Social Trading and Stress

Written by Miro Nikolov

Miro Nikolov

Miro Nikolov is the co-founder of TradingPedia.com and BestBrokers.com. His mission is to help people make profitable investments by giving them access to educational resources and analytics tools.

, | Updated: September 15, 2025

Congratulations! You’ve come a long way since you started reading this guide. At first, you didn’t know what social trading was, but now you’re familiar with the core concepts. You’ve already chosen a platform, created an account, copied a trader, executed a few personal trades and learnt the importance of money and risk management. You’re doing very well so far, but the guide is not over yet. There is still a lot to learn. The idea behind today’s topic is to cover some of the basics of stress management. Even though it may not seem so at first, social trading can be quite stressful, especially when you start using your own money in trades. In this section we’ll help you learn how to mitigate stress and avoid being ‘caught in the moment’.

What is stress?

Let’s begin with a brief explanation of what stress is. Stress is a normal biological reaction of the body to a perceived challenge or dangerous change in the environment. In other words, it’s quite normal to feel that you’re under stress when something is at stake. It is the weapon nature has given us to escape tough situations. In fact, a little stress now and then is beneficial. It’s not beneficial for a person to be too relaxed all the time. However, when stress becomes an everyday occurrence, it can be problematic. What makes matters worse is that stress does not have to be caused by something real – your brain cannot distinguish between imaginary problems and real ones.

The condition we call ‘stress’ is actually caused by a hormone called ‘cortisol’. The short-term effects of cortisol can be stimulating because it allocates more energy to the brain in order to deal with ‘the danger’ we’re in. However, it merely reallocates the energy, which is why cortisol can cause problems for the overall integrity of the body. One of the affected systems is the immune system, which is why people tend to get sick when they are under a lot of stress. In the long run, excessive cortisol secretion can lead to grave consequences. This is why it’s essential to learn how to control your stress, especially if you work in a high-stress environment.

Is it possible to control stress?

Managing your personal stress levels is entirely possible, although it is not a simple task. If you want to learn how to control your stress, you will have to work for it. Even though it won’t be easy, it will make you happier in the long run. You will learn not to pay so much attention to small problems and will be able to focus on what’s really important.

Realising your own imperfections is a great first step towards controlling your stress levels. Remember, we’ve already said that stress is caused by cortisol, and sadly cortisol can be secreted without a real trigger. Society is hard on us. There are so many, sometimes impossible, standards we are expected to meet that we become aggravated with our own humanity. The truth is that we are not perfect and the standards of excellence society is trying to impose on us are superfluous and deceitful. In most cases what we perceive as ‘ideal’ is really just that – an idea which has nothing to do with reality. By realising this, you can create more realistic expectations of yourself and others. A side effect is that you become free of others – you know what you’re worth, so you don’t need other people to tell you whether you’re good or not. This will alleviate your overall stress levels.

Stress and trading

If you follow the aforementioned advice in a trading context, you will be able to manage your stress even as you lose. You are going to lose a lot. This is unavoidable. Thinking that, while everyone loses, you will be a prodigy ‘trader extraordinaire’ and will win 96% of your trades is unrealistic and naive. You will lose a lot and that’s normal. That’s just how trading works. It’s not a matter of opinion – anyone who’s been in the game for long enough will tell you that, no matter how good you are, you will lose. The point isn’t to strive for perfection, because you will never reach it. The point is to have profits larger than your losses. If you focus on that aspect instead of every individual loss, you won’t stress out as much. However, this doesn’t mean that you should disregard losses – you should learn from them. Every loss is a lesson that should be carefully studied, but you shouldn’t take it as a personal insult. Once you realise your own imperfection, you will be able to focus on learning to trade, and you won’t take every loss as a personal insult. This will help you control that stress. If you also follow our money and risk management advice, you should be just fine.

Final words

Don’t make stress part of your daily routine. Sure, it can be beneficial in small doses, but ultimately it will do more harm than good if you let it. You’ll feel a lot better if you don’t allow it to control your entire existence.