Don’t Get Mad At Your Stocks | Podcast Episode #232

0:07
Hey, I’m Ryan Mallory, and this is my swing trading the stock market podcast. I’m here to teach you how to trade in a complex, ever changing world of finance. Learn what it means to trade profitably and consistently, managing risk, avoiding the pitfalls of trading, and most importantly, to let those winners run wild.

0:25
You can succeed at the stock market, and I’m ready to show you how. Hey everybody, this is Ryan Mallory with Swing Trading the stock market, and I’ve got a really good episode for you guys today entitled Don’t get mad at your Stocks.

0:41
And look, not many people are willing to openly talk about it. You go on Twitter and you follow some of these people who proclaim to be experts on the stock market and act like they know every move that it’s going to make next, they’ll never admit to ever getting angry at the stock market, much less ever admit to being wrong.

0:59
So, It’s not a topic that a lot of people talk about, but it’s a topic that a lot of people struggle with. I know I have struggled with it and I’m gonna talk a lot about that today and talk a lot about how I’ve been able to overcome that and how in the end, it will make you a much better trader.

1:17
And remember folks. Make sure that you sign up for my swing trading the stock market patron account. This is gonna give you access to all my stock market research each and every day from watchlists and trade setups to updates on the FA stocks and market indices.

1:33
It’s literally some of the best research you’ll get your hands on and it’s simplified so that you can be able to understand it, no matter your level of experience in the stock market. So check that out and make sure that you’re sending me your questions about your trading. And your strategy at ryan@shareplanner.com because I do read them all and I want to make a podcast episode out of every one of them.

1:51
So what am I drinking? I am drinking Crown Royal peach, not a bourbon. I have had this thing sitting in the cabin for a while now. I’ve been kind of deathly afraid to try it, but I figured, you know what, what’s the one thing that’ll probably make me angry on a podcast talking about not getting angry and drinking some cheap crappy.

2:12
Whiskey known as Crown Royal, not only that, but it’s peach flavored. That one, I tried it, it tastes like a peach that you might get from Aldi that’s probably been sitting there a couple of days past expiration. It doesn’t smell that great. Yes, it smells like a peach, but it’s not that good.

2:28
Now, uh, to the taste, it’s it’s horrific. It’s really bad. I mean, again, all you taste is the peach. It’s not that strong. It’s a 35% alcohol, making it 70% proof. And I think if somebody was going to enjoy this, they’d have to be really, really drunk.

2:44
I mean, it’s just not good. Yes, it’s probably something that you have to mix with another drink to make a, a cocktail with, but I don’t know if I would even like this in a cocktail. I mean, I just think it’s trash. The taste of peach is way too strong, it makes me want to wipe the flavor off my tongue with sandpaper. I mean, it just is not good.

3:00
Scale of 0 to 10, I’m gonna give it a 1.7. It is not good, not good at all. So we’re talking about not getting mad and I drink some crown peach. I gotta tell you, it’s kind of gets me mad. But anyways, though, all joking aside, anger is a major, major driver in the stock market for individual traders and even investors.

3:24
A lot of this is gonna come from taking big losses, from realizing missed profits. Feeling just stupid, maybe the market makes you sell and then it rips higher or you sell at the very low tick of the day. Yeah, that’ll get you angry, especially when you see it go right back up.

3:40
A string of bad luck in the stock market, that’ll definitely do it. And then just when you feel like you haven’t had much luck in the stock market at all and it’s like, how can I possibly be wrong this much? And you start feeling like the market is picking on you. There’s so many things that can drive you.

3:57
To anger in the stock market. Now, for me, it hasn’t been big losses because I don’t really take big losses. I mean, I’ve taken them in the past when I was an undisciplined trader, but I mean, not anymore. And sometimes the missed profits will get me a little worked up. I’ll get frustrated by that.

4:13
Feeling stupid, yeah, uh, look, I’m on social media a lot with Twitter and stock twits and TikTok, and when I’m wrong about something, Yeah, you definitely feel a little bit stupid and it can lead to a little bit of anger, but the good thing is, is what you’re going to find throughout the course of the episode is that I’ve done really good of getting that under control.

