What is the best way to recover from a big losing day?? Go out and get drunk and get back on that horse the next day?? what do you guys do after a big losing day??
#1 step -- Stop trading. (whatever got you into trouble in the first place will continue to do so, until you have found out why.)
What were the circumstances of the big loss? Freak occurrence or following your method and complete failure? Or did you break all rules and gamble? Depending on how it happened, I would probably suggest different things.
Step 2: hire a mentor who is amenable to trading performance "collars" and threshholds, etc. IOW...someone who knows the trading game well.
Damn, I'm glad I made-up with the SCT'ers. He's absolutely right. And you will continue to have "big losing days" until you "fix-it", whatever IT is. This Board exists in part so that we can share our experience and knowledge ... hope you've learned something from ours.
RIGHT most days when i get "killed" it is completely my fault..(me not trading with discipline and breaking my rules).....but i do have those days when i lose a big chunk of money that there is very little that i would do different..... chalk it up to SHIT happens
I've traded my system successfully for over 3 years now (4 yrs if you include backtesting), so when I do have blowouts it's easy to put them behind me and focus on the next day (assuming the blowout was not due to poor execution). Prior to that, I would take a big blowout by: 1) Walk around shell-shocked for a day 2) Do about 50 hammerfists on my mattress, yelling "F**K!!" each time 3) Walk around shell-shocked for another half-day 4) Vow my revenge on the market the next day. I didn't say this worked for me. If anything, it made me into a worse trader. The only way really to move on quickly is to have a good system that can withstand different market conditions.
This is a simple one...never have a big losing day. First off, your winners should be larger than your losers to start with. Secondly, you should stop at a pre-determined daily loss limit. Your pre-determined daily loss limit should be a factor of what you normally make over an average day. And last but not least, if you do not have consistent average winning days, then you need to go back to the drawing boards on your setups.