Is my career over?

This sound like the martingale approach of trading, right?

Hey I lost 20k over 3 years ago, position trading. I took 2 years off, got my head straigt, and started back a year ago at day trading. I hired myself a mentor and things have improved greatly. I have been extremly conservative and after 2 months of real money trading I am down $240, that's it.

My goal is to make $100 a day while I hone my setups better and better, take notes, backtest. Once I determine the ones that are accurate 80-90% I will most likey hit those with multi lots and scale back to lesser contracts if I am up towards the end of the trading day.

Was there any mention of backtesting or forward testing on a simulator to determine winning probabilites? I don't believe so. If that's the case go to Vegas, atleast you will get some drinks for your losses. I don't recall much talk of a trading plan. Without one a trader is doomed. I didn't have one when I blew up my account first time.

It's simple, but not easy, test your signals, write a plan, and follow it or you are doomed, plain and simple.

I am learning proper trading should be boring, when I am get excited, I need to stop trading because it means I am gambling, not trading.

Good luck, at this rate you sincerly need it.

Dan

 

right out of college, i put together savings and traded a retail account, made some money and then lost it all. few years later, i did it again and lost it all again.

then, i joined a prop firm, and learned how to trade. actually, what i learned was how not to lose too big and too often. i learned how to evaluate risk and to not bet ranch on any one single trade cos losing is part of the game.

 

You now have an $8,000 account. You should risk no more than 1% of that on any individual trade. That is $80, which means you must trade small. But it also means you can make 100 mistakes in a row before blowing your account again. That should give you time to learn to trade. Then, when you know what you are doing, if you are a real risk taker you can increase it to 2%; or 3% if you want to live on the edge.

Ed Sekoyta is quoted as saying that anyone who risks more than 3% is a gunslinger.

Van Tharp's work is excellent on position sizing and risk management. Get his Position Sizing DVD and Trading Game before you place another trade. It is eye opening for someone who does not understand game theory and the difference between trading and gambling.

 

Look, this guy, TruthSeeker, is doing what he needs to do.
He needs to lose.
He needs to know he has lost.
He needs to repeat it.
We are talking really cool masochism.

If this was WW2 this guy would have already had a glorious end.
The Nazis would have machine gunned the living f**k out of him.
We are talking real hero stuff here.

Hey buddy get in there and front up for me.
Go f**k big time with the Nazi troops.
I'll be the General at HQ sipping on a cool glass of French white wine while you're pulling the trigger.

 

So you've done the "blowing out your account" thing

Except with the rare occasion of coming into the game having a mentor, I'd say, that while not ALL traders have an experience similar to yours, MOST have to learn the hard way the lessons that are out there (and being given away for free here on this thread).

You've gotten two very good posts here.

They mentioned two paths that you could take.

Here's one more. If you continue to go it alone, you have to study, study, study your butt off, and probably trade simulation. Enrolling in a trading school - this is along the lines "getting a mentor" (after checking around and making sure that you have a system with good positive expectancy) is not a bad idea.

Actually, you're not that bad; you just have to unlearn a lot of really bad habits, get a handle on your emotions, and get a decent trading methodology (uh, you can find them for free on the internet) and you can work your way back to solvency. But plan on it taking a couple of years, not months!

Best Regards,

Jimmy

 

LMFAO!!!

Cheese, back when I was new to these forums, I generally thought you were nuts, now I just know you tell it like it is.

Sometimes it comes out flat out hilarious though....

 

Thanks so much for that. Telling me that you don't think I'll make it is not very inspiring but I get your point. I hope too much. you are right. I see this experience as a stumbling block which is a necessary step toward ultimate success. I believe a trader needs to know what it feels like to lose a lot of money so that when he gets back up on his feet, he has lived through the experience and has learned great lessons from it. Success is very rarely a straight and narrow path just like a market never goes just straight up (there are always pullbacks). I have learned a great deal from my experience. I know the dangers of trading large size. Now I'm just going to try to make my money back $500 at a time.

One thing that I find interesting is the fact that over the past two weeks during which I did not have a single profitable day, I would have to say I was up at least $200 (more often up $600-$1000) on each of those days but rather than take my profits I held the positions to get more; I wound up losing my gains and then some on each of those days. A part of me makes me believe I am not trading the right market since my momentum style may conflict with the conservative bond market. Of course, it is easy to blame failure on the products you trade. I think bonds may be more suitable for hedge traders (i.e. those people who hedge risk in one position by taking an opposite position in another security...for example buy 3 five years and simultaneously sell 2 ten years).

Anyways, I more often than not wake up in the morning still feeling very optimistic about my situation. After having gone through what I went through, I have this feeling that I can in fact make everything back that I've lost. I also have the feeling, however, that I'm not going to make it all back in a single trade and that I need to be more concerned with hitting singles than with hitting homeruns. I should, at this point, take whatever the market is willing to give me and not hold profitable positions longer than necessary and definitely not hold losing positions for long either.

WHAT EXACTLY WENT WRONG WITH ME? It's simple. I made $5000 in a month and felt confident. Then, I lost $5000 and then in an attempt to make that back I started trading larger size (having made $5000 over the month justified, in my mind, the trading of larger size). This is what has led to my current situation.

I know I began this thread with a question: is my career over? Of course, I know the answer to that already. I am not completely out of the game yet. I don't expect to ever give up on trading. What I was really asking is whether or not prop firms would give me a chance now despite the near blowup of my account. I almost feel as if this experience has earned me some stripes as a trader. To be a trader is to be, essentially, a student of risk. The experience I've had you can't really read about in books. You can't know what it is like until you've lived through it. Thanks

 

I decided that bonds would be easier to trade because you can know how they will move when economic numbers come out. Strong economy ==> bond decline.....weak economy==bonds rise.

That was my thinking when I decided on a product to trade. Since the US recently reissued 30-years I expected there to be volatility in this security. Being the most liquid security out there, I thought the bids and asks would always be tight.

Those were my reasons. Being more of a momentum trader, I think I may need to trade something else.

 

Only time will tell whether you are right or wrong on this. I may fail but I will die trying. All of my losses have been due to revenge trading. I already have the experience of trading bigger size to try to get back what I've lost. I don't think it is unreasonable for me to plan to get my money back over months. If I were expecting to get it all back in a single week or, worse, a single trade, then you might be on to something here. I can trade 6-lots successfully. It is only when I've attempted to trade bigger size that I've lost significant amounts of money.

Anyways, I appreciate your response. Good luck with your trading

 

u still thinkin' 'bout makin' u money back when that shud be da last thing in u mind; u prolly aren't gonna make 'em back any time soon...u aim now is to keep u acct balance in check'n'control u losses...profits will come unexpectedly exactly at da point when u have long give up u big money dream...u ought to change u mindset'n'do it fast.