For those who trade full-time or use their spare time after work for trading, you’ve probably lived through those infuriating days: you sit in front of your monitor all day, staring at price movements, waiting for a trade signal to trigger. You sit there for 4 straight hours, eyes fixed on the slow crawl of your chosen X-minute chart—it moves like a Dementor, slowly sucking away your joy and motivation. And in those 4 endless hours, not a single trade signal appears.

Eventually, you can’t take it anymore. You decide to go out for a smoke, grab some lunch from the bakery next door, or maybe just take a bathroom break or shower. But when you return, the chart shows the perfect textbook trade signal—and you missed it. Frustrated, you sit back down, stare at the screen for another 4 hours, and all you get is the same soul-crushing, mind-numbing price action.

You start to feel annoyed, thinking, “I wasted the whole day and did nothing.” Your brain echoes that thought: “Trading is your job, but you didn’t make a single trade today—so you accomplished nothing.”

You tell yourself, “There’s no way I’m ending the day with zero trades.” You don’t want the day to go down as unproductive, so you start browsing altcoins, hoping to find one that looks “decent enough” to take a gamble on. You pick a random altcoin and jump in—only to end up losing $1,000.

You’re so angry you want to smash your keyboard.

If you let those negative emotions drive your actions, forcing yourself to go against your trading principles, days like that could turn into nightmares that define your trading career. People often lose money simply out of boredom or restlessness, leading them to trade without any edge or plan. Trading without an edge and without a plan almost always ends in losses.

Even if your strategy does have an edge, and historical data clearly shows that long-term consistency leads to profits, the key is to stick to your plan and execute it with discipline. Let your capital grow steadily over time. But some traders just can’t wait. They push leverage to chase faster profits—and end up losing more than they imagined, wrecking their entire trading strategy.

“The hardest trade is not trading at all.”

In reality, trading is a game of patience—waiting for the market to give you the right entry opportunity.

As many traders have said: “I spend 2% of my career actually placing trades, and 98% of it waiting for the right moment.”

If you have a high-probability trading system, then aside from waiting, what else should you really be doing? Most traders envision their ideal PNL (Profit and Loss) curve as a slow, steady rise with the occasional sharp spike—those spikes represent rare but lucrative opportunities where you entered a position with size and conviction.

Trading is a long-term game.

There won’t be opportunities every day, and you definitely won’t profit every single day. Your primary goal should be to survive long enough to catch the big opportunities.

As mgnr once said on Twitter:

Translated text from the image:

In discretionary investing:

The correct position is usually flat.

The correct action is usually inaction.

You’ll have five “money lying on the floor” moments a year.

Pick them up.

Then go back to doing nothing.

That’s how you beat the market.

Of course, if you’re a high-frequency or ultra-short-term trader, this advice might not fully apply. But you can still draw inspiration from it—it reminds you that most of your portfolio’s growth will come from a few big, high-conviction trades. Until those show up, your mission is to accumulate capital through disciplined execution.

But what if you’re just… bored?

Here are a few ways to stay productive:

In my upcoming article “Introduction to Trading Journals”, I mention that the main goal of keeping a journal is to help you answer three key questions in trading:

• How can I make more from my winning trades?
• How can I lose less on my losing trades?
• How can I create more winning trades?

If you spend time refining your edge to generate more trade signals—or even discover new edges—you’ll not only create more “work” for yourself (more trading opportunities), but also keep your mind actively engaged.

If for some reason you don’t want to change your strategy, then pick up a hobby. Play video games, go for a run, post memes on Twitter, chat with friends on Discord, play poker—whatever helps.

For me, I play Legend of Mir or some PS5 games.

In my case, I play Legend or some PS5 games.

So, what’s the solution?

Unfortunately, there’s no perfect fix for boredom in trading.

What works best for me is making a commitment to myself:

No matter what happens, no matter how bored I get,

I only trade according to my strategy, and only when the right moment comes.

I absolutely will not trade out of boredom.

Never place a trade just to “do something.” That’s gambling.

Trading is about placing positive-expectancy bets.

If I wanted to gamble, I’d go play blackjack.

Control yourself.

If you feel like you’re losing that control, step away from the market before you make a dumb decision.

There are countless traders who have been wrecked simply because they ran out of patience—don’t be one of them.

Disclaimer:

1. This article is reprinted from [ForesightNews]. The copyright belongs to the original author [Delta]. If you have any objections to the reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team. The team will handle it as soon as possible according to relevant procedures.

2. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article represent only the author’s personal views and do not constitute any investment advice.

3. Other language versions of the article are translated by the Gate Learn team. The translated article may not be copied, distributed or plagiarized without mentioning Gate.io.