Medintrade

Trading psychology #001 - The missed trade

Part 1 | The Trigger

This morning my custom-built indicator fired a beautiful short setup while I was out with the kids. By the time I came back to the charts the move was pretty much done, roughly 500 pips. Straight away I stopped looking at the market objectively and started looking at what could have been. That's dangerous because nothing has changed in the market... only my perception of it.

One thing Mark Douglas drilled into me is that every moment in the market is unique. The trade I missed this morning has absolutely nothing to do with the next candle that's about to print. Yet my brain immediately tries to connect the two. "You missed the move... now get some of it back."

Except... there is nothing to get back. I never lost those 500 pips because they were never mine in the first place.

I want to talk about what happened next, because this is where most traders quietly unravel and enter a never ending loop.

Part 2 | The Chimp

That's where I like the analogy of The Chimp from The Chimp Paradox. The Chimp doesn't understand probabilities, expectancy or long-term consistency. It trades emotions. It sees a chart that already moved and immediately starts negotiating with you. "Gold always pulls back." "You've been reading the market well all week." "Just take this reversal." What's funny is that it never sounds emotional. It actually sounds logical, and that's what makes it dangerous.

Something shifts in the brain immediately. Steve Peters calls it "The Chimp" that emotional, impulsive part of the mind that operates faster than rational thought and exists purely for survival and self-preservation.
The Chimp doesn't see a missed trade. It sees a threat. A loss of status. A loss of opportunity. And it wants to fix it. Now!!

That's not a trading thought. That's an emotional response dressed up as a trading thought. And the dangerous part is how convincing it sounds in the moment.

Part 3 | The reason

Mark Douglas talked about this in Trading in the Zone, the tendency to treat unrealised profit as actual loss. We look at a move we didn't take and our brain registers it as money taken from us. But that's a cognitive distortion. This is where a lot of traders confuse emotion with reasoning. We think we're analysing the chart when, in reality, we're just looking for reasons to justify what we already want to do. That's confirmation bias. The decision has already been made emotionally, the brain is simply acting like a lawyer trying to defend it.

The 500 pips were never mine. I didn't lose them, I simply didn't capture them. I even found myself looking for a long after that drop. Not because it was part of my plan, but because The Chimp wanted revenge. Luckily, my overall trading plan didn't agree with it, so I stayed out. Ten years in this business hasn't removed emotions. I still feel FOMO. I still get frustrated. The difference now is I recognise what's happening much earlier. Your ability to feel that difference in real time is one of the clearest markers of psychological maturity as a trader.

A losing trader chases and forces trades. A developing trader knows they shouldn't but takes the trades anyway. A consistent trader feels the pull, acknowledges it, and closes the screen. The trades that destroy accounts aren't usually the ones with bad set-ups. They're the ones taken for the wrong reasons, to recover a loss or a missed trade, to prove something, to silence the Chimp...

Part 4 | The Lesson

For me, that's what trading psychology really is. It's not becoming emotionless, we can't, we're humans. It's learning to separate the voice of your trading plan from the voice of The Chimp. One is based on probabilities built over hundreds of trades. The other only cares about self preservation.

That's also why I journal these moments. Not because I made or lost money today, but because this is the real work. Every time you catch The Chimp trying to take over and still stick to your process, you're reinforcing the habits that will make you profitable over the long run. You don't just follow rules. You become the kind of trader who follows rules. The decision gets easier not because the temptation disappears but because your identity starts rejecting the alternative.

Anyway... thought I'd share that while it was still fresh in my mind. Hopefully one or two of you needed to hear it today.

Plan. Watch. React. God bless 🙏

Done for the day! Sydney session delivered this morning, praise God!🙏

150 pips extracted for the community members. First trade of the week. Done by 9:30am (AEST).

No guessing. No hoping. The levels were marked yesterday night and the plan shared before market open.

This is what process looks like.

Good evening/morning everyone, I hope you had a great weekend with your loved ones!

As shared in Friday morning's analysis, the probability of price reaching the 4070-90 region on either Friday (Europe/New York) or Monday (Asia) was high and Goldie delivered on Friday. Last week finished with buyers finally stepping in after an extended sell-off, but from a higher timeframe perspective, Gold is still trading inside a broader bearish structure. This recovery might still only be a pullback until buyers prove otherwise.

Scenarios I'll be watching at open tomorrow morning:

Scenario 1: Confirmed rejection from the current watch zone (70-90), leading to a continuation to the lower liquidity pools.

Scenario 2: A deeper retracement into the H1 Fair Value Gap around 4135-4165, where sellers may become active again.

Scenario 3: Buyers reclaim higher timeframe structure and establish acceptance above the current resistance zones, opening the door toward the H1 Imbalance near 4355.

As always, these aren't predictions. They're simply the paths I'll be monitoring based on where liquidity currently sits. The market doesn't pay us for predicting. It pays us for reacting correctly. Always plan, watch, react. 100% technical analysis and probability trading.

I'll drop updates in the community as the price moves and develop during the week.

Have a great trading week everyone.

God bless🙏

Gold didn't give us much to work with on the lower time frames today so I called it early but before I log off, here's a freebie for you!!

Price is currently sitting around 3,980 after a clean sweep of strong lows as mentioned in previous trade ideas on Tradingview.

H1 + H4 levels I'll be watching into tomorrow and next week for swing trades:

🔴 H1 FVG at $ 4,170

🔴 H4 FVG at $ 4,100

📍 H4 Watch Zone — 4,136 / 4,066

📍 Daily Imbalance — 4,090

With "news" up today and the end of week/month no rush to trade, plan, watch, react.

Be safe out there. More of this inside the community!!

God bless.

Welcome to Medintrade.

After 10+ years in the markets and the last 2 years trading Gold full time, I decided it was time to build something I actually believe in. Not another signal group. Not a Lambo lifestyle page. Not a course from someone who started trading 6 months ago.

This is a private community built on three things. discipline, psychology and faith.

"Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established." Proverbs 16:3

That verse has been on my screen more days than I can count. This community is an extension of that commitment.

What I do here:

Weekly and daily Gold (XAU/USD) educational outlooks

Trade setup breakdowns, the reasoning, not the call

Trading psychology breaking the sabotage cycles that keep most traders stuck

A private Discord space to do the work seriously

If you're here as a founding member, thank you. You're part of something from day one and I don't take that lightly.

If you're still deciding, the link is in my profile. 50 founding member spots. Once they're gone, they're gone.

No hype. Just the work.

Medintrade