For Business

Trading Psychology

How to Deal With Boredom Between Setups

Boredom between setups is the wait felt as a problem, and the wait is most of trading. This paper shows you five real days in December 2025 during which a pending order on the euro sat unfilled while the price came short of it by 46, 41, 66, 35 and 2 pips, with the urge the hand had each day; the idea as a heron standing in the shallows, for which the standing is the fishing; the wait on the hourly chart; what to do in it, as a bus stop with a bench; and the Alerts tab on your platform, the one face the platform needs to show while an order waits.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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Five days of nothing to do

The wait, and what it feels like. A pending order to buy the euro against the dollar sat at 1.18040 from the evening of 16 December 2025. For five trading days the price came short of it: by 46 pips, 41, 66, 35 and, on 23 December, by 2. Each day the hand wanted something, with these as example urges: move the order closer, take a different trade, cancel it, add a second order, chase it by hand. Each day the plan needed nothing. On 24 December the order filled on its own. The wait was the plan working, not the plan failing, and boredom is the wait felt as a problem by a hand that has nothing to hold.

A heron in the shallows

Picture a heron in the shallows. It stands in one spot for an hour without a step, and the strike, when the fish comes, takes a second. The heron is not waiting to fish; the standing still is the fishing, and a heron that paces the bank because standing is dull catches nothing, because the pacing is what the fish see. The wait between setups is not the gap between trades. It is the trade, in its longest part, and the trader who cannot stand it is not bored between trades. They are bad at the part of the trade that takes the longest, and it is a part that can be practised.

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