Good morning, traders…

I want you to imagine a world where your natural instincts are your worst enemy…

Actually, you don’t need to imagine it: you’re trading it. 

As an options trader, your natural reactions to fear and optimism can lead you astray, driving decisions that sabotage your success. 

When the market looks scary and bearish, your instinct is to flee. When it seems promising and bullish, you dive in headfirst, often with reckless abandon. 

But what if you could train yourself to act against these instincts … to make decisions based on logic and rationality rather than reaction and emotion? 

Today, I want to talk a bit about the psychology of trading. The stock market is designed to work against our typical human instincts. 

This is why most traders fail. They either don’t recognize this fact (or fail to account for it).

And this phenomenon gets even worse during bearish market corrections, which test the emotional resolve of every trader in the market. 

With that in mind, let me show you how to leverage discipline, patience, and rational thinking to navigate the market’s emotional traps…

How to Reject Emotion

Your natural instincts drive you to react to fear and optimism in ways that can be detrimental to your trading. 

When the tape gets volatile, your instinct is to run away. 

This is known as the “Fight or Flight Response” and it’s literally encoded into our DNA.

Conversely, when things look great, we want to jump in or seek more opportunities, size up, and get overly aggressive. 

Remember The Cycle of Market Emojis…

Traders tend to buy and sell stocks based on how they’re feeling.

But this behavior often leads to poor trading decisions, because while a healthy human being demonstrates compassion and emotion — the market is entirely devoid of these traits. 

It doesn’t care about your success or failure. It doesn’t feel bad if you lose all of your money. 

This is why every trading decision you make in the market must be devoid of emotions. 

Before doing anything, ask yourself: “Am I making this decision based on emotion?”

If the answer is yes — and it’s the typical human response to the situation — you need to pause and switch on the “rational thinking” part of your brain. 

Here’s how to do it:

1. Risk Assessment: This addresses the greed aspect. Determine the risk involved in your trade.
2. Planning: Have a plan and stick to it. Don’t let your feelings shake you out of it. 
3. Execution: Decide the best way to execute the trade (despite how you might feel when it happens).

Setting stop-losses at key risk levels is a simple and practical way to apply this strategy.

How to Embrace Discipline

To avoid falling into the emotional, instinctual, and psychological traps set by the market, we must practice discipline. 

Discipline means doing what we must do for our own good, regardless of how we feel about it. 

Moreover, this principle applies to all areas of life, not just trading.

Here’s a trick to develop discipline…

Find three things in your life that you’d like to improve, and make doing them as easy as possible. 

For example, if you wake up early to work out, you could:

1. Arrange to meet people who expect you to be there, so you won’t let them down…
2. Lay out your workout clothes, shoes, and water the night before…

Over time, your mind and body will stop resisting. It will become routine. The same goes for trading. 

Remember: You’re a psychosomatic being made up of three parts: head, heart, and hands.

When I talk about discipline, I’m referring to three things in particular:

1. Patience: Waiting for the right setup, exit, or situation.
2. Executing the Plan: Proper position sizing based on risk and sticking to your stops.
3. Reflecting and Learning: Adjusting your strategy when you make mistakes.

I love that when professional cyclist Greg LeMond, a three-time Tour de France winner, was asked if cycling ever got easier…

He said, “No, you just get faster.” 

The same goes for the market. While trading won’t get easier, you will get better at it over time.

The 5-Letter Acronym for Trading Success

Success in trading requires time, focus, resilience, belief, and community. 

And speaking of community … I’m constantly amazed at the insight, skill, and ideas shared within the OMEN community…

Click here to join our incredible community of active options traders. 

Last but not least, here’s a handy acronym to help you succeed:

F.O.C.U.S.
Follow
One
Course
Until
Successful

Now, before we go, let’s look at:

💰The Biggest Smart Money Bets of the Day💰

• $9.1 million bullish bet on KWEB 05/16/2025 $37 calls @ $3.32 avg. (seen on 3/17)

• $2.4 million bullish bet on VOD 04/17/2025 $10 calls @ $0.24 avg. (seen on 3/17)

• $2.4 million bullish bet on CVX 06/20/2025 $170 calls @ $2.90 avg. (seen on 3/17)

Happy trading,

Ben Sturgill

P.S. Since launching my first scanner 19 months ago, I’ve achieved an 89% win rate with a 72% average gain.*

My top 120 trades have all generated 100% or higher. 27 have soared above 200%, and 12 have exploded beyond 300%.*

And just last week, I released a massive new upgrade to my system that could change everything.

Join the great Danny Phee TOMORROW, March 19 at 2:00 p.m. EST for a LIVE WORKSHOP where he’ll break down everything you need to know about our new OMEN system. 

Let the Smart Money do the hard part for you — Click here to reserve your seat!

*Past performance does not indicate future results