got my teeth absolutely kicked in. still up but it was ugly...The Swelled head fucked me. missed monday & tuesday had to go to the lake and help FIL reinstall one of the transmissions on his boat. It's for sale lol. come Wednesday I was so eager to trade and so confident in victory that I ignored trading conditions/prerequisites for entry. I made 90 trades that day...about 5x my usual...quit trading 3 separate times...and absolutely shit the bed in every single way. Too tight a SL + Overtrading = getting faked out of ~$3k. Looking back at Wednesday it was really a good day for making money...Thursday and Friday were worse IMO. Thursday I lost $300 trading extremely timid for obvious reasons. Friday -~$150. over an hour of chop on thursday (15m) during liquid hours just killed me...I see what i did wrong looking back but still this shit is hard to trade. Looking back at wednesday I get pretty pissed off. I thought that I had the composure and poise (and supreme skill because of course I am absurdly delusional), but was only lacking proper trading methods...Now it seems that my methods are more capable than I am...and that is a kick in the nuts. Oh well, can't use the past like a baseball bat to beat myself up with. Gotta remember that pain and weakness though, how pathetic it is...It can never happen again. I'm still pretty pumped up, spending about 12 hours a day on this stuff and actually look forward to the work. Moving forward: -> Lose the swelled head I can still suck. -> For now setting a max trade # although I doubt it will be needed. -> go back to prior SL (wednesday used more discretionary and i'm obviously not good enough for that...it was ridiculously tight...90 trades lol my god). -> added a few other hard line in the sand rules concerning entry to prevent overtrading.
Thank you for your honest reply, @zghorner. Honestly, I was a bit worried by your first post as you seemed to read too much into one week of trading and because you doubled your account rather quickly which suggests both potentially too much risk and an element of luck. That said, your approach with tracking statistics and back-testing seems worthwhile for learning more about the market. Think I've said that to myself a million times, too. Then right back at it next week. LOL. With discretionary trading one is always prone to behavior like this.
Yea of course 1 week is nothing, I just couldn't help but to get excited about the changes that were taking place. Definitely got lucky more than anything but god its good to be lucky too lol. To lose consistently for so long even a small V is cherished...especially after if follows copious labor. My problems are still aplenty: i naively gain confidence far too easily...and now that im putting in real work this effect is supercharged. Super swelled head lol. Also, I poses the weakness of having to make the mistake myself to learn the lesson. I have a hard time reading about someone else's screw up and then avoiding it for myself. My behavior Wednesday is so incredibly embarrassing I can't stand it...should have seen it coming a mile away. This is all the proof needed that I'm still not shit. But once something burns me like this I won't forget it. Just have to focus on improvement. I feel like I'm getting closer. "Things will get better for you...when you get better" - Jim Rohn.
Sounds to me like you forgot the a-ha's that got you to think differently and take different actions. You haven't said anything about how those things worked or how you are building on/refining those things. More like the opposite... Back into your comfort zone. I'm curious... did you even apply your new findings? Or did you find a market situation you have no usable method for, and took the trades anyway? When in doubt, stay out? Either way, good trading to you. If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed.
Just going to give a quick update. Its not good to only post when you are kicking ass so here we go. cant seem to do shit this week. Not losing money or making money (barely up this week not enough worth mentioning)...lukewarm pee water. Operating out of fear will slowly bleed me to death I am certain of it. Not seeing the follow through on my entrances like the first week. whereas before scaling in really benefited me in a big way, now it almost guarantees i scratch the trade. One of my hard line in the sand rules is I never let a significant win turn into a loss. So I scale into a solid winner (~20 ticks in my favor), the few times I have done so this week Have ended up a scratch. Price behavior really feels different and I dont have the experience to know if I should stick to the program or simply lower profit target for the time being or even explore a second market to trade. I am excellent with my stops...zero reservation or emotion when cutting them. But still some issues here. I've moved away from an engulfing stop to a set tick amount with detrimental results...I've missed a few solid trades because of this. Probably The smartest thing for me to do would go back to micros until i get back on track...there is no doubt that I am trading too much size because I am overly nervous anytime it moves against me even slightly. I've accepted a 5 tick loss before entering but I cant hardly stand anything beyond that. average MFE this week on trades with "good" timing (go in my favor almost instantly) is only about ~10 ticks. When it moves back to BE I get out +/- 1 tick. I just havn't been able to get behind any of those sweet sweet point moves.
Yes, come join the small time amateur retails club. Instead of scaled up from day trading for a Big Mac to a steak dinner, I scaled down to trading for a cup of senior Mac coffee every day. That allows me to try all sorts of crazy harebrained ideas like no indicators, no bars, just trade... based on gut feel.