@Xela Thank you for your detailed response. I haven't read your post thoroughly yet. But regardless whether we agree or not I appreciate you taking the time to respond in great detail!
Soooooo true. (Always good to hear what one already knows... but might lose sight of being cocky.) thnx. gets a post-em note.
I know fortunes can change dramatically, but I have difficulty seeing him as a beggar ... (anyway, that's arguably "investing", not "trading" and perhaps a slightly different context?). Some of those independent sites where "trading signals" can be "subscribed to" even display a prominent warning next to the highest-win-rate services on offer, to the effect that very high win-rates tend to preceed accidents ... because in an everyday trading context, they do.
Ok ok ok. Trading is risky, keep position size small. Investing is safer, you can substantially build size with less risk. Everyone happy?
I think you should just accept where you are in your trading, right here and now. I've read (and responded to) your other posts. Your'e not going to get this fast. I'm guessing you are smart, and probably work in some kind of analytical capacity where making mistakes is not acceptable. Here you're going to make a lot of them. The point is to make them in a way that doesn't hurt too badly. But it's going to hurt. There's just no way around it. When you come out the other side is when you get to understand why you had to endure the struggle, and only then. There's very little in the way that most of us grow up that prepares us to lose and win in this way. If you're new and you are breaking even, you're winning.
My favorite trading saying from Market Wizards--"Stop thinking that you know something about the market". I use this thought just about every day, because my mind wants to tell me that it knows what is going to happen. It's all just a tendency that can vanish quickly. I see a lot of assumptions being made. If you knew that the market we're going to behave a certain way, then you could have your foot to the floor all the time. But that situation never ever exists. Examine your beliefs about things first. The rest will take care of itself.
Position size has to do with what the market is telling me. It has to do with time of day (liquidity), what the technical position of the market is(hanging off a cliff, in balance, or something in between), whether it's near big round numbers, if it's reacting to news or just technically driven, and especially is there a reversal here where someone has been trapped. I really don't see how one can have the same position size all the time. If I see a market that has been spooked somehow, I'm going to press automatically. Otherwise I tend to be cautious.