Before you started trading systematically, you had some open trades for whatever reason you had. Should you close those trades now that you’re going to trade systematically so you can follow the rules?

You don’t have to close it. If you had an informed and educated reason or plan for that trade, you could leave it there and follow that plan. But if the trade was placed because of the hype or didn’t want to miss out, then you don’t have a plan. If you don’t have a method that will work, then I suggest taking that, which was a discretionary trade. You pull that money into your systematic portfolio and start trading it with the rules because what will happen is you’ve got this position. This doesn’t have rules around it and you don’t know exactly you’re going to get out. You don’t know how you’ll manage it in advance.

If the market goes up, that’s going to feel great. But if the market goes down a long way, it’s not going to feel great. You’re going to lose money, and it will be more and more emotionally difficult and more panic as the market falls. And what you’ve learned in the Crypto Success System is that this market goes up very fast, but it also falls very fast.

We don’t want to sit through that if we don’t have to. If we take that position that doesn’t have a plan around it, put the money into a system, the system will get us in when it’s moving up, or get us out when it’s moving down, or keep us safe and reduce our stress, and it should improve your results long term. But if you have a strategy that you are following around that initial trade that you already have, you can keep following that strategy.

If you don’t have a strategy, be honest about that with yourself and realize that trading without a strategy is dangerous. And then just put that money into a system and be done with it, and you’ll do a lot better with a lot less stress.

author avatar
Adrian Reid Founder and CEO
Adrian is a full-time private trader based in Australia and also the Founder and Trading Coach at Enlightened Stock Trading, which focuses on educating and supporting traders on their journey to profitable systems trading. Following his successful adoption of systematic trading which generated him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year using just 30 minutes a day to manage his system trading workflow, Adrian made the easy decision to leave his professional work in the corporate world in 2012. Adrian trades long/short across US, Australian and international stock markets and the cryptocurrency markets. His trading systems are now fully automated and have consistently outperformed international share markets with dramatically reduced risk over the past 20+ years. Adrian focuses on building portfolios of profitable, stable and robust long term trading systems to beat market returns with high risk adjusted returns. Adrian teaches traders from all over the world how to get profitable, confident and consistent by trading systematically and backtesting their own trading systems. He helps profitable traders grow and smooth returns by implementing a portfolio of trading systems to make money from different markets and market conditions.