With a small account you cant take "maybe" trades. Take your setups or sit on the sideline. Knowing when to not trade will help you grow your account. If you miss a great trade that for example would have yielded you 1k but you didn't feel right about it let it go, because there will be another trade that will offer the same points or profit tomorrow or the next day that has your name on it. Kind of a lose a grand today or make a grand on MY TERMS tomorrow attitude. Its when you can walk away or watch a trade pay somebody else because it didn't fit your criteria is when you are ready. GL
No, I'm not. I blew up many times this year just to get to this point. My entire savings is wipe out. I haven't dare taken a look at those reports b/c I don't want to know how much my losses are. I don't want to know until it's tax time. That's true and one of the hardest lesson I had to learn from last week blow out. I've realized that I've don't have to take every setup and I don't have to trade everyday. I've already greatly reduced the number of trades I'm making and the amount of times I'm in front of the screen. So far that has been very helpful. There's less stress and stuff.
Lost $105 on one trade. After commission, the account will be at an even $800 like it has done so many times before. Decided to just quit after that to prevent any revenge trading. Ultimately when you see a setup and enter, it's either gonna work or it's not gonna work. No amount of analyzing afterward will influence the market. There's no guaranteed your setup will work no matter how good you think it is. It's all probability in nature. All you can do is set your stop at a reasonable level and hope your trade will work. If it doesn't, then just let it go and wait for the next setup. This is the gambling side of trading. The difference is that there's a degree of predictability in trading. In gambling it's entirely probability. You're only fooling yourself if you think that with enough hard work and good analysis you can be 100% sure you're right. Tomorrow is another day.
I'm doing that and it hurts me so much to see money that could've been mine going to to someone else's. ha ha.
You need to analyze all of your trades every day, and replay them, see where you would have added or taken some risk off. Your attitude for taking certain setups shouldn't be hoping (you should never be hoping or praying while trading), it should be more like, 'if I took this setup 10 times, would I be profitable 7 or those 10?'. You are correct sometimes those setups just won't work, but now is the time where you should be focusing on what setups work well FOR YOU, and try to do more of them even if its 1 a day. You need to start to keep track of what are your 'A' setups, 'B' setups ect.. so when you see an 'A' setup you can press your bets, when you see a 'C' setup you know you won't be risking as much on those trades as on the 'A' setup. I know right now you are trading with 1 lot, so what you can do is with your 'A' setups give them more room to work then you 'B' setups. Also go back and look to see where your stops were placed. Did you place them based on how much pain you are going to take on that trade based on your P&L or did you place them based on trading fundamentals? I would almost bet you are placing them based on your P&L, which isn't what you should be doing. Remember you are still learning how to trade, do not focus on your P&L right now, focus on making good trades and figuring out how to make more of them. Once you learn how to trade, your P&L will reflect that and your emotions will become less of an issue. I can't stress this enough, you should go on the sim until after labor day as the moves in the market are not in your favor until real volume comes into play.
I'm already in over $10k in student loan debt. I'm not using my degree and there's a high chance I will never be able to. The kind of job I can get pays at most $10/hr. It's almost impossible to save anything after subtracting cost of living. Trading is the only chance to dig myself out. No, I'm not placing them based on how much I want to lose. If I didn't have to deal with bots hunting for stops, they would be much tighter. I've had many situations using tight stops that would get hit and reverse immediately from exactly where the stop was placed. I could use mental stops, but right now I don't trust myself to execute them. The loss from the last trade would've been worst if the stop weren't there. So that stop was placed correctly.
You're getting "there" in a sense. While you see a setup and enter, you can be watching for some kind of reversal or something that tells you that your original trade is no longer valid in its current direction. Sometimes this warrants a reverse trade, but on a small account you don't want to end up getting chopped out. Probability is your edge. You set your stop at a level where price would tell you that you are wrong. You don't just pick some random, reasonable level and "hope" it won't get hit. That is gambling with your stop. You absolutely CANNOT "hope" in trading. Like I said earlier, "Do not wish, hope or pray." The common theme here is that you have to work on YOURSELF. It's not about you taking the rest of the day off because you don't want to revenge trade, it's not about finally understanding what price is going to do because it has always done this before, and it's not about watching your account reach a certain level and you can't seem to break through. What I am referring to is the fact that a lot of your statements are, "I knew...," "I hoped, wished, and prayed...," or something along the lines of "I, I, I." The last one was the "You, you, you" referring to the fact that you're turning the market into a machine of expectations and trying to humanize price movement. The market does not care what you do, it does not care where you got in. If you get in, get stopped out, and then price reverses it may cause you to think, "I am fully convinced that people on the inside go hunting for your stops." No. What that means is that YOU were on the wrong side of the market. YOU have to take full responsibility for your trades. You chose to enter there where there may have been a signal that price was reversing. Sometimes you just don't know, but if you aren't sure what the signal is, then you shouldn't have put on a trade to begin with. You can't not take a trade, see price go a million ticks the way that you were going to trade, and then look back and say "yeah, see, I should have traded there." If you "should" have traded there, then you "would" have traded there. You cannot play the "shoulda, woulda, coulda" game because it will eat you alive. Trade in the "now moment." If you decide to sit on the sidelines because you just aren't fully convinced and then price races to a profit target, you can't beat yourself up over it because you were right in not taking the trade. You took all available information and decided to not take the trade. Just because price went to all new highs doesn't make you wrong for not taking the trade. You have to be able to distinguish what makes you right and what makes you wrong. Most of my problem right now is that I see my setups, but I don't take them. It's partly because I don't trust myself and I have some sort of mental block. It's a fear. It's not a fear like "I'm scared of snakes." It's a fear of the unknown, of uncertainty. I am aggressively working on it. I'm working on myself. I'm not sitting here reading every trading book on the market and I'm not sitting here analyzing every market trying to find what works. I know my setups/signals work, it's just me that is causing me to hesitate. Turn your mindset away from the what the market "should" do and what the market "will" do, and direct your energy toward your own psychology. Look for self-improvement of yourself. I think the two best books are commonly known. Also, the only direct point I will make here is this: Stop using 1 minute charts.