So, it finally sunk in for me. Trading with my money is way different than my previous situation, which was OPM but had all the accountability of a demo account. I had 2000+ hours screen time, a decent track record, experience swing trading various instruments, experience watching hundreds of other people blow accounts up, and years of reading everything under the sun. And my first month daytrading Im having difficulty getting better than breakeven, though Ive dipped negative only once. Today had I followed my rules, I would have 200-300 ticks, but I ended my session "revenge" trading (though following my rules, I was not in the state to be trading and risked too much) back up to +40 from -10. Broke every rule I can think of. Cut winner short, didnt protect capital, averaged up randomly, risked too much. Shit man. Maybe Im just venting cause Ive had a couple of bad sessions in a row, but this might be harder than I thought lol.
first of all you are way ahead of 99% here most are demo traders and just plain dreamers that never do only dream you need to reduce size so your fear is gone TRUST ME reduce size, trade like that for few months
on the bright side, I do have some new rules/algorithms after tonight in my journal that should prevent this from happening in the future. One of them will effectively reduce my size.
what seems to be working for me so far has been concentrating and adhering to strict money management: reducing size widening stops scaling out staying humble
You have put them in the wrong order, its meant to be 1) Staying humble 2) Reducing size 3) Widening stops (as volatility evolves) 4) Scaling out IMHO
You know, I thought this was a useless thread of me selfishly whining, even as I was typing it. but I think something really good has come of it. most of my errors in my journal have the common thread of too much size, ratcheting my stop too fast, bottom and top ticking breakouts, letting risk mgt fight with my TA, etc. I have most of my ducks in a row, except bankroll, and I think I was pretending that wasnt the case. Im not betting the rent, but maybe a little overleveraged in my new situation. +40 was my result today If halving my size would have made me follow my rules, my result would have been bare minimum +200, meaning +100 adjusted for size less leverage, more ticks, less stress, quicker compounding I was wondering why trading all of a sudden got harder haha. Thx all