This is a question for traders who started out with a relative small account and gradually grew it to a much bigger one and in the process they had to deal with the psychology of growing account >>> possible bigger losses. If you care to describe your feelings, thoughts and the process, we would like to hear it. How does the growing account affected your money management? Again, I am not interested in traders who started out already with a decent account size. I would specially like to hear from futures traders as they kept adding to the number of contracts....
I look at drawdown first then yield in percent...I do not think in dollars... May I ask who we is? we would like to hear it
I agree with the 2nd post... do NOT think in terms of dollars, think in terms of % of account... $2500 sounds like more than chump change if you take it as a loss... but not if it is only 0.5% of your account... Focus on the %... and grow size whilst keeping % constant...
I agree too. But it is hard not to think of it, when your account grew rapidly. I am thinking here high leveraged futures accounts. Let's say making just 1 ES everyday consistently you can grew a 2K account into a 200K+ account in less than a year, but sure it would effect your thinking when you are trading 50 contracts instead of 1-2. Michael, the we would be the ET community. I hope for some real answers, although there are probably very few here who achieved such an account growth...
I keep a detailed trading diary and I decided to review my notes about such from the early 90's. By the way, most beginner retail traders think in terms of dollars...I did the same back in the early 90's. It's not until you gain some trading experience do you view your account via other statistics. Anyways, back then I had some bad debts and felt it was too risky to try to increase my position size via just one reason that my account size was growning. I needed a better reason than that. That's when I came across an article (I didn't write the name down in my notes) about seasonal traders in Soybeans. These guys only increased their size during these market seasonal cycles. Thus, I decided to only increase my size during seasonal cycles when there was a higher probability for a successful trade. Simply, although my small account was growing I wasn't eager to take more risks. Instead, I became more eager to learn when to decrease my size and when to increase my size... Position Size Management. I'm also saying that at that time (I don't see any references in my notes) I didn't know anybody that just increased their size for any trading day just because they had been growning their trading account via profitable trading. All the stuff I have in my notes are about trading pals that as they got more trading experience and became more consistently profitable... They actually decreased their size on some trading days while increasing their size on other trading days depending upon risk:reward scenarios sort'uv speak. However, I saw this more with my trading pals of futures and less seasonal trading with those I knew that traded stocks. I also begin to do a little more diversification via venturing into other key futures markets. Psychologically (overall), it wasn't a problem and when to do such was an easy decision mainly because I researched and learned the seasonal cycles and intraday tendencies of my trading instrument. Yet, I do have two journal entries on particular trading days where I stated that I made a stupid trade that resulted in a loss (counter-trading against the seasonal pattern) on some size and then the next few trading days I had to decrease my position size because of a new seasonal pattern. That was tough because I had lost money and now I had to stick to the trading plan that required me to decrease my size making it more difficulty to make that money back. That's when I started trading other markets at the same time because my current market may require me to decrease my size while a different market may require me to increase my size. P.S. There are many different ways to determine your position size from one trading day to the next. http://tradermike.net/2005/07/position_sizing/ Just find one that fits your trading style or personality. Mark
It was meant as a sad commentary not a funny one. Btw. you know what they say about those who TALK about women all the time???? Read up on Freud, he might have some answers for you. However, be careful and do not get upset, his style of writing is similar to Don's and hard to follow. Do not give up, there is help. You know the old saying: even blind rooster will get lucky someday.