NAV: 7.69M HKD (-1M deposits) Huge losses this week. Self-reflecting. My friend invested 100k into my "fund" at the start of week, so I could get a taste of trading people's money, and immediately my biggest losing streak occurred. It was also the reason I resumed this journal. But I am going return his entire investment, at par. Trading people's money is tough. There's extra pressure and felt an obligation to win. This led to trading mistakes and losses and I really felt it trading tonight. Am I using this as an excuse to justify the loss? Maybe, hmm, probably not? I did feel differently trading tonight. Felt contradicted when wanted to go long but in the back of my head I know my friend expected me to be short, these kinda misaligned thoughts always lead to trading losses. Obviously not the entire loss was due to this but definitely partially. Probably a good lesson, but very expensive. Anyways lets regroup and tackle this again slowly. I will also de-leverage, while I am still up. Let's face the reality - I gambled and got lucky, and now I'm losing some back - rightly so. Didn't want to admit it. Anyways, what's passed is passed. New day tomorrow, let's just try to do the right thing and hope to win.
It's not really clear to me what your methodology is or if you even have one? It all seems very discretionary and like you're trading from the hip? This does not sound like a confident player. You can't just try and hope if you want to succeed in this game. Add "overleveraged" into the mix and it's not going to end well... You need a method you're confident in. There's no room for hope in trading.
I trade discretionarily. But yes I should at least start implementing rules, especially for risk management, as the account is bigger now. I probably won't go fully systematic though. You are spot on. Confidence has always been a problem with me. My confidence changes very quickly. I could be very arrogant when things are well but quickly panic when things go south. This actually isn't as bad as it sounds though. I scale up fast when winning and wouldn't hesitate to cut losses, but maybe I overreact and adjust too quickly. In poker, I move up/down stakes very quickly, my mentor said it was a good thing. He said mathematically optimal bet sizes should be a large portion of your net worth given the slightest edge, so one should bet big when there's an edge and scale down quickly when facing losses. Not many people can stomach Kelly's optimal sizes. But of course I will never know my edge (if any) in trading.
NAV: 8.66 HKD (-1M deposits) Wow markets moved exactly as my prediction - Crypto plunged, NQ new low, shorts tanked massively... ... but I did not make any money. I feel so stupid. I learn that even shorting in a bear market isn't easy. There're many dead cat bounces that take away profits if not careful. Even worse, the anticipation of these bounces can induce one to the opposite side, only to see market continue trending, resulting in losses and extreme agony. The lesson learned this time is NOT any black and white rules like always stick with original view, or not to go against the trend (although generally sound, but rules are rigid and trend is subjective), etc... ... but instead, I learn to accept the fact that there's no perfect trading. That there's always a chance to be wrong no matter which side I ended up on. That I'll feel like a genius when right and extremely stupid when wrong, but instead I should feel neither because a single outcome doesn't dictate the quality of the trade. Evaluate my decisions with spectrums of grays. Keep learning. And try to make better decisions next time. Feeling Zen lately.