Trading anxiety: a four-minute downshift before the open
Anxiety before the open is your body preparing for an event it cannot predict. Give it something physical to do and something already decided.
Is this you?
- —Your chest tightens in the last ten minutes before the bell.
- —You take a position before your setup exists, just to stop waiting.
- —You want out of trades the moment they are on.
- —You sleep badly before sessions you care about.
Two or more of those and this is the state costing you the most, not the strategy.
What it actually costs
Entries taken for relief are not trades. They are the most expensive way to end discomfort, because they put you in a position you never planned at a size you did not choose.
The protocol: The Two-Minute Downshift
Trigger — Any of these before or during a session: shallow chest breathing, a clenched jaw, your cursor hovering on the exit button with nothing wrong on the chart.
- 1.Stand up. Both feet flat, shoulders down and back.
- 2.Ten breaths: four seconds in through the nose, six seconds out through the mouth. Count them out loud.
- 3.Name three things you can see that are not screens.
How long — Two minutes.
Read the full protocol, success test and what to do if it fails →Do this in your next session
Ten minutes before the open: two minutes breathing four in and six out, then two minutes writing your maximum loss, your one setup and your stop time. Read all three back unchanged.
Not sure this is your state?
The quiz takes two minutes, needs no sign-up, and names your top three protocols out of the fourteen.
Keep reading
Work it through with the Coach
Describe your last bad trade. It names the state, picks the protocol and gives you the exercise to run before the next session. Free to use.