I still remember the day I turned a massive home run into blown accounts, and I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t by taking small trading wins.
I had followed my plan perfectly. Hit my targets and a lot more. The trades were done. But instead of closing and walking away, I sat there watching the chart, convinced that this was THE move. The one that would make my week. Maybe my month.
You know how this story ends, right?
The market reversed. I held on, sure it would come back. It didn’t. What started as a disciplined win became a revenge trading nightmare as I tried to make back what I’d just lost. By the end of the session, I’d given back three days of careful, consistent profits.
That’s the greed trap. And if you’ve been trading for more than a week, you’ve probably fallen into it too.
Here’s what I wish someone would have told me when I started trading: the same psychology that makes you chase bigger wins is exactly what keeps you from building real wealth. We celebrate the idea of small consistent gains, but deep down, most of us are still hunting for home runs. And that contradiction is killing our accounts.
Let me show you why your brain is wired to sabotage your success, and more importantly, how to fix it.
Why Your Brain Hates Small Trading Wins
There’s a reason why a post about a 0.97% gain gets flooded with comments from traders saying “this is the way” while those same traders are secretly disappointed when they close a trade for only 1%.
We’re wired for it.
Our brains evolved to seek big rewards. Finding a fruit tree with enough food for a week was way more valuable than finding a handful of berries. The problem? The market isn’t a prehistoric forest, and treating it like one will drain your account faster than you can say “just one more trade.”
Trading psychology, greed in particular, isn’t about being a bad person or lacking discipline. It’s about your brain doing exactly what it was designed to do in an environment where those instincts work against you.
When you close a trade for a small profit, your brain doesn’t release much dopamine. It’s underwhelming. Boring, even. But when you imagine that same trade running for 5%, 10%, or more? Now we’re talking. Your brain lights up like a Christmas tree.
The cruel irony is that the emotional high you get from imagining the big win is often bigger than the high you’d get from actually achieving the small win in front of you. So you hold. You wait. And you watch your actual profit disappear while chasing the fantasy.
I’ve done this hundreds of times. You probably have too. You hit your target, but it feels too small. Too easy. Surely the market has more to give, right?
Wrong.
That feeling of “this isn’t enough” is the greed trap talking. And every time you listen to it, you’re training your brain that disciplined trading doesn’t feel good enough. You’re literally rewiring yourself to fail.
The Math That Changes Everything About Consistent Trading Profits
Let me show you something that changed how I think about trading forever.
A trader who makes 1% per day on a $10,000 account, counting only weekdays when the market is open and compounding those gains, would have over $110,000 at the end of one year.
Read that again.
One percent per day. That’s it. That’s the “boring” gain that feels like it’s barely worth the effort.
Now, I’m not saying you’ll trade every single day or that you’ll never have losses. Real trading doesn’t work that way. But here’s the point: small gains trading isn’t small at all when you zoom out. Consistency compounds in ways that home runs never will.
Most traders never see this because they’re too busy trying to hit 10% in a single trade. They’ll risk their whole week trying to make it happen, give back their gains when it doesn’t work out, and end the month break-even or worse.
I used to track my trades in a spreadsheet, and honestly, it was too easy to ignore the patterns. I’d remember my winners and conveniently forget about the times I gave back profits chasing more. When I finally started using proper trade journaling software (I use a custom Notion template that I built, but TradeZella is perfect for this too if you just want plug and play), and I’ll be honest, seeing my actual statistics was brutal at first, I couldn’t hide from the truth anymore.
My biggest wins weren’t my most profitable trades. My most profitable trades were the ones where I followed my plan, took my small gain, and moved on. The home runs I was chasing? They showed up maybe 5% of the time. And the other 95% of the time I spent trying to manufacture them cost me way more than those rare wins ever made me.
The math is simple: consistent beats spectacular. Every single time.
But knowing the math and actually feeling okay about taking small profits are two very different things.
Breaking Free From Revenge Trading and Unrealistic Expectations
Here’s where the greed trap gets really nasty. It doesn’t just make you hold winners too long. It creates a cycle that’s almost impossible to break without serious self-awareness.
You chase a bigger win. The trade reverses. Now you’re frustrated because you had a profit and let it slip away. That frustration turns into determination to “make it back.” So you take another trade, probably one that doesn’t match your setup, with bigger size than you should, because you need to recover what you just lost.
This is the revenge trading cure nobody wants to hear… you have to feel the pain of your mistakes without trying to immediately fix them.
I know that sounds harsh, but stay with me.
Every time you try to make back a loss right away, you’re teaching your brain that the solution to emotional trading is more trading. You’re reinforcing the exact pattern you’re trying to break. The cycle continues: greed leads to losses, losses lead to revenge trading, revenge trading leads to bigger losses, and bigger losses make you even more desperate for a home run to fix everything.
The way out isn’t another trade. It’s accepting that today’s loss stays a loss. Tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities, and the only way to get there with your account intact is to stop trying to force the market to give you what you want right now.
When I finally broke my revenge trading pattern, it wasn’t because I found some magic strategy or indicator. It was because I set a simple rule: after any trade where I felt emotional about the outcome, I was done for the session. No exceptions.
