Join me TONIGHT, 8–10 PM ET, with the Canadian Association for Technical Analysis! 📡 @prrobbins I’ll share how our proprietary momentum scanner at SetYourStop helps identify developing momentum and asymmetrical setups. 📝 Hope to see you there! 👇 canadianata.ca/content.aspx?…

2026 has been a frustrating year for me as a trader. And after more than 20 years in the markets, I can tell you that dealing with frustration is still one of the hardest parts of trading. You spend hours studying charts, researching companies, building watchlists, reviewing trades, and preparing for the next opportunity. You put in the work. Every single day. But then you look at your equity curve. Sideways. Or even worse, down. You get stopped out again and again. Breakouts fail. Stocks look promising one day and fall apart the next. And what makes it even more frustrating is that there are still a few stocks making huge moves. You see them. You know they're out there. But somehow, you're not catching them. That's frustrating! And I would be lying if I said that it doesn't affect me. Of course, I start asking myself questions. Am I doing something wrong? Should I change something in my strategy? Why am I putting in so much effort without seeing better results? The real danger starts when frustration begins to influence your decisions. You want to make back your losses. You become less selective. You start taking trades you would normally reject. And after getting stopped out several times, you suddenly hesitate when a genuinely good setup appears. I've experienced this before, and I know how destructive that cycle can become. So how do I deal with it? For me, the most important thing is to rebuild confidence through evidence. I go back to my trading journal and review my decisions. I want to know whether I'm making mistakes or whether the market environment simply isn't rewarding my strategy. I study my successful trades. I look at historical big winners and remind myself what exceptional opportunities actually look like. I spend time researching and testing my trading edge. Not because I want to reinvent my strategy after every losing streak, but because I want to understand what works, what doesn't, and where I can improve. I also look at my long-term equity curve. It's easy to lose perspective when you focus only on the last few weeks or months. And there's one distinction I've learned to make: Feeling frustrated doesn't automatically mean my trading strategy is broken. If my statistics show that my edge is deteriorating, I need to investigate and make adjustments. But if I'm following my process and the market simply isn't offering the kind of opportunities my strategy needs, I have to accept that too. That doesn't make the frustration disappear. But it helps me avoid making emotional decisions that could turn a difficult period into a disastrous one. One of my biggest lessons from more than two decades of trading is that good opportunities eventually return. I don't know exactly when. And I certainly don't want to waste my capital trying to force profits out of a market that isn't cooperating. My job during these frustrating periods is to protect my capital, keep improving, and maintain enough confidence to act decisively when the right opportunities finally appear. Because the last thing I want is to survive a difficult market, only to be mentally exhausted and unable to take advantage of the next great opportunity.