Investing should be done professionally. DYOR, TYOR are but a couple of abbreviations that you will get to read as you pore through investing articles.

DYOR is simply Do Your Own Research. TYOR is Trade at Your Own Risk. We have to face facts here. Investing in crypto is exciting for some, but scary for most. It’s volatility is enough to induce heart attacks or depression on the one hand or euphoria and ecstacy on the other hand. So how does one handle such a situation?

Let’s look at how professional traders do their day trading. They read research papers of different listed companies. Then they identify which are oversold and overbought, through technical analysis. They buy these stocks then add on gains and loss percentages on the stocks prices (For discussion purposes, we will peg it at 10%). So if they put 1000 USD’s on a certain stock, it is common practice to put stop loss orders when the portfolio goes down to 900. This simply means that they put orders to sell when a certain price point is reached. Stop Loss obviously means that the price is going down by 10%. This is essentially a signal, that the trader is only willing to lose 10% of his investment. On the other side of the spectrum is when prices go up. You put an order to Sell, when prices increase to by 10%, making a 100 USD profit on your trade. This cycle is then rinsed and repeated daily.

These percentages are arbitrary to the type of investor. 10% may be huge for some, but small time for others. If you are on the aggressive spectrum, then 10% is peanuts. Conservative investors though would see 10% as too much and would probably opt for five to eight percent loss. It could even be a mix of both, 10% loss but 30% wins.

That’s one of the stark differences with professional traders and retail investors. Professional Traders don’t have buyers remorse, false hopes, untamed greed and fears. They let the numbers do the talking. If it goes up, sell. If it goes down, sell. At the end of the day, they average their wins and losses and see which won. Unlike most of us, when prices go down, we cling to our calls like we would never make a mistake and if it goes up, we hope and pray that it goes up higher before we sell. That results in 75% losses like several of my holdings! Hahaha!

This mindset is also very useful in crypto. You set the buy price and the sell price, execute and repeat. You then average your figures at the end of the day to see if you’ve won or lost for the day. Do this daily and you will get your monthly results as well. Do this monthly and you get your annual results.

Why am I discussing this? Because over the years, I’ve talked to young people, who are dead set to make a living by day trading. Citing several people they know or heard of who are doing spectacularly. Let me tell you something. You rarely hear the circumstances they had to go through to get where they are. You don’t see their failures, their struggles, their sacrifices. All you see are the fruits. And these fruits come because they have learned to tame their emotions and do the necessary hard work and persistence to stick to their plans. They don’t cry because they lost on a trade or dwell much too long on a win. They simply move on to the next trade.

In the end, that is why discipline is a must in investing. Discipline to stick to your trading plan. Personally, I need to practice this more on my end, as to be honest about it, I too am still learning. But then again, who among us isn’t?

DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial adviser and what you have read here is purely my opinion and may be used to further your own research. This is not financial advise. Cheers!