Simple, read "Law of Attraction" to get your mind right prior to doing any trading or system development..this is a must in my opinion. http://www.amazon.com/Law-Attractio...9322816?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188671626&sr=1-1 Simple read and the change of mindset does not take long once you know "how" to think.
try trading w/ the small lot size..........gather some more info. and knowledge.......read some of Toni Turner's books.....you can always go online at Amazon and read snippets from her trading books before ordering to see if you like her style and advice. Very simple, easy to read and understand with tons of very useful information........KISS. Good for the novice and the professional.
FT71, while I fully agree with most of your post, chances are overwhelming that the OP doesn't know his entry, doesn't know his stop and doesn't know his target. There is no TRADE management to speak of, in his post. supercoder2006, why don't you describe exactly how you came up with that "70% correct" figure? You are going to get more useful, focused feedback that way. For example, are you familiar with the basic notion of expectancy and related concepts? Do you understand that even a well defined "win rate" % by itself is not useful (without also knowing... what?), let alone something as seemingly vague as "prediction %"? You could have a "95% win rate" negative expectancy, losing system and you could have a "25% win rate" positive expectancy, winning system. You can explain / illustrate to an interested 6th-grader why that is, right? Does your paper trading explicitly incorporate a specific ENTRY and a specific set of EXIT rules - both Target Profit (Exit) and Stop Loss (Exit)? Unless it does, a "prediction %" is... meaningless.
Supercoder2006, As they say, it's not the knowing that is hard in trading but the doing. Theoretically you could turn your account over to any of the numerous brokers that specialize in implementing trades generated by their client's systems, sit back and collect, except that is a whole other experience with it's complications. Since your dilemma is psychological I would like to call your attention to an amazing book, Stress for Success by James E. Loehr, a sport psychologist. I almost did not read it at first because of the corny title but I am so glad I did. (I bought it on Half.com) It sheds an entirely new light on stress and how an athlete, businessman athlete or for that matter trading athlete -although trading is not even mentioned in the book- can live with it in a healthy way and harness it to their advantage. Many of the examples and exercises guide the reader how to develop productive habits, by that I mean what gets you closer to your goals, and overcome seemingly unsurmountable situations created by stress. Good trading and good luck, GC
it's surprising if the foptt is occurring without having made a trade, usually it occurs after a losing trade, however whatever the issues are, working with a hypnotist should help many traders and money/fund managers use hypnotists but it won't be a one shot deal rather a course of treatments where you'll deal with issues not directly related to ptt but which are causing your fear to manifest at the time of ptt start with the Yellow Pages for your area, phone hypnotists individually and explain your problem; listen to their answer, they'll identify in their answer that they work with traders ask what they charge either per visit or course of treatment, perhaps $500 - $1000 total
Just use 1 lots. Anyone can pull the trigger when there's only $50 at risk. Once you've done that a bit, steadily scale up your size until you become more comfortable with the increased risk. You might also want to ask yourself why you are scared. Usually it's due to fear - which means either you are not capitalised sufficiently, or do not have enough confidence in your method.
One problem is, it can be 70% or even 90% winning trades, but still losing money. One example of such system is: buy anything, sell if it goes up 0.1%; if it goes down, don't sell but hold.
I appreciated all of your comments. I am going play this game on tilt as mde2004 post. mde2004, I think your tone of advice worked for me. I need to man up and get some courage. Thanks to you all.
Happened to me 2 or 3 times in the past. All during my system drawdowns. My biggest problem was to figure out whether my system had become obsolete or was experiencing larger than usual drawdown. I had finally decided to implement more systems across more markets so I was diversifying that risk as well. That led to reducing the size on a separate trade and I got in that comfort zone. Though I considerably reduced the ROI (as the result) it's ok with me. This trade-off well worth it.