4:30
I don’t care much anymore about what people think of me because I feel like I’m established enough in my trading to where. I know I’m a good trader. I’ve done it long enough to realize I’m a good trader, and I’m just not gonna get worked up if I have a bad trade. If people want to judge me by my last trade, then so be it.

4:46
But there’s times too where I’ll have like 4 or 5 losing trades in a row and I’m just like, what in the world is going on. You start doubting yourself. You start getting angry when that next trade is a loser as well. And yeah, you feel a little bit picked on by the market, even though the market’s not picking on you.

5:01
And there’s times where I get upset or I have been upset. And I’m actually staying very disciplined in my trading. I’m not going outside my trade parameters. I’m managing the risk. I’m keeping it tight. I’m taking profits along the way, but I still feel stupid by remaining disciplined. Let me tell you, again, it’s not a problem anymore, but there was a time where I went through a lot of keyboards.

5:23
And a lot of mice. I guess mice is the plural for the mouse that you use on your computer. I’ve broken a lot of mice, and I used to have a desk when I first started off trading, man, there were so many like scratches and dents on that desk for me just slamming things down or, or whatever.

5:40
I don’t use that desk anymore and the desk that I have now, they’re flawless. I don’t have any scratches or anything like that on the desk, and it just kind of shows you the growth as a trader. But I broke so many keyboards and so many mice. I’d have to keep going back to Best Buy and getting new ones.

5:55
I had to actually start getting the protection on them, knowing that I would probably break them again in the future. I didn’t have much confidence in myself not to break them. And yes, I would continue to break them. I thank goodness. Best Buy has a great policy on their returns. I mean, it’s like they’ll replace it for whatever reason.

6:12
So that was good. I don’t know if that’s a plug for Best Buy or not, but one of the things that I realized when I acted out of anger and my trading. Is how stupid I felt afterwards. Broke a keyboard, let’s say it was like $120 a keyboard. I felt stupid afterwards cause guess what?

6:28
I gotta go buy another one. I gotta go take time out of my day and go buy another freaking keyboard cause I don’t have one that works. I even ended up getting backup keyboards knowing that I didn’t want to have to leave in the middle of a trading day to get a keyboard or a new mouse. And it would usually make my bad day worse.

6:45
I can’t tell you too, the market, it’s so interesting how the market and our emotions correlate with extremes, and it’s not just with me, it’s with so many others too, that when you get frustrated most, it’s oftentimes a telltale sign that the, you know, if we’re in a bear market and you’re just getting killed by constant sell-offs.

7:02
It’s almost a telltale sign when you kind of reach your peak mad that the market’s gonna start bottoming. I can’t tell you how many times I broke a keyboard and the stock reversed it and I actually made a profit on the day, which made me even more frustrated because like I said, it made me feel stupid for getting so angry so easily, and it ate into my profits because if I have to replace a $100 keyboard.

7:24
Because of that trade, that just eats into my profits. So there’s been a lot of growth over the years. Remember, I’ve been doing this since I was 11 years old. I wasn’t breaking keyboards when I was 11. But over the years though, I mean, and it’s been years since that’s happened to me, but over the years, I’ve become a better trader and especially in the area of managing my emotions.

7:42
And let me tell you, I can’t just go through a mouse anymore either. I’m 41. I don’t know how Tom Brady does it, but I can’t throw a mouse across the room like I used to. Usually I’m paying for it in my shoulder for like the next 2 or 3 days. I got to warm up my gun slinging arm before I start chucking a mouse across the room.

8:00
So the last thing I want to do now is throw a mouse and then I’m paying for it for the next 3 days and having to go see a chiropractor cause I threw my back out in the process. One of the things that I found too is that when I was getting angry with my training, it was oftentimes linked to being Undisciplined in my trading.

8:16
That doesn’t mean I was ignoring stop losses, but maybe it was I was over trading my account where I was revenge trading. I mean, you want to get mad, get stopped out of a stock and revenge trade because you want to make that money back in that particular stock because there’s no way that there’s not a better stock out there that you just got stopped out of that couldn’t recover those losses a little bit better.

