COULD IT BE THAT YOU DIDN'T TAKE THE TIME TO DOCUMENT EACH OF THE F-ING TRADES YOU TOOK THE LAST SEVERAL MONTHS??? WHAT DO YOU DO NOW, HUH? COME ON ET AND ASK US WHAT YOU DID WRONG? WHERE'S YOUR TRADING DIARY!!?!!?
No... you have major problems in terms of basic logic. (1) You cannot reverse your losing... Because you cannot reverse your costs and slippage. (2) And if costs = zero... Then it's actually equally hard to make money consistently or lose money consistently. If you don't understand what I am saying and why... Just stop trading... you have no chance... Go be a musician or whatever you are good at.
I believe that the OP is indicating that he looses a lot more than slippage and commissions. When I first began trading I lost money so quickly and so consistently; this actually motivated me to continue because, despite what others told me I knew from experience that the market was not random and I figured that I could therefore turn things around. My performance was due to the fact that I would trade against the trend and I would hold losers. By doing the opposite (trading with the trend, holding winners and cutting losers) my performance has gretly improved.
I have traded stocks such as AMZN, CROX, WM. Anywhere from a few trades per day to 20 trades per day. I think that slippage is a part of the problem. And for the majority of my trades, I do try to pick tops and bottoms. So let's say I think that a stock has bottomed out, it might to start to swing up a few cents. Then when I place my buy market order (I almost always use market orders), I will lose another few cents due to slippage. Then if it goes bad, I will get stopped out and lose a few more cents due to slippage. So like a couple people have said, maybe trying to fade the trend is one of my problems. I will see if I can use a slight pullback to enter in the direction of the trend, instead of trying to fade it. In addition, I will now try to use limit orders (for entering, maybe not for exiting) in order to cut down on slippage. Another thing that I am thinking about is how I keep taking 10-20 cent losses per trade. To do the opposite would mean entering a trade, and then entering a limit order that would give me a 10-20 cent profit. Sure, I wouldn't be letting the winners run, but if this is truly the opposite of what I have been doing, then I should be able to rack up a huge number of small profitable trades. I will try all this out on paper too.
I think your first problem in too much trading. Especially if you are losing!!! Stop trading for at lewast ONE MONTH! Then ease back into it on paper. If you cannot make it on paper then losing it in a real account just destroys you confidence. You can get more money, but regaing confidence is the hardest. SO stop and regain control of yourself.
none of you here understand the real problem you see, a user is losing money, in fact if he DID the opposite of what he does now he would in fact make money but the reason it can not be done is because he doesn't know at this point exactly what he is doing (he has no documented rules) for example, if taking small profit and letting loses run means losing money then doing the opposite helps this is one example of 10 I could write, but no one is paying me
Look at your worst losses. Probably you will find that you held on doggedly through corrections and just didn't let yourself get shaken out and only closed out the position once it had grown truly enormous. Now, envisage being on the right side of that. In order to make large profits you have to pass on taking small ones.
The newbie mentality is naturally programed to lose money. Rather simple... a trade makes a lil money, they see $$$ signs and exit with a quick, glorious, exciting profit. If the trade is a loser, they hang on to it, hoping it will turn and become profitable. The trade continues to lose, eventually they can't stand the pain, and exit the trade with a huge dent in their account. The market cleverly and beautifuly strips newbies money from their accounts. The mind naturally wants to take quick small successful profits, but we hate to be wrong, so we let losses run hoping they'll turn around. I'm opening a firm that only allows newbie traders to trade. They deposit their own money, and are led to believe that they are trading with their own hard earned money. They, naturally grab quick profits, and hang on to big losing trades. Little do they know that they're only trading in a simulated account that I've made to appear as a live account. Meanwhile, I use my house account to take the opposite of every trade they make... they go short, I go long... and visa versa. Once the newbie loses $10k, $20k, and is devistated, and quits, I then give them the good news. He actually didn't lose any money at all. He was trading a fake account. Didn't lose a dime. He's thrilled! I give him $1000 bucks, tell him he was part of an experiment, and kick him out. After I kick out 10 newbies, thats $100k+ profit in trading for my house account. If I do come across a succesful newbie trader, who adds $10k of profit to his account, I cut him a check for $10k, kick him out and tell him to go trade at another prop firm. Afterall, only 1 in 10 inexperienced newbies will make money... if that. I'm still up $90k. .... it's genius, I know! lol Who's in...?
You are just copying the retail FX model - except they don't give money back, but they do make things difficult if you have the temerity to win. The only thing worse than a winner is a winner who withdraws his winnings.