My day to day routine, involves various acitivies that must be completed within a certain time frame, otherwise when things roll over, there is a good chance I will start to become lackluster in each task I have set myself to complete throughout the day.

Once we received notification that the UK was to go into “Lockdown” – The first thing I thought was, great…I have more time to dedicate to trading.

Considering that I only trade the opens of each session, to have the time to trade throughout the day, I was probably the only person that was happy about going into a lockdown.

One thing Covid did teach me was to never deviate from habit. Just because you have the time to trade more does not mean you should change what is working, purely because you have more time to do so…

The problem I had during my formative years was, the fact I had so much time to trade, set me up for more exposure and more losses. If I started the day positive, I would try and keep earning more, If the day started off negative, I would try and recover.

Prior to Covid, If any session started and finished negative, I would stop for the day, I mean, the market will always be around, why force yourself to trade? However, due to the fact that I had so much free time, I took this as an oppotunity to trade more because “I had the time” to do so.

I would say this was the biggest mistake I made over the past few months. I have learned a thing or two about habit, It can change in an instance.

I became complacient, I thought, now I have so much time to trade, regardless of what happens, I can recover any losses, trade more because I had the time to do so…Wrong Wrong Wrong.

For a breif amount of time, I realised that what had taken me, best part of 6 years to install in my mind about habit and discipline, simply disappeared.

All because I had more time.

Without going into to much detail, I will get to the crunch of things.

1) A habit that you have dedicated so much time to ingrain into your mind, must be respected as a habit and not be changed, simply because a change in your every day routine allows you to spend more time “Trading”

2) Your approach to trading should not change. I will admit, I did feel as though I was experiencing FOMO. All because I had more time to trade.

3) Your system of choice is designed to help you find high probability set ups at specific times. I made the mistake of thinking that just because I had more time to trade I would see more set ups…Man I was wrong, so wrong.

To you the reader, if there is something you can take from this, it’s this…Your system, if profitable, says to trade at certain times, then trade those times. Do not allow emotional triggers to make you believe that because, in this instance, COVID, put everyone in lockdown, you have more time to trade, means you forget about what your system tells you to do.

This experience proves that if you become nieve within any endevour, any slip ups, will cost you. Stick to your system and rules.