He was cocky after he had a stretch of success (450% gain from bottom to peak in 11 days) when he said "I just netted $455 today. If god wanted me to work full-time, he's doing a poor job convincing me" and that overconfidence contributed to his next two big DD days. On the other hand, he traded well for 11 days when the market was not easy to handled without a single down day, it showed that his system/strategy was functioning to a certain degree, so his big loss was more a operator's errors than his system. Over leverage is definitely one of them and risk control and discipline are also the issues he needs to tackle with.
Poor jinxu, everybody wanna beat him up. The last paragraph above is P R I C E L E S S. Gotta admire anyone who KNOWS that a stupid job is for the locos - escaping is a MUST regardless a pipedream or whatever. I'm with the op. Who knows, he might even come back and hire all these coots here as career traders in his firm!!!!
Mother Superior dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates. Ahead of her is a guy who's dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket, and jeans, with pockets full of money and condoms. Saint Peter addresses this guy, "Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?" The guy replies, "I'm Jinxu, stockbroker, of Noo Yawk City." Saint Peter consults his list. He smiles and says to the stockbroker, "Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Jinxu goes into Heaven with his robe and staff, and it's Mother Superior's turn. She stands erect on her Journal and booms out, "I am NoDoji, Mother Superior of Saint ET's for the last forty-three years." Saint Peter consults his list. He says to the nun, "Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven." "Just a minute," says NoDoji. "That man was a stockbroker-- he gets a silken robe and golden staff but I, a Mother Superior, only get a cotton robe and wooden staff? How can this be?" "Up here, we work by results," says Saint Peter. "While you preached, people slept; his clients, they prayed."
http://www.iitm.com/articles/Stop-Worrying-Yourself-out-of-Profits.htm "Stop worrying yourself out of profits" good article
Is my understanding about your objective correct that you wish to harness larger trends? If you are willing to become a trend trader, jinxu, then big profits are inevitable coupled with small losses. This requires you to look at the bigger several day picture instead and stay in a position for days to weeks. My observation of your trading is that you focus too much on the small ticks while day trading the intraday picture. A newbie is not proficient enough to maneuver the small swings. It leads to fatal mistakes, jinxu, and possibly blowups. Emotions come into your way which can be avoided if your focus are large trends. I'm wondering, are you willing to take this leap and hold positions that long? Can you endure small counter moves while you patiently wait for trends to evolve? Do you want to give the market enough breathing room to serve as your money-printing machine? Trends last days to weeks, jinxu, they do not reverse on you every few moments as your perception makes you believe. What you perceive as a bad move against you is merely a counter-reaction for the trend trader on the way up or down. You have to understand the dynamics behind the market to accurately trade large trends if that is your goal.
Palatine, your post is really spot on for jinxu. Trading a larger term trend is far more forgiving as long your account can endure the swings and you recognize the warning signs to get out. Jinxu is trading a tiny account and I'm pretty sure is unable to hold e-mini positions overnight. Maybe he could trade options for larger trend swings, but before he trades anything again he needs to learn to identify a trend, the life cycle of a trend, the price action that triggers a low-risk entry point into the trend, and the difference between a retrace and reversal. Day traders need to master the same concepts as swing traders, but they need to always trade within their time frame. You can't make a trading decision off a 5-min chart and then switch to a daily chart because a trade isn't going your way. If you trade a 5 minute time frame, your "trends" are found within that time frame in a single day's session. When trading a 5-min chart, a 5-min price bar is equivalent to the swing trader's "day". "A newbie is not proficient enough to maneuver the small swings. It leads to fatal mistakes, jinxu, and possibly blowups. Emotions come into your way which can be avoided if your focus are large trends." I think the biggest dangers for newbie day traders are that they don't yet understand trends, cycles, reversal signals, breakouts, etc. and aren't prepared to calculate entry triggers, stops and profit target zones quickly, over and over again throughout the day. They try to trade intraday with 1-, 2- and 5-min charts, no firm trading plan other than buy low/sell high/sell high/buy low, and when a trade goes against their opinion (usually an opinion made based on a much larger time frame or on news) they stay in it until it "comes back" or they add to it in an attempt to get back to even. It's like a casual weekend bicyclist suddenly competing in a motocross competition with no prior training. Best advice to jinxu that so many have offered is spend a lot of time in sim. Learn to identify trends, trend life cycles, reversal signals, breakouts, failed breakouts, etc., choose the setups you like best, then learn to properly enter a trade without chasing, and learn to use fixed survivable stops and flexible profit targets.
In my opinion there is nothing like a growing sense of confidence and belief in yourself and in what you are doing to melt away all those trading worries. Furthermore, confidence feeds on success. There are only so many things that the market CAN do and I would advise any beginners to have a well thought out plan for all the possible scenarios. Otherwise, there is no point risking money.
FWIW I appreciate your posts with consistently excellent advice aimed at helping jinxu as I appreciate the posts of others along these lines and I've tried to offer some constructive advice too. But it's up to you jinxu to find a way to actually use the advice or not. And as I mentioned in another thread, expressing appreciation to more experienced traders trying to help you wouldn't hurt either. We're not being paid to help you or anything. We can ignore your posts if we choose. Expressing appreciation helps complete the circuit. Good luck to you one way or the other.
Trade with the proper risk reward based on your account size, let your winners ride, cut your losers, and don't be a pussy follow through on your convictions.