Pull up that weekly 3-5yr chart, it will put it in perspective. This past week doesn't even show up as a retracement.
I scanned the entire thread, hoping someone would have pointed out the biggest problem here; Your risk is insane. From what I gather, you get in these RTM trades, and the market trends against you. This violates the maxim "cut your losses" that any good trading book or trader will talk about! We operate in an environment where anything can happen. The only thing you can control is your risk. Why even put yourself through pain? A good technician can sell on the way down and buy on the way up. You've reminded me of a trade I took in silver in 2010, when I didn't understand how professional gambling works. I went short where price had formed a perfect technical ceiling. But once that ceiling was broken, I held....Every day the market went up I just said, it will revert. I lost 10k on 1 contract which was the majority of my account at that time. Of course I don't do that shit any more!
This is your problem, you HOPE. You're better off realising the frank reality which is that you will not achieve any of these goals. Work towards them. But never in hope.
gamblingman, Good posts here on ET for a change. All the best to you. I am in a similar boat as you are; one thing that helped me siginficantly recently is always concentrating on being in that "delta comfort" zone and being aggressive in cutting risk to get back into the zone when it gets out of whack. Every ones in a while i still leave it out hoping for a reversion; but thats part of the game.. good luck trading! -gariki
Bad choice of words on my end. You're right "expect" would have been better but the two are not mutually exclusive. Every day I expect not to get hit by a bus but I also hope for the same. Not sure that that's really a "problem".
Thanks. I agree, I've reduced my delta significantly. If you look at greed and fear, greed is definitely the stronger one for me. I'm less fearful that this rally continues (and boy have I been wrong about this the last 18 month) but I'm worried that when we do have a pull back for once I don't make enough money (back). So reducing delta is hard but necessary to manage the risk.
I agree with everything you've said but the "cut your losses", that never made much sense to me. I think the risk should be controlled via size (and I'm bad at that as well). One thing I'm curious though (and I'm sure I arrive at this knowing how I trade) is the "insane risk" part. I fully agree my risk level is high but how did you arrive at that conclusion (is it based on the weekly P&L changes, the fact that I don't stop myself out, the fact that I fail to recognize the trend or do any technical analysis ...)
If you are bad at managing risk then you need to plan your trades this will build discipline and eventually confidence.