Hey cd, That's the $64,000 question. I keep questioning myself.. WHY?? Why do I do the things I do.. I know what I need to do.. I know how to do it.. Executing in the heat of battle is the problem.. I believe I have some deep down psychological hangups.. Feelings of inadequacy, lack of ability to succeed..etc.. I am working on them but can't seem to get rid of the demons inside..
Hi Flash, good luck this year. If you think yor problem is discipline, then how will setting a big $$ goal help? If you think your plan will give you consistent results and profits, then why not just try to work only on your discipline. The profits will take care of themselves and you will come out ahead of your goal. Always try to find out what the real problem is and the real way to fix them. Just increasing your goal and failing at that might just hurt your discipline more, because of fear. Just be a machine and take all the trades. Sooner or later your start coming out ahead.
Flashboy, Find a quite place and make a list of all the things you've accomplished and all your positive attributes. Don't be shy, brag, brag, brag. After all, you won't be sharing this list with anyone. Don't say to yourself, "yeah but I could be better", remember that perfection is a process, not an event. We could all be better. The one thing that gets in our way, is thinking we aren't good enough. You are a good trader. Most people haven't got the stomach to do what you're doing. Nor do they have the smarts or ambition. So you keep making the same mistake, at least you admit it and are in the process of finding a solution. Kudos to you. You'll get it. Don't let your psyche reside in what you did wrong, focus and duplicate what you did right. Do you know why little children learning to ride a bike always crash into the telephone pole or parked car. Because that is all they are looking at. Ever notice when you're driving down the road, the steering wheel tends to move in the direction of your attention. Focus on what you did right and you'll do it again over and over
oh yeah armed with that post he can $$ come tomorrow morn c'mon you BS'ers! dont kid a kidder, give the guy some real meat and taters he's starving here! :-/
With all due respect, if Flashboy feels his hangup is psychological, all the meat and taters in the world isn't going to help. There's a great deal of psychology in trading, not only others, but your own as well. If it isn't important, why is it one of the areas that needs to be studied before trading? Flashboy has already gotten quite a bit of meat and taters input, what more can you tell him? If you have some constructive advice, I'm sure he would listen.
maybe you should read cdbern's post again. nowhere in it did it say he will make money tomorrow. hey maybe you can mentor him ........ ( yawn - yeah right ) :-/
Stop trading with money and papertrade. Don't go live until you are consistently profitable for 1 month. I know I know, papertrading is worthless, there is no value to it etc.. but if you don't have the discipline to do it (papertrade) then you don't have the discipline to make it live. As someone said earlier, "do the same thing get the same results". But the real jem in that is, once you find your "way" then you can be consistently profitable. I stopped trading 4 months ago because I kept "doing the same thing (no discipline in my trading) and kept getting the same result (losing money)". I believe the reverse of the above statement is true "do the same thing (discipline in my trading) and get the same results (making money). I think you need to give it a break, get some perspective. I wish the best to both of us, regards, Bruce
Today's Trades 2 Trades - Net Profit of $44 Beginning Balance this morning = $711.52 + 44 = $755.52 Was very patient today.. but did make a trading error.. I bailed on a trade too early.. my plan calls for trailing a stop on this type of trade.. especially being the fact that it was a long and we're in an uptrend.. I will learn to let trades like this run.. I'm bailing a little too early on my good trades and holding my losers until stopped out.. a definitely a recipe for disaster.. Reason for these types of errors I know are the fact that I'm trading with such a low account (scared money) which is causing too much emotions..