You are revenge trading. Set either a stop loss for the day and/or the number of trades your will do in a day. Wait for your setup. At 1st just take small profits and losses instead of shooting for home runs.
I think you have understood me well. I think your advice is good and I have even decided to do that a few times. But, then I talk myself out of it and say "It will be different today". The hell of the deal is I see these warning signs in my decisions and still proceed to trade. I have gotten so wrapped up in my successive losing trades that I have gotten completely disoriented. I think that is why I decided to post. I needed to get grounded again. I knew there would be people making fun of me, but I also knew there would be some members who would offer honest direction, help and support. Thanks for the thoughts. I think you have "hit the nail on the head".
Take a couple of weeks off. Get your head straight. Start back trading one lots. Stay with one lots until you are consistently profitable. You need to ask your self a very important question. Why are you trading? Don't tell me the reason is to make money, because we both know that is not really accurate. Is it for ego gratification? Excitement? To punish yourself for some deeply buried reason? A person who is trading to make money doesn't blow out their account the way you admit to doing. If you hired someone to trade for you and they did that, you would have fired them or perhaps killed them. The people who succeed at this game care about one thing only, making money. They aren't invested in being right or proving how smart they are or anything else. One thing, making money. When you let a loss get away from you, you are trying to prove yourself right. Making money becomes secondary to protecting your ego. The market doesn't care if you're right or wrong, lucky, dumb or smart. It doesn't care that you work 17 hours a day and I don't. Whatever. Most people will never get it. I get it and I still screw up all the time.
Are you familiar with the behaviors that indicate addiction problems? Here's a very common theme using drinking as an example: "I think your advice to quit drinking might be a good idea and in fact I've quit a few times. But then I convince myself I can drink normally and think, 'It will be different this time.' I see these warning signs every time I try to drink responsibly and end up in a mess, and yet I still proceed to do it again."
You have lost much of your potential mental capacity. A person explained your mental problems. You are explaining you can reject his input. If you, wrongly, reject his input, then you are digging a deep hole from which you are not going to emerge. you ARE learning. the subject you are learning has a name. The name is "LEARNING FAILURE". So far your grade is A+ . Congratulations. Drop the "learning falure" course. Get 50 sheets of blank paper. Get an eraser. Draw a bar on a sheet. Erase it. Can you still see the erased bar? reaply the eraser to the erased blank sheet. Can you still see the erased bar? Draw a circle around the space where you drew the bar. Can you still see the bar in that space with your eyes closed. Turn the sheet over and keep your eyes closed. Can you still see the bar in the space you circled while you keep your eyes closed? A person can start from scratch and learn to be an expert in 20 days.
You've already blown up. Many of us have been there. Let's say you have 18% remaining... Odds are 100% right now you'll feel more regret by quitting when you are down rather than giving the 18% away. So basically, get prepared to have lost it all. First thing you need to do is stop. Likely you aren't in enough control of yourself to do that. Maybe some creative mental accounting can get you back. First, accepting the loss and furthermore accepting that you'll likely NEVER make any money in the markets is the first step to healing. So... Move most of the money out of brokerage (at least temporarily) and leave a little to feed your gambling problem. Turn it into a junior account -- instead of trading 1 lot of ES, go down to 1 ATM SPY or SPY mini option (if you MUST trade S&P, which I have no idea why). You'll either continue to bleed, or you'll churn, or maybe you'll do OK and get some confidence back. Tell yourself once in a while your dream/hope you'll eventually return the remaining 16% (or whatever the # is) and someday get it all back from this 'edge' you and everyone claims to be seeking. And by the way, if you are trading options... for the sake of learning some self control, no doubling down. Practice taking losses on your failed entries. And trade serially, don't treat approximate 'doubling down' as two 'parallel' trades. Not right now -you aren't emotionally capable of doing it. You need to practice discipline. Just remember - You don't have an 'edge' (as most don't, so don't feel to bad about it) so stop acting as if you do. My guess is that you actually don't like trading as much as you think you do. What you like is -not doing- whatever else you were doing. Well let me clarify, maybe you like gambling. But that's a degenerate activity (add it to the top of the list of other vices) ... (and all of us who are here find it appealing on some level) Some other good advice here.. but you need to get a handle. And stop feeding money to other people. BTW: Sure S&P is 'manipulated' (but so is everything else)... but this has been the easiest environment to trade it in as a perpetual dip buyer. Nothing complicated; very simple stuff. And everyone who said the market doesn't reward hours spent or 'work ethic': totally agree. That said, it helps to have a strong enough finance/stats background to keep yourself out of trouble and save yourself from wasting time chasing anomalies and technical systems that you might believe are viable (but really aren't). But that's another discussion. Likely it'll take you years to develop any skills. Its lousy to have to accept the blunt reality you are a failure at this iteration, but the sooner you are, the more money and grief you'll save yourself.
Yes, I see signs of addiction in me at times. Other times I don't. Lately, as my losses mount I see it more. I guess I think we all have these signs in us in varying degrees. I don't smoke, I have never done drugs, I have never been an alcoholic, when I go to Vegas I gamble with a hundred bucks and when it is gone I stop. But, I am in no way saying that I am not an addict. Like I said. I see the signs too. I guess I see this. I can learn to control it by implementing a system. Is that not why a rock hard system is a tenant of trading? ie To safeguard us all from such train wrecks as this thread is discussing? I sat out of the markets yesterday and will today and the foreseeable future. Making money is much more appealing to me than gambling. Yes, I have a long way to go. Thanks NoDoji, you continue to help. I am open for more insight.
Mr Hershey, I understand your post except I am still not fully understanding the sense of how you are suggesting that I "have lost much of (my) potential mental capacity" Is it the thought that I am creating a subconscious imprint of failures in my mind which are near impossible to erase? Which in turn does not allow for appropriately directed mental capacity? As for "A person can start from scratch and learn to be an expert in 20 days." -HOW?
I think the real problem that you have is that you can't tell sane apart from insane... Are you for real or are you Hershey posting as someone else...?