Started with Bright and my $50K about 10 years ago and have made a good living and a very good living recently (last 5 years) when I switched over from Equity to Futures and some option plays. Day trading successfully comes down to one thing......come back the next day with capital to trade and keep your discipline to not get blow out because of stubbornness or a brain freeze. Avoid mental pain and it becomes easy and this current trade is just like the next 1000 trades you will do this year. It's all mental and those that need to be right 80/90% of the time have a hard time with active trading. I now have a CTA and trade longer time frames for more scalable systems but I still day trade my own capital each day when we have range and opportunity. When nothing is going on and with no range and we are just chopping around.......... I work on testing or go golfing or something to pass the time and wait for the juicy period where you make the bulk of your income.
Yes, it is all mental. The best system in the world won't amount to anything if you can't master yourself.
If trading required 80-90% from my system, I would have never started trading. I would still be punching a clock somewhere.
Ah ah, that's an awesome quote Patrick, made me laugh. I thing you are bang on, kind of like reading THE SECRET, we are an antenna, your mind is dictating what you want to attract, hear or view... Lots of profitable day traders out there, and of course if they are profitable they are disciplined and follow some important psy rules out there, I guess one one them is probably not to get too excited about how$ much your making but how well you are trading and following your rules...
yep, spot on. i don't even have a P&L on my screen. Don't want to know (cause it messes up my trades). i just get angry if i do something stupid as in breaking a cardinal rule (chasing for example). If following rules, losses don't bother me at all as i know that situation won't last long.