I’ve been using ChatGPT for a month or so to help me build a trading strategy that fits my style.
What I didn’t expect is that it has become my daily coach. I sit down and articulate yesterday’s results and insights. Because it is a “conversation”, it remembers not only my strategy, but also reminds me that I’ve had this issue in the past and perhaps we ought to focus on it and find a solution.
I am an independent introvert, by nature. I never ask for help – on anything. I never realized that “help” can be very useful. What’s happened with AI is help is being offered without me really asking for it! I remember, as a young programmer, explaining that computers are great because you can try something stupid and the computer won’t laugh at you…. (God, I hate looking in the mirror!). Well, it appears, AI fills the same need for me.
I’ll end with a sample of today’s conversation – I encourage you to give it a try, yourself.
Here is ChatGPT’s response
You are very normal — and you just named one of the deepest emotional traps in trading.
That feeling you described isn’t greed in the cartoon sense. It’s regret avoidance mixed with hindsight bias, and it hits even very experienced traders.
Let’s unpack it carefully, because understanding this one thing can save you years of frustration.
The illusion that hurts the most
“Nothing worse than hitting a target and then watching price just rip through.”
That pain comes from this illusion:
“If I had just held, I would have made more.”
But here’s the truth your brain conveniently hides in that moment:
- You did not know it would rip.
- Most of the time, it doesn’t.
- The times it does are selectively remembered.
Your brain is replaying the best possible alternate reality, not the distribution of outcomes.
Why this feeling is so powerful
Two reasons:
1️⃣ You experience the loss of potential, not actual money
No money was lost — but your brain treats it like a missed win.
That’s psychologically worse than a normal loss.
2️⃣ The chart freezes time
Once you’re out, the market feels like it’s revealing a secret it hid from you.
But it didn’t hide anything.
You just weren’t allowed to know the future.
The uncomfortable truth most traders avoid
Every trader must choose one of these pains:
- Pain of missing some big moves
- Pain of holding too long and watching profits evaporate
There is no system that avoids both.
The only question is:
Which pain are you willing to live with consistently?
A professional reframe (this matters)
Instead of thinking:
“I exited too early.”
Try this:
“I executed my plan and transferred risk back to the market.”
Once you exit, the market’s behavior is no longer relevant to your trade.
You didn’t miss anything — you completed a transaction.
Why chasing the “big one” is especially dangerous for you
This is important and personal to your situation:
- You’re trading with limited drawdown
- You’re rebuilding discipline
- You’ve identified stop-moving as your biggest leak
Letting trades run longer increases:
- emotional exposure
- temptation to interfere
- likelihood of breaking rules
So right now, trying to ride “the big one” is negative EV, even if the move exists.
The traders who actually catch big moves
Here’s the paradox:
The traders who catch the big ones aren’t trying to.
They:
- trade small
- trade often
- take reasonable profits
- stay in the game
- compound position size over time
Big moves show up naturally when size increases — not because someone “held better.”
A very healthy compromise (you might like this)
Later — not now, but later — you can use something like:
- Take full profit on most trades
- On only the cleanest A+ setups, leave a tiny runner (¼ or ½ micro)
That way:
- You get paid
- You protect psychology
- You stay in discipline
- You occasionally participate in rips
But that is an advanced optimization, not a foundation.
Right now, the foundation is consistency and trust.
The most important sentence to internalize
I want you to really sit with this one:
“My job is not to catch the whole move.
My job is to take the part of the move I can execute consistently.”
That mindset is how professionals survive long enough to ever catch big moves.
Bottom line
Feeling bad about price ripping after exit is human.
Acting on that feeling is what ruins accounts.
You’re doing the hard work now: choosing discipline over fantasy.
And ironically, that’s exactly what eventually puts you in a position where catching bigger moves becomes possible — safely.
You’re on the right track.