8:36
No, we got a revenge trade in the same exact stock that just caused us to take a loss that we didn’t want to take. So. The worst thing is you revenge trading and you lose again on it. And I’ve had that happen to me as well. And so what does that do that just makes you more mad. And the worst thing you can do as a traitor from a human relations standpoint is to let your bad day creep into how you treat your family, how you treat your wife or your husband or your kids.

9:03
You can’t let that stuff get into your personal life. And yeah, there’s times when my wife Jen, she can tell when I’m having kind of a rough day in the market, you know, if I’ve taken some losses or I’ve, you know, made a bad trading decision or whatever, but I mean, she can tell it, you know, I mean, I’m not like irate and yelling at her or people, but sometimes it’s like, man, I just tell her it’s like, yeah, I just kind of.

9:25
Feeling bummed out today about it. So, and that’s OK. Look, everybody talks about how you have to trade emotionless. This podcast episode is not to try to say you need to trade emotionless. You can’t. We’re humans, we’re made to have emotions, but it’s about making sure that it doesn’t go to extremes that we’re not getting set off by something that our son or daughter says, or we get snappy with our spouse because.

9:51
We’ve had a rough day and we just don’t want to put up with it. You still have a life outside of trading and you still have to be sane and not let what happened to you in the stock market carry over into your real life because then you do that enough, that’s where marital problems come up.

10:09
That’s where your kid is talking to a counselor one day about how crazy their dad got because he couldn’t control his emotions when they were growing up and he would always snap at you. You don’t want that. You don’t want that to be. Your legacy with your kids, so you have to make sure that you’re not getting angry, that you’re not letting those emotions carry over into your family time.

10:29
And one of the best things that you can do is when you do feel that anger coming up, take a walk around the block, put the pen down, turn the monitor off and go walk around the block and try to cool off. Sometimes it’s getting a little bit of sun and. Just getting outside and realizing that the sky’s still blue and that the sun’s still in the sky will help you get through some of those days.

10:49
It just helps you cool off, but when you got your face just plastered into the monitor looking at these one minute charts and getting worked up about every move up and down, up and down, that’s not good for you. So much of my trading too has come from trying to manage emotions, trying to make sure that I’m not putting myself in a situation to make a bad trade.

11:09
For instance, I don’t like to trade in the 1st 30 minutes of the trading day. I know there’s a lot of you guys out there that like to do that and even have strategies built around that. For me, I avoid it like the plague. And the reason why is because there’s so much emotion in the stock market already, how unpredictable it is in that 1st 30 minutes.

11:27
What’s up, it can become down and what’s down can be up. Within that 1st 30 minutes, multiple times, and it doesn’t always define the ultimate direction that the market’s going to take on the day. So knowing that’s a very emotional period of trading and I don’t need to add more emotions to my day than there already is, I just avoid the 1st 30 minutes of trading, and it’s not just me that does that.

11:48
There’s plenty of traders out there that do it for the same exact reasons. One of the other things that really helps me out a lot is becoming more systematic in my trading, how I’m taking profits along the way. I expect to take profits. Always. Now, if a stock goes from, you know, my entry point and I’m now up 5 or 6%, oftentimes, that’s a good time to start maybe taking like a third off the table if I have like 6% of profits and I have a 3% stop loss.

12:13
Look, you already got about 2 to 1 for what you just risked on the trade. Let’s start taking some profits off the table. Let it run some more because when you do that, when you take some profits off the table, what you’re doing is allowing for that risk to get smaller. You’re gonna become less emotional about the trade, and that’s a good thing.

12:29
It’s good because you’re likely to make better decisions with having a 1/3 off the table and managing the 2/3 of a position going forward because there’s less money involved and you’re probably gonna make even more money having 2/3 than 1/3 because you’re gonna have less emotions involved.

12:46
And then once you take that off, then you can let that last 1/3 just really run wild if you want it to because you’ve already captured a lot of your profits in the trade. And they’re secured because they’re back in your account. So becoming systematic, having the stop losses in place, taking profits along the way, having a average stop loss that you usually try to have, like your emotions might be a little more crazy if you go from like a 2% stop loss on one trade to a 20% stop loss on the next trade.

