i say hang in there! and HAVE A GAME PLAN. go back to small positions if you have to. do not keep a realtime p/l on your screen. stick to your game plan . if you really want to trade and you need money now..maybe a night job or something to get the "if i lose $ , i'll go broke" fear out of your head. if the ES is your game and you liked the 800 today, take one car....and give yourself a 3to1 reward risk.....and stick to it. you must buil your confidence level back...and eventually you will "be like water". good luck
Yep that's what I do. When I'm down 20% I take a long break. Maybe eat something and take a nap. Then usually when I start trading again in the afternoon I make it all back.
A lot of trades in a short time frame does not equate to experience. It can't be rushed. Making 10 trades a day for 4 years or making 20 is, IMO pretty much the same thing. Making 20 for 2 years is not equal to 10 for 4 years. It doesn't add up that way. Would be nice though. Trade odd lots like crazy (1 share)....Evelyn Woods School of Trading.
From that example it looks like you're trying to trade several set-ups, or at least indications, at once, and that they're contradicting each other to some extent... It's not clear where you derive the primary set-up - THE TRADE - and what functions as a filter or secondary indication... Though I mainly trade individual stocks, which can produce different kinds of set-ups than the index instruments, I think my experience may still be relevant: Things didn't improve for me until I began to focus on just one narrowly defined set-up that I would always trade when it showed up; then gradually added filters for trade management and trade rejection; then gradually added just a couple of other set-ups. Even now, I usually find during trade review that if I had just stuck to the PRIMARY SET-UP, I'd have done much better. It's when I start "freelancing" too much, playing too many different indicators or looking for too many different set-ups at once, that I get in trouble. Sometimes, I see too many things, and come up with a lame reason to turn down a good trade. More often, I start getting wishful, find myself guessing, squinting set-ups into existence that aren't really there, and end up overtrading and suffering all the many ills that come from it. It's so easy, once you've violated a rule and suffered for it, to enter a death spiral of frustration and escalating self-sabotage... assing trades up that you're supposed to take also counts as a rules violation. Paralysis keeps you at breakeven, but ensures eventual failure, whether by wearing you away or by building frustration to the point that you flame out in some spasm of desperate activity. But for any of this to make sense, you need to have some very clearly defined rules in the first place. Do you?
The answer might lie partly in your ability to handle stress. Tasks like trading, flying an airplane, running your own business, pioneering etc. are stressful because they are complex, high risk, there are times when only one or two decisions can go a long way towards making you or breaking you, and you can't cop out because your "it". Gotta be able to keep functioning while under stress. All this would of course only apply if you had a function.
success is not messured by the amount of money you have made. Never believe that. Success is the fact that you can come back from being down, the fact that you never give up, and the fact that you still love the ultimite game. However, if you can find some sort of mentor i would advise it. The reason is, not for the mentor to tell you what to do or how to do it. For the mentor to tell you what not to do, learn from the mistakes of others. A prop house is fine. I learned on Schonfelds dime....and they treated me very well. I had a mentor and soon broke off on my own. Now im with a small group of partners trading another market than what i traded in 99-2001. So, hang in there, the market is always changing, and the trader must adapt. Dont listen to most traders, i have come to find out more than half are broke as it is. er
Great post Kymar. This really describes my current troubles. Mental discipline is essential. It is difficult for the creative mind that created the method to turn off and then be a robotic follower of it's rules. The creative mind is still there, looking for an outlet, looking to influence things. What about yoga or TM to help steady the emotions? **************************************************** "I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change." - Dan Quayle