 Welcome back to the trade hacker mindset. In this episode, I want to talk to you about why it's okay not to trade sometimes Trading the markets can be difficult to master and seemingly just out of reach Professional traders have a secret trading requires total mental and emotional control. It requires The trade hacker mindset All right, so let's jump into our discussion of why I think it's okay not to trade sometimes to give you a little bit of a context why this is on my mind and why I think it might help you is the time of this recording is Friday, July 30th and Today, I just decided not to do any trading and when I say trading I'm talking specifically about day trading today every morning. We day trade we stream live to our community For the first 90 minutes of the market open from 8 30 a.m. To 10 a.m. Central time and in that time I'm calling out trades. I'm actively trading executing trades right there in front of the community and so I Love it, but today I decided not to trade now. I can't just Decide I don't feel like it because I have an obligation to my community But what I did is we still stream live, but I did not personally execute any trade So I still called out the setups. I still called out the trades, but I didn't execute any trades And there's a couple reasons why One I this week I've just I've just I've had this weird head cold which has created kind of some brain fog I have a little bit of fatigue a little bit of tiredness You know and part of that is you've got to continue to take care of yourself You got to continue to take care of your body now. I typically get enough sleep. I stay pretty active But at the same time I'm Constantly going hard meaning, you know, I'm waking up at 4 a.m. Every morning. I go work out I get ready. I'm in the office. I'm preparing for the trading day. I'm trading. I am Doing other things for navigation trading whether that's creating content courses classes Presenting doing videos and then I have kids and so, you know after I get done with all that I get to go do kids stuff, which is very active in sports and all kinds of other activities, right? So I think part of it was, you know, sometimes you just go so hard go go go And finally your body your mind is kind of like, hey, let's let's take a little break And so I think that's part of what what's going on The other reason that I didn't trade today is because in my day trading on two so today's Friday on Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday I had three losing days in a row So I had three red days in a row and when you get in a situation when you're going through a little bit of a drawdown Sometimes it's best to either just I've talked about this before just scale down your position size really small or in this case Just don't trade and so that was that was part of the decision The third reason that I didn't trade today is because I just I have a lot going on and if you have distractions outside of your trading that can impact your decision-making when you trade Sometimes it's best just not to trade and so, you know, I've got a lot of stuff going on with with navigation trading on Thursday We presented we redid our entire options basics course. So I presented that on Thursday So I was doing a lot of preparing and presented that on Thursday We were in the final stages of getting to ready to roll out our new Trading platform to our members. So we're doing a lot of stuff there So I've just got a lot of stuff going on and it kind of took me Really being self-aware and focusing on the fact that hey, I do have a lot of distractions I've always got a lot going on and I feel like I'm a very good multi-tasker and I can handle it a lot a lot of times But I think today I just I just kind of woke up and I said, you know what? I'm just I'm just not gonna trade I just am not mentally there, you know We talked about in the intro of this podcast that to have the trade hacker mindset you have to have total and complete mental and Emotional control and if you are not Laser focused if you are not dialed in and you lose that focus while you're trading it can cost you money It can cost you losing trades and so that's why I decided not to trade today You see when you're when you're trading you have to be in the flow of the market You have to be trading in the zone You have to have this mindset that you can Emotionally go with the flow of the market if you find yourself budding heads with the market or if you find yourself at odds with your trade making decision then then that may be kind of a a red flag That maybe you need to take a break or maybe you just need to sit out for a while and watch the markets and and until you get Back into the flow of the markets Most of the time I can't stand not trading right I hate when we have those long holiday weekends. I don't like long weekends I don't like holidays when the markets closed because I love trading so much I love to be active in the markets But you also have to be self-aware that if you're having a losing streak or if you don't feel good If you don't feel like trading if you have outside distractions, then it's okay Just to not trade One of the great things about the business of trading is that you have total control Over when you enter and when you exit trades, right? We can't control the market We can't control what the market does what we can control is when we enter and when we exit trades If you're somebody like me who's just absolutely obsessed with trading you're obsessed with the market It's really hard to be self-aware To to tell yourself. Hey, you know what? It just may not be the best idea to trade today And it's very rare that I ever get to that point. I I don't remember The last time I had this This this feeling where I just didn't feel focused enough to trade it just it very rarely happens But when it does and I'm you know, it's one of those things that you have to be self-aware of It's one of the it's one of those things that I want to Continue to focus and be more aware of you know every morning Before I trade I always write down and try to be very self-aware of how I'm feeling Did I sleep good last night? How is my home life? Did I get in an argument with my kids or my spouse? Am I distracted by all these other things? And so when I wrote those down this morning It was very clear to me that hey, you know what? I probably should not be trading Based on the way I'm feeling based on all these other things that I've got going on And so so making that decision not to trade while it's very difficult to do It's something that sometimes you have to do now You know, you might be thinking well, that's not a big deal for me if I don't want to trade I just don't trade it probably could be a little bit different for me because I do have an obligation to our community Right. I can't just not trade because that's what our membership. That's what our community is all about But if I can still fulfill that obligation and at the same time be self-aware enough Not to put myself in a position that's going to be detrimental to me financially from trading and placing losing trades And if I'm not mentally in the game, then that's something that has to be done from time to time Now I I imagine when I come back in on monday morning I'm going to be fired up to trade, right? I didn't trade friday I'm not going to be able to trade saturday or sunday because the market's closed when the market opens monday I'm probably going to be itching for that opening bell and excited and and can't wait to get in so I imagine that will be the case But hopefully this helps In if you ever have that feeling if you ever get on a losing streak or or you ever get in a mental framework Where you just don't feel like trading. It's okay to take the day off I think one of the other things that that works against us Why it's so hard for traders like us who are obsessed with the markets to take the day off Is because I think a lot of times you have this fomo, right? You have this fear of missing out if I don't trade today I'm going to miss out on the potential profits that I could have had and and if you have We've talked about this in a previous podcast But why I think it's a mistake to have financial goals like I want to make 10,000 a month I want to make 20,000 a month trading if you have those financial goals Then it's going to make it even more difficult for you to take the day off If you're in a mental state where you shouldn't be trading Because you're going to think that you're missing out on a day that could get you closer to that goal Remember we are all human, right? I mean you look at I mean you look at what just happened with simony biles in the olympics I mean she had so much pressure that she quit the olympic team And couldn't perform now. I'm not saying I'm going simony biles and and I don't I don't feel like I I feel like I can handle the pressure and that so I'm not I'm not trying to compare myself But at the same time I mean you see you know all these elite athletes or all these celebrities and You know if you look just at their instagram profile, you would think that they never have a bad day You would think that they never need a break you think you would think that they are Almost untouchable invincible and that's just not the case. I mean we are we're all humans We all need to be self aware Of what we are doing and and what we're what we're thinking and and how we're performing and if if you need to Step away and like I said, this is a great thing about trading is you are in total control You don't have the Obligation to be trading every single day. So if you need to take a break, I hope you do I hope this was helpful Just it was on my mind So I wanted to share it with you all so if you've ever found yourself In this same kind of state of mind that you would understand that that everybody goes through it And it's part of life. It's part of trading and you can only do what you can do And the great thing about navigation trading is that you don't have to do it alone We have a community of traders Interacting on a daily basis that are helping each other out with not only the mindset stuff But sharing trade ideas with the sole purpose of helping each other become better traders So if you haven't checked it out go to community that navigation trading calm It's free to join. We look forward to seeing you on the inside or we'll see you in the next episode