Hmmm... I'm like maxpi and JMowery1987 in that I'm a very bad at being shoehorned into traditional paths and roles. School was darn boring for me and I always felt impatient and held back. Sure, I could get straight-As if I wanted to, but I felt like school was such a waste. I learned best on my own, at my own pace, in the specific subjects I wanted to learn. I've tried trading "systems" and classes and they did no good. To this day, my learning method is still varied depending upon the conditions and subject. I've found mentors to be helpful at times, books for other things, and ultimately, hands-on training was the best. The most important rule for me has been that the results I've achieved in my life has been based upon everything I know and who I am. To get different results, I have to be a different person with different knowledge. I have to be willing to give up who I've been for who I could be. So my suggestion to HGL is to not make any drastic changes. I'd go for some safety and security first to ensure your family's survival. Such as getting a steady-job so that you can have some stability and put food on the table. Then practice on your trading system and emotional control with a small account part-time until you can make consistent wins with steady growth in the account. At some point, your gains will be enough to live on. Then and only then would you want to trade fulltime. Good luck!
well, not just him. I bet 50% of the people who give advice on ET do not have a positive balance. Another 45% of the people are barely making it, but do not know what the heck they are doing. (i.e. have no idea on the purpose of system trading, and have no idea on the meaning of positive expectancy). p.s. this is not to say, losers should not give advice. Sharing is the foundation of progress. This is how we learn and grow. But some losers do like to come out and sound like an authority on a subject that they have failed!
Happy, After a 18 year sales career and a family to support I find myself in a similar situation. I have been working with a guy out of Las Vegas who was supose to be mentoring me but after 9 months and a sizeable investment in time and money it is not working out. Picking a mentor is a great idea but make sure they are qualified and can teach. Good Luck, John
You don't need a mentor, you need a shrink. As it was pointed out earlier, you obviously didn't learn much from ET by lurking, otherwise you wouldn't have blown your account so many times. If you were able to make 40K from 8K, go back and analyze those trades, why where they succesful? You must have had some kind of system or did you just kept flipping a coin? I have to agree with Cheese that you are not suitable for being a trader. You already had 2 mentors, and you were not able to follow their systems, so what makes you think this time is different? You clearly have no money management and no selfdiscipline. A mentor would just waste his time with you. And you don't even want to pay for it? You blew 10000s in the market but a mentor who would give you a skill for life would get only a thank you note? I don't think so. Go and get a job. Sooner is the better. I suspect you are a compulsive gambler deep down. Seriously, go and get a shrink... P.S.: Just how did you manage to miss the biggest bubble in history, when every monkey was making money? It just shows you can't even recognize the general trend...
I used to trade too. You have to ask yourself why do you want to trade and risk suffering from a stroke, when you can earn probably double as an analyst in a good bank. Is it the buzz of it? Well if its buzz u want then why dont you just date a stripper or something...... Even if you do do well in your day trading, why do u want to risk losing it all from one trade? Go for the CFA exams and move into investment management... anyone agree?
Feelings of frustration could be your mind's way of telling you to develop your own method of trading. What do you think is preventing you from getting personally involved and performing your own studies of price behavior?
His problem is discipline and poor money management. Until he fixes them the past will repeat itself every time that he trades. Every single trade that he takes, in the back of his mind he is still thinking about his past failures in trading and they are effecting his emotions.