At first, this meant I had a lot of really short trading days. I’d take one trade, feel disappointed about the small gain or frustrated about a loss, and have to walk away. It felt like I was missing opportunities. But here’s what actually happened… I stopped giving back my gains. My consistency improved. And slowly, my expectations started to shift.
This is such a DIABOLICAL SHIFT from the trash you see on social media! But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Small gains stopped feeling disappointing because I wasn’t comparing them to fantasy scenarios anymore. I was comparing them to my actual results. And my actual results were finally trending in the right direction.
Rewiring Your Brain for Realistic Trading Expectations
The real work of escaping the greed trap isn’t about changing your strategy. It’s about changing what feels rewarding to your brain.
Right now, if you’re like most traders, closing a trade at your target feels slightly disappointing. It feels like you’re leaving money on the table. That feeling is the problem, and you can change it.
Here’s how I rewired my own expectations, and how you can too.
First, start celebrating process over outcome.
I know this sounds like generic self-help advice, but hear me out. When you close a trade at your target, that’s a win. Not because of the percentage gain, but because you did what you said you’d do. You followed your plan. You acted like a professional trader instead of a gambler.
In my trading journal, I literally started marking trades as “process wins” even when the dollar amount was small. Over time, getting those process wins became what felt good. The dopamine hit came from discipline, not from profit size.
Second, make your small gains visible.
This is where something like TradeZella becomes genuinely useful, not just as a tracking tool but as a psychological one. When you can see your consistency rate, your average win rate, and your equity curve smoothing out, those small gains stop feeling small. They become data points in a bigger picture of profitability.
I have a screenshot of my equity curve from my first three months of truly consistent trading. It’s not dramatic. There are no massive spikes. It just trends steadily upward. I look at that image whenever I’m tempted to chase more than my plan allows. That boring, steady line represents more profit than I ever made when I was hunting home runs.
Third, practice gratitude for what the market gave you.
This might sound weird, but it works. When you close a winner, even a small one, take five seconds to acknowledge it. “The market gave me an opportunity, I took it, and I profited.” That simple mental practice shifts you from scarcity mindset (there’s never enough) to abundance mindset (there are always more opportunities).
The market doesn’t owe you anything. It doesn’t care about your bills, your goals, or your need to make back yesterday’s loss. Every profitable trade, regardless of size, is a gift. Treat it that way.
Finally, set targets based on your actual edge, not your financial needs.
This is huge. So many traders decide they need to make X dollars per day or per week, and then they force trades to try to hit that number. Your edge doesn’t care what you need. It produces what it produces.
When you align your expectations with your edge’s actual performance, trading becomes so much easier. You stop trying to squeeze more out of setups than they can give. You take what’s there and move on. And paradoxically, that’s when you start making more money.
The Compound Effect of Consistency
Let me tell you about Sarah. She’s not a real person, but she represents every trader I’ve talked to who finally broke through after years of struggling.
Sarah spent three years trying to grow her $5,000 account into something meaningful. She’d have good months where she’d get up to $7,000 or even $8,000, then she’d have a bad week and be back to $4,000. The cycle repeated endlessly.
The turning point came when she stopped trying to grow her account quickly and started trying to not shrink it. She focused entirely on consistency. Her only goal was to end each week with more than she started, even if it was just $50.
The first month, she made $340. Disappointing, right? That’s less than 7% on a $5,000 account. But she didn’t give any of it back. The second month, she made $420. Third month, $510.
Six months in, she’d grown her account to $8,200, and for the first time ever, she didn’t give it back. She just kept building. Small gain after small gain. The compound effect of consistency had finally clicked.
A year later, her account was at $14,600. Not because she hit any home runs. Not because she found some secret strategy. Simply because she stopped falling into the greed trap and started treating small gains like the powerful tools they are.
This is what consistent trading profits actually look like. Not exciting. Not dramatic. Just relentlessly effective.
The traders who make it aren’t the ones chasing 50% months. They’re the ones who stack 3% week after 3% week until they look up a year later and realize they’ve completely transformed their trading account and their relationship with the market.
Who wants to be a millionaire? This is the way!
Ready to Transform Your Trading?
If you’re tired of the cycle of chasing big wins, giving back profits, and revenge trading your way into bigger losses, it’s time to address the real issue.
It’s not your strategy. It’s your identity.
The Identity Lock System is a 30-day email training program designed to rewire your identity into a disciplined trader. It’s not about learning new setups or indicators. It’s about becoming the kind of trader who naturally takes small consistent gains because that’s who you are, not just what you’re trying to do.
I built this system after years of falling into the same traps you’re experiencing right now. The greed trap. The revenge trading cycle. The constant disappointment of knowing what to do but not being able to actually do it consistently.
If you’re ready to stop fighting yourself and start building real, sustainable consistency, learn more at thetrappedtrader.com/the-identity-lock-system.
The market will always be here tomorrow. The question is whether you’ll still have an account to trade with. Small consistent gains aren’t sexy, but they’re what separates traders who make it from traders who blow up.
Take the small win. Close the trade. Do it again tomorrow.
That’s how you beat the greed trap. That’s how you win.
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