13:12
That 20% is gonna be a lot more wild of a ride than that 2% stop loss that you had on the other, and it’s probably gonna become more frustrating too because If you have a 20% stop offs, you need like a 40% return just to get a 2 to 1 return on the amount that you risked for that reward. But if I’m being honest, I bet you in my lifetime, I’ve probably destroyed. 15 keyboards, 15 keyboards, and 20 mice.

13:37
The mice are easy to break. In fact, nowadays, because I’ve been using the same keyboard for so long, I have it wired into my computer. I don’t have a wireless keyboard because those ones, I mean, you can go WWF on those keyboards and start smashing it against something and usually all sorts of.

13:53
Keyboard pieces start flying everywhere. And even if the keyboard survives, good luck trying to find all those keys that just went flying off. And then like I said, probably about 20 mice. I mean, those suckers are easy to break too. They’re not as sturdy as you think. I’ve had a couple of them that’s really held up well, like they’ve taken on a few tantrums.

14:09
But overall, I’ve learned through the years that getting mad at the stock doesn’t change its outcome at all. I think the most frustration you’ll see from me when it comes to trading, when I’m feeling like I’ve Miss some profits or I just feel stupid or a string of bad luck.

14:25
It usually gets just a deep sigh for me and maybe an eye roll. That’s about it now. Maybe that comes with age, maybe that comes with getting older, but for me, that’s about the extent of the emotions that I have in the stock market. Do I let it carry over to my family time? No, but sometimes I’ll tell them I’m feeling a little bummed out, but that doesn’t mean that I’m gonna take anything out on my family, so.

14:45
And with anger and with trading, you’re gonna learn a lot about your understanding as it pertains to greed and fear and hope and your views on money. I mean, the stock market brings it all out of you and you got to expect that if you’re new to trading, expect that you’re gonna be tested emotionally and how you respond to those emotions and how you can consistently respond to those emotions will go a long ways on how successful you are as a trader, because if you can keep it together and be systematic in your trading.

15:15
As much as possible, especially as it pertains to profit taking, how it pertains to managing the risk and stop losses and how you plan out your trades, you’re gonna be OK. I think too people get very angry when they get sold on a story when it comes to a stock.

15:30
There’s so many people like right now, it’s nuts when I go to different boards on whether it’s stock twits or if it’s a mention on Twitter, but more so on stock twits because they have individual boards and you got these like cult. of individual stocks, it seems like. And you say something about AMC that’s negative.

15:47
It’s not about me bashing a stock. It’s about, hey, AMC broke resistance or Sophie has a series of lower lows and lower highs, wouldn’t buy it. Looks like the trends continuing to the downside. I get so much hate for that, like crazy hate. And I can tell you, most of them are losing and most of them are angry because they’ve bought into a story, whether it’s with like Sofi or AMC or GameStop.

16:08
So many people are thinking, OK, if I just keep holding it. My shares in AMC and GameStop, I’m sticking it to the man. What they don’t realize is that there’s plenty of people that have held their trades and held their shares in a particular company during market downturns and they lose everything.

16:27
It’s just a matter of fact, guys. And when you trade, you’re not doing it for anybody else. That’s what’s so stupid is that there’s so many people out there that are like saying, hey, I’m holding it because I want to stick it to the man. No, you’re holding it and you’re penalizing yourself. It’s like everybody roaring kitty or whatever the guy was with GameStop.

16:46
People were. So angry, they felt like they’d been cheated in life and they looked to this guy as their idol, as their hero. Well, he’s selling parts of his GameStop position along the way. I don’t know what his current state is, but I remember him saying, hey, I sold some of this here and I sold some of that there.

17:03
Let’s say, for example, he sells $2 million. Of his position, who is he selling it to? The people who are following after him, they’re buying the shares that he’s wanting to get out of. So in essence, these big whales on individual stocks or these people who are selling like millions of dollars of shares.

