I'll respectfully disagree. If you blow out your account a few times doing what comes naturally, you may just investigate traders who make $, emulate them, and develop a plan. This process can happen in a year or less.
No I didn't. I'd look at a graph of the gold price and an internal voice would go "wow - get me some of that". I know how mental that sounds. That's why I'm here.
I do not trade futures myself. But I have a similar background although not quite 10 years. I learned to trade stocks slowly and carefully for reasonable returns. However, I got into forex and encountered a totally new learning curve. From my experience I can tell u that the number one issue/enemy that you are probably facing is too much leverage. In futures and forex, managing risk is actually even more paramount than having a good, workable edge. You need to master both and in my experience it is simply too tempting to overleverage when things go your way so be ever vigilant with the risk your takng on. Also I dont know your particular strategy but I hope you have seen the monthly chart of gold and the nice channel its trading in since 2009. If you are buying at 1900 ABOVE the top of the channel you have to be able to hold to at least the the support levels of the channel which it never broke. If you couldnt hold onto your position than you were using to much leverage most likely (I am assuming). On a side note: I dont wanna sound condescending at all since I had major spills shorting silver with ZSL way too early but luckily I broke even after horrendous losses initially since I was trading against silver's top channel resistance on monthy chart. Look at both charts before trading either metal since one usually foreshadows movements in the other. I am thinking that silver is possibly trading 2 months ahead of gold so a correction may happen before rally resumes, you need to expect this.
With the stocks, yes more or less. Recently with the futures not so much. I'd be looking at the price rocketing up and think "I'm gonna get me some of that". I would set stops just under where I perceived the resistance to be. Limits not really well thought out. Sizing. What I could afford to lose. Problem was I had some initial success which encouraged me. Bad. The experience hasn't wiped me out. Just my risk capital for the year. Still, it made me feel like puking.