Good morning, traders…

Have you ever frozen mid-trade?

Your hands stop working, your head floods, and before you know it, the moment’s gone.

Instead of sitting on gains, you’re left with regret and a stale cup of coffee.

I’ve been there. Too many times. And not just in trading.

Pressure has a funny way of showing up when you least expect it. You don’t suddenly rise to the occasion. You fall to the level of your training. 

That’s why Steph Curry can hit a nearly half-court shot at the buzzer. That’s why Sully landed the plane on the Hudson. And that’s why a seasoned trader can hit the buy button in a scary market without flinching.

They didn’t guess or hope. They trained.

If you want to stop freezing and panicking in the face of a great setup … you need to prep now, not later.

Let Me Show You 5 Ways To Condition Yourself Before The Pressure Hits…

Use Training Wheels

You don’t send a kid straight onto a ten-speed without first letting them wobble around on training wheels. The same goes for trading. If you’re just starting out, run paper trades. Set up alerts. Mark key levels. 

Don’t put real capital at risk until your strategy starts to show results in simulation. 

Track your would-be entries and exits. Then review them. Ask yourself: Did this follow my rules? Was this a setup I trust? What would I do differently next time? 

The goal is to build repetition and increase your confidence. 

Confidence under pressure doesn’t come from guts. It comes from reps.

Control What You Can, Ignore What You Can’t

Pressure exposes gaps in your system. The more you tighten what you can control, the fewer gaps you’ll have when the heat turns up. 

• You can control how well you sleep. 
• You can control how you prep each morning. 
• You can control how many names you’re watching. 
• You can control how you size your trades. 
• You can control whether you chase. 

These aren’t little details … they’re a huge part of your trading success. 

If you walk into the market flustered, underslept, unsure what you’re watching, and guessing size … you’re already down 15 points at halftime.

The antidote? Build pre-market routines that lock in these controllables like clockwork…

The market doesn’t care about your plan. Headlines break. Volume dries up. Spreads widen. Sometimes your perfect setup gets ruined by a random downgrade or a hot CPI number. 

Your job isn’t to control outcomes, but to control your behavior. 

Stop trying to predict every move or win every trade. It’s exhausting. 

Let the September Effect chaos play out in the background. You stay grounded. Trade what’s in front of you, not what you wish was there.

Build Repeatable Habits

Habits build identity. Identity shapes performance. 

The more you repeat a habit, the more automatic it becomes. And under pressure, you need automatic. 

Think about a basketball player at the free throw line with the game on the line—he doesn’t reinvent his form in that moment. He relies on what he’s done 10,000 times. 

That’s what you need. Build a repeatable routine. Morning scan. Market prep. Risk plan. Trade execution. Post-trade review. 

That’s how you build trust in yourself. When pressure shows up, that trust is your anchor.

Pre-Plan Your Response

Most people panic under pressure because they never planned for failure. They’ve only imagined the trade going right. They’ve visualized the green PnL, the win, the exit near the highs. 

But when it goes wrong, they freeze. 

So plan for failure in advance. 

What will you do if your first trade of the day is a loser? What if you take three stops in a row? What if you break your rules? 

Don’t wait until it happens. Write it down now. Rehearse it. Say it out loud. Build a muscle-memory response so you act instead of react. 

That’s how professionals stay calm under pressure. They’ve already decided how they’ll handle the storm. No thinking required, just action.

This is what the world’s best traders do. They condition themselves daily, so that when the moment comes, they don’t freak out. 

They simply follow through.

Happy trading,
Ben Sturgill

P.S. Want to learn how to execute trades like this?*

The best place to start is in our Smart Money Workshops.

You’re one click away from the best setups in the options market. 

Join us TONIGHT at 4:00 p.m. EST.

*Past performance does not indicate future results