Not Served
"How much better to heal than seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes a lot of time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?"
—SENECA, ON ANGER, 3.27.2
When I thought about today's meditation from a trading point of view, the thing that immediately stood out for me was revenge trading.
If you allow yourself to revenge trade, because a trade goes badly wrong and you get angry and desperate to recoup your loss as soon as possible, there will generally be one outcome; further pain and suffering, from further losses!
Revenge trading means that you abandon the rules/criteria for your strategies, you will even use much bigger stakes than you would normally! You will trade the very next opportunity on impulse, regardless of whether it meets your rules/criteria or not, because you are desperate to recoup your big loss and all reasoning goes out of the window! You've lost your patience, discipline, trading mindset and you are now on full tilt! STOP! This is something that you cannot afford to let happen and if you take a much bigger loss than expected, you must walk away and stop trading, before you do even more damage, if you are feeling this way! You must be in control at all times.
So when it comes to trading "revenge is a dish best not served" too!