Optimization Over Maximization
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Traders often fall into a trap when they look at charts in hindsight and see perfect entries and exits. The mind starts imagining how much more money could have been made, and this pushes the trader into profit maximization thinking instead of process thinking. The brain begins to believe that it should catch the full move every time, even though that is only possible on past charts, not in real trading. When the focus shifts to outcomes, emotions take control. You feel happy when a trade goes your way, upset when it doesn’t, and the worst feeling comes when you book profits and the price keeps rising without you. To avoid this emotional pain, traders keep changing indicators, tweaking settings, and searching for a perfect system that never loses. But this search never ends because such a system simply does not exist. The market is driven by probability, not perfection, and trying to force accuracy through profit maximization only creates more fear, more greed, and more disappointment.
When you backtest a system, the real test is simple: Are you satisfied with the returns? Can you handle the losses? Can you sit through the drawdowns without losing discipline? If yes, then just follow the system. Don’t try to increase the profits or remove the losses, because there is always a trade-off. You cannot have everything—more profit usually means bigger drawdowns, and smaller drawdowns usually mean less profit. Optimization is not about making the system perfect; it is about making it workable for you, based on your own execution skills and emotional strength. Many traders get influenced by someone else’s great results and try to copy their system, only to fail because they are not built for it. Every trader has done this at some point. Real optimization is about improving your process, not chasing better outcomes. It matches the probabilistic nature of the market and builds discipline over time. If you commit to this process and accept it fully, your consistency will improve, and in the long run, this approach will outperform anything driven by fear, greed, or comparison. In the end, embrace optimization over maximization—it is the right path.
