Written by Katie Gomez

As traders, we aim to protect our assets and portfolios. Often, the safest way to do this is by selling. The worst mistake a new trader can make is to stay active in a market that does more harm than good. If you want to succeed as a stock trader, you must learn when to walk away.

Learning how to disengage from the market is an essential skill for any investor. This involves making informed decisions about when to exit positions, take profits, or cut losses. Doing so helps protect both your financial capital and emotional well-being. In this article, we’ll explore steps to help you make these decisions, drawing parallels between stock trading and poker.

At first glance, poker and stock trading may seem like disparate activities. However, if you delve deeper, you’ll find key similarities. In both, you must learn when to “fold” and step back, a lesson that often takes time to internalize, especially for newcomers.

Risk management is vital in both stock trading and poker. Both require a certain degree of risk tolerance. Many players and traders forget that sometimes the best moves are the ones you don’t make. In the stock market, investors must assess risks in light of the economic climate to minimize losses. Poker players also need to manage their bets mindfully, making decisions based on the risk of losing chips.

The recent recession has made the risks of trading more apparent than ever. Stock trading is not merely about buying and selling, just as poker isn’t only about making bets. In both activities, you must be a keen observer, taking proper precautions before making any moves. Both also involve a significant amount of waiting and watching, often overlooked aspects that are, in fact, active forms of engagement.

Another similarity lies in decision-making under uncertainty. Both activities require decisions based on incomplete information. Investors must rely on data and current market trends, while poker players consider the cards and opponents’ behaviors.

Psychological factors like emotional dysregulation can be a significant hurdle in both poker and stock trading. The emotional toll makes it difficult to walk away. While it’s easy to associate walking away with quitting, that’s a misconception in both contexts. The key is to re-engage the logical mind to counter emotional impulses like greed, fear, and overconfidence.

One effective way to engage the logical mind is by using statistics and probability. Both traders and poker players use these mathematical tools to gauge the likelihood of specific outcomes. Conducting research before risking money enables informed decisions and appropriate sizing of bets or trades.

Both activities require adaptability. In poker, you adjust your strategies based on table dynamics; in stock trading, you must adapt to market conditions and news. An often-overlooked yet significant aspect of both is the art of inaction: waiting, researching, reading, and biding time.

In both poker and stock trading, the waiting game is often underestimated. New traders can be overzealous, prioritizing quantity over quality. This “pay to play” mentality ends up hurting them in the long run. The more time you spend in the market, the more you’ll recognize its similarities with poker. Folding is not the same as leaving the table, and selling doesn’t equate to quitting. Although these activities aren’t entirely interchangeable, they have enough in common to warrant deeper analysis.