Hey guys I lost 12,000 the last 2 trading days alot of it in stupid matercard's down move today, Im still up about 20,000 for the year, but feel like im pressing now and am increasing my chances of blowing up bc of that, how do u guys put real bad days behind u so the losses arent in your head the next day, so u dont take wild chances to try and make it all back at one time instead of chipping away, any advice would be appreciated.. thanks
1st advice... get a hard cut off... with a hard market out cut off... for me it's $400 gross, and if I'm down $800 gross with open p/l it just markets me out... so that no matter how out of it I am, I won't lose more than $500, unless I'm so out of it that I'm holding onto huge losers hoping, in which case I'll never drop more than a G. All the major platforms have a cut off. Second, just go back to makign $500/day, or $1000/day, or whatever is your normal grind that requires minimal pushing... make a small target... try to be green... just accept the losses, that money is gone, don't try to make it all back, it will come back ONLY if you try to make it back slowly... what always happens to me after going through something like youve gone through is I have a few small positive days, and feel "meh, well at least I'm green, but at this rate I won't make that loser back too soon"... but I keep the proper attitude, LOW RISK LOW RISK LOW RISK, and try to make 1-2 multiples of my max loss, and then before I know it I have a nice little streak of 12 days, where on the last 3, I made back all of what I lost in the major loss, and then it's all uphill until I hit the next struggling point. Biggest thing is don't push. Don't push. Just accept going back to the grind. Be happy to make $400. Grind grind grind small profits small profits even smaller losers. Another thing that helps me, this may not work for your trading style, but if you're up in the morning, and you start to churn and the market feels choppy, book your profit on the day. After a tough losing period just booking some small-medium green days, without risking them for more, is great. It's a really shitty feeling to lose 10k, accept that you lose it, go back to making 500/day, do that for 3 days, then be up 500 the fourth day, get pissed off at a choppy market and finish down 1500. Really kills the positive momentum.
Look at this as an opportunity to see what you are made of. Tough times call for your true character to appear. Will you run and hide like a weakling, or will you face the market with the proper discipline and courage despite your recent lack of success? Remember, the market has NO idea how you have been doing, only you do. Get back on that horse.
Throw away your James Brown and George Clinton CDs, and only listen soul and R&B (rap is strictly forbidden). Now seriously, take a break from trading. Take a break of one to two months (a couple weeks if you daytrade) and get back into paper trading during this time. Oh I forgot, liquidate your losing positions ASAP.
Dude, you'll get out of it. I have been holding shorts since the last fed rally, with some heat, all that green. I just said fuck it today and covered my shorts only to flip and go long. I broke about even on the cover, a little less with comish, but hella of a lot of green into overnights. This market is fucking hard as hell. Swing trading is this enviroment is a bitch, don't know about scalping. I can't fight the "intervention" that is coming into play from the FEDS to the Bail outs, SWFs, and now the the super bail out. Hopfully I will book the profits I could have on the short side, on the longs. Fuck'n hell.
IMHO having a hard cutoff is somewhat appropriate if you are managing OPM or you have a discipline problem and can not trust yourself when you get a small housefire so to speak. If thats the case, your likely going to have some difficulty staying in the game long term. Push, esp when things are going well. When things are going well there is a reason for it, press your advantage as hard as you can.
I use IB with Ninja Trader and neither have the ability to market me out of all my positions when I lose a certain amount in a day. I would buy a program that would forcefully limit my daily losses in a heartbeat. The problem isn't that I don't use stops I just sometimes get so heated that I will keep reentering my same position after I get stopped!?!?! I need something to turn my machine off if I start doing that. I am disciplined and patient 95% of the time but when something sets me off I get pissed and lose it!!! I was having a nice easy day all day... was trading 4 cars and 500 shares at a time. Won about 70% of my trades... let my stops get hit with no problem... just perfect trading. Was up 1900 at 2:00 and figured the market was stale so I was done. I hopped in the shower and when I walked out saw the market had popped on the MBI/ABK news. I didn't even want to trade but figured it would be foolish to let such easy money go... so I started buying as the market retraced. Got fully loaded waiting for the next leg up then bamn.... that high volume spike down at 2:45 stopped me out. At this point I was up only $500 and got pissed. I figured since I was stopped the market was in for a huge reversal so instead of stepping aside I went short... Compounded the problems and ended the day down $2300... all based on one event that confused me and I acted too strongly in search of fast money. Same thing happened to me last week after the Fed minutes. Shorted the hell out of the market after the minutes... got whipped out... reentered my short got stopped out.... went long and the market reversed. These two pieces of news cost me about $8000... I need to find a way to avoid these bullshit traps. During normal market conditions (No 100+ point moves in minutes) I steadily make really amazing money. Any time I try playing news with the big boys I get screwed!!!!
Yea I know the market seems so thin lately it reacts so sharply on anything its making trading really difficult, but i liked what nysescapler said its just very tuff to do in this market but i musts try taking off a month or so is not an option, this iis my living.. just have to be more discpline and try and chip away and fight through it, its frusterating though that ill have 10-15 postive days in a row but my down days are so big have to work on that