I thought this time would be different because the fed headline driving sell pressure. Lesson learned, follow the rules no exceptions. To help with that I'll be doing a lot more automated trading with OTO trades.
Nice, it is always cool to hear these stories from former times, thanks for the insight. May I ask which country you are from in Europe ?
I have kept thinking "This time it will be different" since Feb 2018. And nothing has changed. It was to my detriment. No, there will no longer ever be a "this time it is different". Unless a meteor the size of Texas slams into the earth, or NK launches their nukes.
What I meant is Flat to Flat trades percent, not trade per car. And as overnight said in the forum, possible if one doesn't use SL, and incur drawdowns. TRUE! I can't thank you guys enough, because I've started to take those SL. It was really hard the first couple of times, but then now I have no problem in taking them. It feels good to just take a scratch or small loss and then re-evaluate the price action and get back in with a better price, rather than trying to maintain the win rate and have to see large draw downs! Thank You!!
Mixed results today, the market is very range-bound and choppy. Some wins, some stops. Good volatility in charts like EDU
%% I cant really blame you for not taking a small loss[noise] ; unless taking a small loss in your plan. Taking a small loss on SPXL or TQQQ makes no sense for me in my plan/ so i dont. BIGGEST problem i see is ''give back profits for a MONTH or 2 @??!!'' WAAAAY to much give back. Actually terrible, but here's how to fix it. Like you i HATE the word ''loss''; so i changed the word loss to business expence. NO such thing as a business with no expences or to many exspences. Va333, TRY to keep business exspences [losses] within reason/ if you want to stay in business.
I also had this problem, but the main thing is discipline and your attitude to trading. Before making the deals you've got to understand the fact that the market is really unpredictable and all of your thoughts concerning this or that deal are only the matter of probabilities. Nobody is 100% right in trading and everyone has losses, but we should calculate the risks. Stop losses exist in order to secure our budgets from the total loss and before making a deal we should always bear in mind the fact that there is stil possibility that the deal will be a failure. I also understand that there is a kind of perfectionism when all the history of the trades is in green and you don't want to have something red there, but trading presupposes some losses and you cannot do anything about it. You've got to accept the fact that there are no perfect traders and the market is totally unpredictable and losses are absolutely normal for every trader. You just need to understand it and change your attitude towards trading accordingly.
For daytrading I've found larger size (for me that's 200-700 shares) doing many trades with super tight <.2 stops is better than small trades with big >.4 stops. Test!
I guess with stop loss one can always think it this way, that in a trade where they could have lost 50% of their money, they just managed to lose only 10% of it. As they say something is better than nothing.