When does the stress become less intense?

Simple: The opposite of anxiety is confidence

Also, just because someone is confident, does not mean it is smart to focus or work less in their competition.

Therefore, learn to be confident in your ability; look up positive affirmations, and also build the habit of working hard and consistent regardless of your confidence.

Building confidence and changing work habits can take practice and effort but worth it

I also find US Indices pretty stressful to trade this year.

Majority of my trades are in commodities which I find super chilled and easy to trade.  I like instruments that are securities in their own right and not a tug-of-war between 500 underlying stocks.

Agriculture commodities are super easy.  Soybeans I do well on and also Corn and Wheat sometimes.  You get 2-3 nice strong trends a week on the Ags.  When they start trending they usually keep going to the close and I can just keep piling into my position.  If you check the soybeans daily chart you'll notice that there's a very high ratio of trendbars; and even in the trading ranges on the daily chart the bars are mostly trend bars.

Copper is also a good one for me - super easy and very chilled trading.  Copper taught me limit order trading.  Its great because the bars never get huge.

I've made a lot on Oil and Natural gas this year but they're quite stressful sometimes, but perfectly tradable on the 5 min chart, and quite forgiving as long as you use the right stop.

[Note: EVERYTHING is sideways today... so look back a few days before analysing these instruments]

I still trade ES but I hate every second of it. And if I've got positions in other things I ignore it.

One other thing that reduced my stress and increased my confidence: I have ditched the moving average from my charts, which has been game-changing for me. It had a paralysing influence on my trading, giving contradictory signals, making me feel that the market was overbought/sold, giving the illusion of non-existent support/resistance, making me constantly doubt my analysis and making everything more stressful.  Any time the moving average actually works there's almost always some other type of S/R in the area, like a trendline, prior breakout point or final flag.  Removing the moving average brought a lot of clarity and stopped me from passing on good trades.

I'm not complaining, and it's not going to stop me. It's teaching me about my own emotions, and I'm learning to deal with them. It's also caused me to start working out again, which I had given up due to COVID lockdowns. So really, I'm fine. Just wondering when trading stopped being as stressful for the more experienced traders out there.

Hi Michiel,

I believe your last paragraph leads to an answer to your "When does the stress become less intense?" question. Emotions cannot be blocked or eradicated like so many claim. But they can be managed. We need to learn to inoculate ourselves from stress, and that is what you appear to be achieving. Trading will always be accompanied by some stress, but will certainly become less intense as time goes by. 

Learning about your emotions, as you noted, or being aware of them is key. Like Al will often say, emotions are our radar telling us that something is happening - maybe a strong breakout or trend giving us stress because we can't pull trigger to enter. for example. One of Al's many examples is that trading in these circumstances is like being a kid on a swimming pool diving board afraid to dive/jump in. A simple solution is to pinch the nose and just do it! The emotions will still be there but you are effectively managing them and moving on. After many jumps you get conditioned to the "thrill" and do not need to pinch your nose! 😀 

Your trading progress is good. Congratulations. As you move up from 1 contract, and as you inoculate yourself against the fears/anxiety with practice, the same feelings will keep reappearing as your brain and nervous system do their job to protect you (from loss/pain).

In addition to keeping fit, working out, and getting enough good sleep, you can look into deep breathing exercises (while trading) to calm/manage your emotional reactions. Try some meditation when not trading to become more aware of how the mind works - how we talk to ourselves - and use that knowledge when trading to negotiate with those internal voices that shout out encouraging us to do the wrong thing! The uncertainties of trading will always generate these reptilian and mammalian responses built in to our DNA. 

Just a few thoughts to encourage you to keep going. Good luck.

Writing down your thoughts and emotions in realtime can help.

It also give you something to review later. You can then analyze/categorize/study them to understand them better. Better understanding makes managing in realtime easier.

Thanks guys, I'm glad to report that it's (slowly) getting better. I've postponed my aggressive scaling plan, and decided to keep trading 1 contract for the foreseeable future, just to give myself some time to get used to the emotions. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person when it comes to IQ, but when it comes to my own emotions, I'm about as smart as a brick. This part is proving to be the most difficult for me, but I'm liking it. Actually I'm loving learning this about myself. I do realize I need to take time for it though.

I will try meditation. I've been thinking about picking that up, even before my trading journey started, but I never actually did. Looks like I have a good reason for it now.

I've also written an indicator for Ninjatrader that beeps when a candle closes, which is really useful. When I notice my emotions are taking over, I simply walk away, rely on my stop, and only come back to the chart once I hear the beep. This helps me take decisions based on price action instead of fear or greed.

Thanks again for replying, it's really helpful to get these tips and validation.

but when it comes to my own emotions, I'm about as smart as a brick.

You are just human. Remember that emotions are your friend, not your enemy.

I've also written an indicator for Ninjatrader that beeps when a candle closes, which is really useful. When I notice my emotions are taking over, I simply walk away, rely on my stop, and only come back to the chart once I hear the beep. This helps me take decisions based on price action instead of fear or greed.

I use an external app for that, could you share the code?

Sure! When you add this indicator to a chart, make sure to set "Calculate" to "On bar close".

namespace NinjaTrader.NinjaScript.Indicators
{
	public class BarCloseAlert : Indicator
	{
		protected override void OnStateChange()
		{
			if (State == State.SetDefaults)
			{
				Description									= @"Play sound on bar close.";
				Name										= "BarCloseAlert";
				Calculate									= Calculate.OnBarClose;
				IsOverlay									= true;
				DisplayInDataBox							= true;
				DrawOnPricePanel							= true;
				DrawHorizontalGridLines						= true;
				DrawVerticalGridLines						= true;
				PaintPriceMarkers							= true;
				ScaleJustification							= NinjaTrader.Gui.Chart.ScaleJustification.Right;
				//Disable this property if your indicator requires custom values that cumulate with each new market data event. 
				//See Help Guide for additional information.
				IsSuspendedWhileInactive					= true;
			}
			else if (State == State.Configure)
			{
			}
		}

		protected override void OnBarUpdate()
		{
			//alert sound
			Alert("myAlert", Priority.High, "Bar Closed", NinjaTrader.Core.Globals.InstallDir+@"\sounds\Alert2.wav", 1, Brushes.Black, Brushes.Yellow);
		}
	}
}

Thank you very much for sharing!