Hello All Need some advice. Please. No BS. I have thank Goodness an extraordinary system. The problem is I have shit discipline. Everything goes well for a few days/weeks, and then I make a mistake and destroy the balance. And it's always one of the same three mistakes. And they're dipshit stupid mistakes: Badly timed entry( before news), playing with the stop, or refusing to exit even when I know I'm wrong. I'm fortunately not stupid (though you could argue stupid is as stupid does *Forest Gump), the opposite. FWIW, I'm a genius. Not arrogance, just a fact and part of the "story". I know all the psychology about humility and admitting when you're wrong, etc. and have no issue with that. It's just I'm sure it will turn around and truth be told it 90% of the time does. But usually only after f$%&^%g my account balance. So any advice would be appreciated. TIA. p.s. I trade scalp/short term. Generally under 10 minutes per entry.
Take your trading size down to a level where following your rules causes you no emotional distress. If adhering to a stop that results in a -$4000 loss is too painful to take, cut your size down by 90% so the loss is only -$400. If this type of loss is still to painful to take, cut your size down another 90% so that adhering to the stoploss only results in a -$40 loss.
Are you getting to much confidence, after a series of wins and become careless? Or are you seeing in retrospect that you make a mistake?
Quite often the solution is in the problem, and in this case, it's your discipline. The story around about your exceptional IQ does not matter. After many years in this business, I would tell you this: I would let an ex-marine handle my money before a quant. Just letting you know how much, in my opinion, the mental game matters. I would focus on books, lectures, webinars, or seminars that discuss discipline and habits (even if not focused on trading specifically). Each person has it's own approach to discipline and how they want to solve it. In trading, it's hard for humans to do nothing, and so they become "creative" in trying to max out profits. Quite often, this leads them in the wrong direction. Please do not feel that you are the only one who is lacking in this department. Every successful trader had to combat at some point issues of discipline. I hope this helps and I wish you success in trading.
Automate your trading using the rules from your extraordinary system and by doing that you'll take discipline right out of the equation. One of our sponsors is a successful trader named Kevin Davey and his website is https://kjtradingsystems.com/. He teaches a workshop on how to automate your trading and write your ruleset into TradeStation using EasyLanguage. Another quality sponsor we have here at ET is one that literally wrote the book on EasyLanguage. His name is Murray Ruggiero and his website is https://www.usingeasylanguage.com/ And finally, Alpaca offers a web-based API service for writing your system rules and automatically executing your trades commission-free through their brokerage division. Good luck!
Poignant advice esp. regarding the "creativity", and your point regarding Marine vs Quant is well taken (and surely true). Thank you.