17:20
They’re selling it to people who are going to likely become on these Wall Street bet stocks, future bag holders. It takes like God knows how many thousands of people to absorb all those shares that a big whale is offloading. And if he’s unloading it at a high point in the stock, that means he’s just creating scores of future bag holders.

17:43
And so there’s a lot of anger on these boards. They feel cheated and they can’t handle any kind of criticism or even a chart with some technical analysis on it without feeling like they’re being attacked. Don’t be like that. If a stock is making you that angry, it’s so much better not to even be in that stock.

17:59
Don’t get attached to your stocks, don’t get married to it and don’t get sold on the story behind them. If you’re going to be a traitor. If you’re an investor, that’s one thing, OK? I still think you should use risk management on trading for the long term, but most people when it comes to trading, They’re buying into these stories too.

18:17
They don’t know how long they’re gonna hold into it. They say it’s a trade that I’m trying to, you know, make 100% off of it. They don’t know how long it’s gonna take. They hope that it doesn’t take very long. That’s why they’re getting into it now because they feel like they’re gonna miss out on that 100% move any time now, and then it doesn’t happen. There’s anger, people criticize it, they feel like that’s in a direct attack and that somehow that person is trying to manipulate the stock.

18:39
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been accused for buying puts on AMC and GameStop. I’ve never done that. Never done it once, but yet, Every day somebody will almost accuse me of doing that very thing. In the end, trading, if you embrace the fact that you got to control your anger and you look at the Raw responses that you have to money and fear and greed as it pertains to the stock market, you’re gonna become a much more calmer person if you work to become more systematic in your trading to help prevent those raw reactions and the throwing of keyboards or busting of the mouse, and you’ll find that there’s not much in life that will get under your skin, at least I found it for me, that will get under my skin because trading has helped mellow me out a lot because I also know too, if I don’t mellow out of my trading.

19:25
I’m never going to survive and that’s what’s happened to me over the years, and that’s what I want for you guys too. There’s a lot of people who struggle with anger for the very reasons that I mentioned earlier, whether it’s a big loss, missed profits, feeling stupid, making a stupid mistake. I didn’t even mention that one, but sometimes you might be trying to sell 100 shares of the stock, but instead, you end up buying another 100 shares of the stock.

19:46
You doubled your position. And you didn’t even know it. And then like the next day when you open up your brokerage account, you think you’re 100% cash and you see that you’re taking a major loss on the stock. Yeah, that’s frustrating. That’s anger. Probably one of my most angry moments. It was probably one of the last moments that I had a real true anger outburst in the market was when LinkedIn got bought out by Microsoft.

20:06
Now, I kind of give myself a pass for that one because I got stopped out 30 minutes before the close, and a lot of you guys who have listened to this podcast for a long time have heard me tell the story, but for the new ones, I’ll tell it again. I got stopped out and I’ll do it real quick. I got stopped out 30 minutes before the close on a Friday afternoon, only to wake up.

20:24
Monday morning to it getting bought out by Microsoft at a 60% premium. Dude, there was no keyboard or mouse in sight after that. Keyboard pieces were everywhere. I was mad, really mad. I don’t think that had ever happened before, so it did elicit a very raw response out of me.

20:40
I was mad. I’m glad nobody else saw that. But again, I had to go to Best Buy and get a new keyboard and mouse. Any case, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like and subscribe. Leave a 5 star review for me if you could relate to this podcast today.

20:55
That really means a lot whether you’re listening to it on Amazon, on Apple, on Spotify, whatever your platform of choices. Make sure to leave a review those. I actually do read them too, and they do mean a lot. And I try to take to heart what you guys have to say about it as well. Also, make sure that you’re sending me your emails, ryan@shareplanner.com so I can answer your questions, plus, make sure to check out swingtradingthestockmarket.com.

21:17
Thank you guys. God bless. Thanks for listening to my podcast, Swing Trading the stock market. I’d like to encourage you to join me in the SharePlanner trading block where I navigate the stock market each day with traders from around the world. With your membership, you will get a 7-day trial and access to my trading room, including alerts via text, email.

21:36
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21:53
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at ryan@shareplanner.com. All the best to you and I look forward to trading with you soon.