To Coolweb, JMowery, Volente, maxpi, JA LDP, DannoXYZ, Gaphunter, Pekolo, blg01, I am presently unable to respond to each of you individually, but deeply appreciate your having taken the time to read my thread and respond. Coolweb: I enjoyed your 6 steps to success; they are classic. As far as joining a prop firm, I have investigated that. My choices, due to my location, are presently very limited, and I feel I must be comfortable with the style of the firm in order for it not to be just another failure, which I haven't found yet, after speaking to the couple of firms here. Relocating. as someone suggested, is not an option; that is my family situation. Oddtrader: One might say I am a 'jack of all threads--master of none' except that I'm not even sure I'm the jack part. As I've said here, more than the compulsive gambler, which I really believe I'm not (notwithstanding Pekolo and others), I have out of greed and laziness failed to give the markets the respect they command. Overcoming those two vices is something, like JMowrey goes on to say, that must come from within, not from a shrink. Volente: I have not read that book. From its title, I can see it's something I need to read, and will be doing so promptly, especially coming with the recommendations of successful traders. Maxpi: I agree that it's almost impossible, at least for me, to trade and do edge searching at the same time. This is one reason that I am not trading real money right now, and will not, under any circumstances, begin again unless I have a backtested and forward-tested edge. JA LDP: What you said is something I've told myself in the past. Every time I've 'run up' my account in the past, it has been through discretionary trading. Either I'm very lucky, or I have a decent feel for the markets; I believe it is the latter. However, discretion is a two-edged sword. Even if you've been successful for many days in a row, you're always nervous that you may just lose your 'feel', or that you may have just been lucky all along. Having a demonstrable, repetitive, edge, gives one the confidence one needs to take stops, keep losses small, etc. I don't think, for now, that it's a good idea for me to return to discretionary trading. DannoXYZ and maxpi: Yes, I'm a pretty good self learner. But if I wish to succeed, I must clamp down on myself to follow through and see each project to its conclusion, instead of all these loose-ends that come back to haunt me. Gaphunter: Thanks for having the guts to respond to this thread, despite my getting pretty beaten up. A lot of the mentors out there are traders who have never made it themselves, and have no demonstrable edge. Perhaps they delude themselves into thinking they are the "coach-but-can't-play" types. Perhaps they are simply crooks. Either way, they are too likely to blame your failure on you, when (in the mentor-guru scenario) it in fact comes from a failure in the methods. I think there are two types of mentors: 1) There are, truly (believe it or not) successful traders out there who help others for free. They do it, perhaps, as a way of giving back, or because they love the teaching. 2) Hugely successful traders who are willing to share their secrets for very big money (relatively), i.e. $25k and up. Perhaps they don't mind taking some time off, and $25k + risk-free money is something that even some quite-successful traders would consider. These guys who 'sell their souls' for somewhere between $99 and $5k or even $10k are usually making a living off their mentorship, and unless they can show you, in advance, their own consistently profitable account statements (I would say one year minimum), they're probably taking you for a ride. Not only will you be poorer; in the end you will be even more confused than when you begun. The two people I 'mentored' with, Scott and Bill, may indeed fall into the same category. At the time, the money they were asking for was very small, and I learned a lot from each of them, which, despite my present lack of success, has made me a 'better trader.' Pekolo: What can I say? Thanks for your comments. I missed 'the bubble' because I was too engrossed in my 'real job' at the time to be able to trade. Actually, I don't regret missing it; I needed the time to invest in my other job, and trying to juggle both at that stage would have been disastrous. The two 'mentors' I had, IMHO, never really had (proven and successful) systems to follow, despite their claims to the contrary. Maybe I'm wrong about this. They'd say so for sure. But, as I said before, at some point, for me, I realized I'd get more from the market theory they taught me than from the (ever changing?) methods. I'm not too cheap to pay for a mentor. I regret my losses and have suffered as a result of them. I am still wary of paid mentors/gurus, and am not sure it would be a good idea for me right now to plunk $5 or $10 or more k down for the next guru to knock on my door. That's what I meant. blg01: Doing as you said, getting a decent-paying 'mundane' job is definitely a consideration I have been actively exploring. I spent a good chunk of time recently making phone calls, knocking on doors, and sending out my resume. Strangely, I don't find trading deathly stressful, and when I'm trading well, it can be relaxing and enjoyable. I am not yet willing to give up on it, a) due to my pessimism about getting a job through which I can support my family (that is just the situation, I can't change it), b) because I've invested so much time and effort into trading and feel in many ways I have a really solid understanding of market behaviour, and c) because I perceive my lack of success as something within my power to change, perhaps with some help from other experienced traders. Having to go through this thread and respond and mull over it has itself done me much good. Hook n Sinker: Laziness and greed, as I've said before. Volente: You're right. One of the conditions of my 'finding and edge' is that it must have a pre-determined stop, which is very tough if you're trading off gut-feeling and intuition as I have in the past. My past edge may well have been my intuition, but even if it was, it is not a style of trading that I can continue. Thanks again to all who took the time to respond, both on thread and by PM.