Quote from Samson77: "I still challenge any trader to trade against me anyday... 98 days out of 100 I will kick butt" As I said previously I find it hard to BELIEVE anything you say. Aren't you the one who claimed you signed up with Trader Brad because you lost most of your account? Aren't you also the one who made back $20,000 in one month? How do you make these gains with 2% of such a small amount in your trading account? Why don't you just come clean for once and maybe someone here CAN help you? As was stated by another poster you obviously get something from posting here. So get something. I still say get some help now. 20% hit in one day may be okay to someone like illiquid but I find it unacceptable unless you are gambling which speculation is NOT or shouldn't be anyway. Why use the term "berserk" if it's no big deal? Why not just shrug it off? After all it's ONLY money! My instincts tell me this happens to you more times than you care to admit. I hope I'm wrong though.
steve my trading is constantly changing as I am trying to "find my way" in this as a career, so the details of what I am doing are to difficult to explain in details in the forum. I know this is a journey and adaptability is very important I recently sold my company and have a nest egg and I have streamlined my lifestyle so that I may do this as a career full time but with these kinds of issues coming up I find it very discomforting and disturbing. I believe that consistency is achievable it MUST be right ???? Otherwise why are we all here. I personally have not meet anyone that is the real deal and I guess that is where ET comes in. There must be traders in here that are the real deal and I believe there are because you can tell by the quality of their answers to some of my posts but the truth is I will never know until I have the reality of personally meeting and getting to know someone that is for real. If I am going to make it as a trader for the next 20 years before I retire, it helps to know that others struggled with these issues and overcame them. I don't see any difference with this business than with any other that I have run and I can tell you this much. The more you surround yourself with good quality people the more chance of success.
Occupy your time with a day job and get some perspective. Trade part time. Your getting lost in your patterns and need to get distance. Michael B.
I was not going to say anything but since no-one else mentioned this I better do. - There are some systems that have occasionally the big drawdown and the big runup ("the fat outlier"). - If your drawdown is too large in proportion to the size of your account then you are overtrading. - It makes no difference if the drawdown is the result of human error, the market behaving differently from expected, a news spike etc. These things DO and WILL HAPPEN!. (If anyone else thinks different then they are not of this world, only the Perfect Being, by whatever name it goes, makes no mistakes) (PS if it exists for those who are atheists) Therefor going to psychiatrists etc. is just throwing money away, it will not help you. Those people are (perhaps only marginally) useful for people who are "abnormal" but your behaviour is totally normal. Besides trading smaller size you may want to make some additional rules to your system: - Stop trading if the total losses exceed xx% for the day. Same for if you exceed yy% for the week or zz% for the month. First start with the longer period: Market may have changed and your "system" (mechanically or discretionary, makes no difference what it is) may not work too well in the new environment. Going towards the shorter timeframes you'll find that the market often plays less of an influence and the human feelings are becoming the major cause of the deviation of the "standard" results. - Stop viewing the market as game of skill where the skill can be improved by taking more risk, getting in more often, trading "harder" or whatever. The objective here is to realise that you will improve by standing back, as Roger Whittaker's song is about the gambler "You'll need to know when to hold them, you'll need to know when to fold them" Also: "don't count your money while you are sitting at the table, there will plenty of time when the dealing has been done." - Realise that the traders highest duties are to preserve his (her) trading capital, you'll need to be able to have a stake to trade another day. As Sun Tzu mentioned in the Art of War: You want to win the war, the battle is unimportant. So too with the individual trade: The overall results are important and not the indivual trade results. Others say: take care of your loosers, the winners come by themselves. - You may want to look at your financial results differently, many traders are, understandably, obsessed with how much money they make. The money is not important, following your rules are important. You can do things like " if I follow the rules every trade then I am allowed to keep xx% of the profits. If I do not keep the rules then I have personally to pay the whole amount (if it is both a winner and a looser) in my "contingency fund". The "contigency fund" is a fund that ideally should be zero and that only should be topped up, never any money taken out off. It will measure how well you are doing sticking to your rules and never exceed a certain percentage of your profits. You can see this as an emergency startup funds, a funds to be used when you are in trouble. Put it in some long term savings or bonds or whatever that will not enable you to touch it for 6 months at least. If it exceeds a certain % of the profits then you will have to take time off. - You may also want to trade the money for someone else and not for yourself. I know someone who started to trade the money of his wife (he was a consistent violator of his own rules) and whenever he had a loosing day she thoroughly checks if he has followed his rules. If he has not followed his rules....... - You may alternatively see the $$$ as a scorecard but your reward being tied to how well you followed the rules. I as a rule do not have up on my screen the profit/loss of an open trade or for the day. If a looser is bigger than a certain amount I am done for the day, I deserve the day off. If I have three loosers in a row then I am also done for the day. Anything "outside the standard deviation" and I go in "observe, papertrade mode". Before I started with this profession I did meet some traders and found their reactions "abnormal": no emotions, no feelings whatsoever. It is not always easy to come to a balance there. But the important thing is to realise when this situation is coming up and then if you do notice it to go for a walk around the block etc. until that feeling has gone away. Forget the psychiatric "help" from others, that will only screw you up. (are they trading, do they make money in the market, do they know what it is to be a trader?) Just realise where you stand and what you can do about it. It is like surfboarding: you can read all about it but you will still have to practise. Someone else can tell you how to do it, but you still will have to practise. You'll have to practise to stop trading when you break certain rules. Until then....you have not graduated as a trader... Peace
i think this has a ring of truth.. gamblers tend to remember "highs" and excuse away their losses.. even after a 20% loss you don't admit that the market is bigger than you are.. rather you justify by saying that you can out-trade others 98% of the time.. except that you aren't trading against others.. no one else knows/cares what you trade or how.. neither does the market.. why do you pretend like you are somehow in competition then? does your ego require that you somehow position yourself above others in order to feel like you have value? you were probably able to manipulate people in your previous business in a way that made you feel powerful and in control.. when you win in the market you probably get the same feeling.. when the market says "no" to what you want, you cant handle it because it makes you feel small and insignificant.. so, you attempt to control the market by throwing random trades at it.. when the market rejects you further, you come to ET seeking only the advice of "currently profitable" traders.. which is just an attempt to group yourself with what you wish you were and elevate yourself above what you fear that you are, a loser in the market.. admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery.. i doubt that you will admit the core issue though, your ego has not suffered enough yet.. perhaps my words seem harsh and for that i apologize if it is offensive.. the truth, like the market, does not know if we like it, it just is what it is.. im sure you will be able to overcome this if you are honest with yourself and make consistent deliberate action to change.. good trading -qwik
I don't know if you have a gambler's mentality or not. You must determine that yourself and if you do then deal with it quickly and decisively. If you wish to be a trader for a living you must control your losses. How you do that is your problem. You'll never make 20 years without cutting your losses short. I've heard some say they stop after 3 losses. That's a start.
Thank you ALL very much some of this advise is really excellent. I was struggling with the question of weather or not to start this post but Im really glad I did. I wanted to hear different perspectives on this and I sure got it... good and bad.... Thanks for all the honesty. It's funny how when we just start to think we know what we are doing the market humiliates us so easily. It is such a great challenge. I guess I still have allot more learning to do. Damn this job is hard ...
Knowledge is probably not your problem. dbPhoenix had some quote about "maybe your knowledge is wrong?" But are you going to get help?
Steve that is what I'm trying to figure out right know ... exactly what I need to fix !!! This post has given me much to think about.