Rayston is providing some very good points. The following additional ones are intended to help promote a long term view towards trading (or investing...whatever you want to call it). I would learn to set stop losses that will accomodate your style of trading. Swing trading and position trading can accept wider stops. It is up to you to determine a proper risk-reward ratio. Look at your paper trades and see which ones failed. Identify at what point you should have exited, even if it means exiting some of your future winners. Live well within your means and work towards increasing your earnings potential, regardless of whether it is a profession or business. This will in turn, increase the amount of funds that you can dedicate to your portfolio. One thing that not many people mention is the magic of compounding while continuing to reinvest your savings for a period of time before drawing on them. Most folks on these boards have an illusion of quitting their day jobs tomorrow and trading full time. This is simply not feasible until you have a substantial amount of capital to fall back on. Step back and look at the bigger picture. After many years of taking unnecessary risks, I began taking a conservative approach to trading. I will never post some of the ridiculous numbers that you may see in some of these journals, but I will still retire comfortably many, many years before the majority of the population (and still have a full head of hair and my original heart!). Hope this helps.