hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! some of my longer term trades ( long & short) have not behaved as they normally would. In December, you may look at the market and say,"dang on it, I quit this job again I am going back to trading." by the way, how was 2003 for you? good luck.
I have lost money for 4 years. Last year I was breakeven, but with fees, phone and such I did lose money. This year I am down a lot less. So I guess I am improving. LOL I just like to post threads that "tell it like it is" for the newbies who think they can make money trading small accounts. I started with a big account and turned it into a pathetically small account. The people who teach me make millions a year trading. NO JOKE. But they trade with millions too. I am very fortunate in my mentors. I never knew how dumb I was until I started trading. This is not a place for the stupid!
Don't feel bad...you ain't the only one. How many times have you seen anyone post legit profits. (or any profits) Think about it, if a bunch of traders were making dough, there would be screenshots all over this board of account statements or TWS's showing how good they are.
There seems to be a disconnect here. You have great mentors who are highly successful and you consider yourself very fortunate. So, if they're great mentors, what's the problem? Perhaps the problem doesn't lie so much with you after all.
i'm only responding here because i've seen you post before. Have you tried woodiescciclub? if you haven't, i would suggest you give it a shot with paper and try it out for several months. if you have a passion for trading and can visualize success in your mind, why not pursue it? and you don't have to do it full time to be pushing forward towards ultimate success...
Cathy, you wrote in this post: In another unrelated post a few days ago, you also wrote: I do not consider myself a guru or expert by any means, but I have been around long enough to know that emotions are a killer to trading success. You said that you don't want to bottle up your emotions - this is good. Suppression of emotions is something that will only result in an explosion at some point down the line, and isn't really dealing with the issue anyways. The trick is to not have the emotions in the first place. Do you get emotional when you go to the grocery store and buy a loaf of bread? Do you dance and cry when you do your laundry or wash the dishes? If not, why do you do these things when you trade? You don't need to suppress your emotions, you need to get to the state where there simply are no emotions about making or losing money in the markets. Only then can your mind be clear, and proper decisions be made. If you are always getting a "rush" out of trading, you are no different than the gambler who walks into a casino for a thrill and expects to win. The goal is not to suppress that "rush", it's to look into yourself and question why it's there in the first place - then watch it fall away. Ask yourself why you like trading so much, and be honest - is it simply the freedom of doing your own thing? Not having to answer to a boss? Or is it the rush you get from seeing a successful trade? If it's the latter, that is the source of your problems. Some people are simply not cut out to be traders, just like some people are not cut out to be professional gamblers. The best thing I would recommend is that you take a break. Do something else for a while. You'll know after some time passes what you really want to do, and what you're cut out for. As for your quote about all great traders losing all their money, what about George Soros? He's still got all of his, the last time I checked.
The problem is that they really can't tell me exactly why they trade each trade. It is discretionary. I am reading an old book on price patterns that one mentor in the room says he uses every day. He stays in his trades for hours sometimes. The other one makes over a million a year. He makes about 2 points a day on ES with hundreds of contracts. Usually it is 2 or 3 trades a day at most for just minutes at a time. This time of the year he takes off in his yacht. Another mentor is a rapid fire scalper. He must make 100 trades a day easily. He gave me all his charts so I can see what he does, but I am just not fast enough or brave enough. And besides he is in another time zone and trades DAX and EURO from 2 am EST. There was one fellow from here who tried recently, but I was too frustrating for him or something and he gave up on me too soon. So I have half the information on an interesting technique. I found more information on it and am working with fading the extremes of wave patterns. When it works, it works well....but yesterday I must have missed something and got chopped to hell.
Yes, I do try and not get emotional about trading. Easier said than done for me. Good thing I do not get upset when I do dishes! And I actually dislike gambling. Waste of time and money to me. I usually get upset when people say trading is gambling. That makes me feel better about George Soros.......LOL.
ummm, i am confused about one bit..you are giving up Day trading..Sure thats fine....Dont give up trading all together..you can do VERY VERY well swing trading..and have a hell of a lot more sucess then day trading...
The goal here is to look within yourself and see the source of these emotions. We get emotional when things are important to us. Why are you so emotional about trading? What is it that you visualize when you start to think about your account growing in size? Do you want to make a lot of money so that you can buy yourself expensive things? (If so, are you sure that would really make you happy, and is it really necessary for a successful life?) Do you want to make a lot of money so that you can show everyone who doubted you how smart and strong you are? (If so, realize that most people won't care anyways, and that their criticism has more to do with themselves than with you.) And so on... only you can identify the source of your own emotions. This is why no guru can ever help you to become a successful trader _simply_ by teaching you their system. If it worked like that, why wouldn't someone just write a computer program that extracted money from the market under all conditions all the time? Personally, I have found Zen and meditation very helpful in this regard, not only for trading but for life in general. You might want to check out a few books on that, if you're interested. In any case, the advice is still the same - don't go chasing the latest system or guru right now. Just take a break, step back, look at yourself and re-examine what you are doing. Take at least 6 months and do this, and if you come back to trading, you'll know that it's in your blood. If not, you'll have done yourself a huge favor by moving away to something else. If you can't step away for even 6 months, that shows a lack of patience and restraint, which means that you will not be successful. (It also shows that you're addicted to the rush, incidentally.)