You have some major problems to overcome psychological, has nothing to do with your Trading Plan. Matter of fact your Trading Plan is not the one doing the trading. You currently not having a business, the business has you. People fail at trading because like most other businesses fail = POOR MANAGEMENT. If you had a Hot Dog stand, would you get upset at $1200 sale? If you bought the hot dogs for $400, would you be upset? If you paid $25 for relish, would you be upset? Trading is a business like any other business, you buy things and sell things, stop taking it personal, it will kill you. When you come to your computer, think it is some other business and you just buying and sell. If you don't have well back tested Trading Plan, that will not help either.
Sure it can be improved. Question, what happened after the event you mentioned in your op? So after the 10 minutes you wrote about - what was the yield of your Trading Plan for the following time when you Did Not Trade - but would have If you had Followed Your Trading Plan To The Letter? Did you miss more Yield? How much? Over what timeframe? As a series of trades after that 10 minutes, did they all go W, W, W, W, W, ...? Or were there some losses in there in that series? Were any losses closer to the 10 minutes or further after or equally distributed over the day? Tedious aint it. This may be why so many go automated or 'intuition', trade by the seat o their pants, or just follow the plan and let the chips fall where they may. If you actually start keeping an error log, you will find that stopping after 'taking the gift', stopping after pulling down some yield which is outsized compared to your usual trade - That particular 'Error' will not be a major drawback which rises to the top of the list of the collection that will be generated as you compile your log. You'll have things like -Entered trade late, -Made up trade, Did not enter/ Missed Trigger, and more... Stopping after Gift will be rare. If you stop after a run of the mill trade that's similar to 80% of your trades, then that's gonna be interesting. Keep us posted. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/trading-how.363022/#post-5493985
It boils down to risk management, the fear of losing. Now, if you risk only a small amount, say 2% per trade, small losses should not faze you. All you need are huge wins when you do win to offset the small losses and make monies. If you wish to trade or even invest in the stockmarket, you will lose monies. Casinos lose a few times to gamblers who hit big jackpots. Do they crap in their pants? Hell, no. They smile and say congratulations. Give you all sort of freebie comps. The reason is obvious. Casinos have a built in edge and will get back all those monies and then, some. As Larry Hite said, "you got to be in it to win it." If you stopped trading permanently, you will not lose monies in the stockmarket----you also, will not win monies from the stockmarket.
Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. I personally don't necessarily see this issue as risk management or trade planning issue... More like mental risk rewards. I believe it's necessary to keep your emotions same as keeping your capital. Now.. the scenario is 30 years 9-5 guy just got 1000k after teach himself for five years. Someone inside just want to stop. You did it for today.. just go. I'm kind of confused with this new ability.. I have to work 9 hours to get 300$, and now this.. I have mixture of feelings.. euphoria and fear basically.. But Im sure I will be fine. This thread is part of the "fix process".. Good week ET guys.
Leob, I know the exact problem you are having. You are having a hard time accepting that scalping makes money for you consistently. Scalping meaning risk higher than reward per trade. I had this problem as well because all the internet trading education and forums all say keep reward higher than risk. Listening to @volpri help me understand the advantages to scalping from a mental standpoint. Well, guess what? They not around when the account goes to drawdown by $X,XXX with their keep rewards higher than risk quotes. Do exactly what makes you money and keep your account out of drawdown.