Lol, welcome to trading! Dont worry, everyone goes through this kind of stuff. The ones who succeed are persistent mofo's who will do whatever it takes to make it. Be prepared for the next year or so of rocky roads, ups and downs, feeling great after a good day and just awful after a bad one. In the end, if you stick with it long enough, you will have learned what works, what doesnt and how to keep your emotions in check. Just make sure you dont blow through your account before you have given yourself a realistic chance of making it. This comes from 8 years of trading, 7 consecutive profitable and zero down weeks since 2001.
Don't worry. Look on the chart - how many of the last 10 sessions had selling followed by a nice strong buying close? I bought it too, unsuccessfully. Bad luck this was your first day, one could say. Not often you see the russell 2k move 4%!!!
It's ok, it's normal. Hint, now you know you need to work on your trading psychology. Search ET. Let me give you a head's up. Plan on reading Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas and Brett Steenbarger Ehancing Trader...............You can find both on amazon. Ari Kiev's book is supposed to be good also. Do you have a written trading plan? You better. I should be as detailed as possible. It better have you will do this if you see this, etc. You will stop after so many losses or % of account DD. Trading is a marathon not a sprint. Go back to sim and prove that you can have a profitable week. Focus on perfect execution of your plan. If your plan is good you will make money. If it's not you will know soon enough and can re-tool it. Stop focusing on the money. I know that sounds weird coming from a trader. Good traders focus on doing the right things and the money comes. Thinking about the money so much, obsessing about it, just f*cks with your mind. Trust me. I was you 2 years ago. I am still struggling, but I am getting consistently better and controlling my losses. Lastly when you get angry, frustrated and want to teach the market a lesson stop immediately! Our retail accounts aren't going to move any freakin' market bud. Ride the wave of smart money or stand aside. Just shut down and watch or better yet go do something else. Work out, take a walk, do something else until you are under control. It's taken me 2 1/2 years to figure out that most times I am trading against or with myself not against the market. The market just exists. I am either in tune with it or not. It's that simple. If I am not in tune with it I just to do something else and study when the market is closed. Trading is so much about the thoughts in your head. As a brilliant OP on ET once posted the trading monitor you use is a special kind of mirror. It reflects back to you what you are feeling inside at that moment. Confidence, Insecurity, Anger, Arrogance, Revenge it's all there. I hope some of this info finds you well.
Fair enough: The question you have to keep asking yourself is why did i do what I did. Dandxg's post is worth a second look. If you don't have a written plan take the time to write one. Good trading
Hey Drew07, If it makes you feel any better I lost 2.8% of my account in about 10 minutes this morning! At least my stops worked Ironicly, I'm up over 9% on the paper trades I made this morning. Don't let your losses get you down, your not the only one learning the hard way around here. It's aggravating to study these markets for so long and end up getting completely burned on random days. Yeah it blows that I could have had my account gain 9%, and my paper trading account lose 2.8%, but that's life. I could have just as easily lost a lot more. It looks like I'm down 4.8% since I started just eleven days ago. Considering my goal is to just break even, I'm not going to worry about it just yet. We picked a somewhat wacky time to enter with the Fed cuts and such. I've personally made a few bad choices as a result. I'm committed to losing every penny I have in my account before I even get upset about it. I just pretend like the money doesn't even exist, and that I never really had it. You and I both felt we were ready to start trading, so I have no shame in continuing, even if things only go downhill from here. I've leeched a lot of information from these boards over the years, and I'm not going to let that go to waste. I'm going to keep trading until I get it right, and hopefully soon I'll be able to start contributing back to these forums. Anyways, just trying to make you feel better if possible. Hopefully next week will be better for both you and I.
Drew, Try adding a "max-loss" clause to your trading. If you hit your max-loss for the day then switch back to the simulator or just stop for the day. The goal is to stop the bleeding early. Sure, everyone believes they can trade back out of a hole, but most just keep on digging that hole deeper. This should be part of your trading plan. Max loss per trade...max loss per day...max loss per week. This game is about controlling how much you lose in between your winners. Hope this helps.
There is alot of value in what golfer says. Especially when combined with other posters mention of having a trading plan. When I started my "rules" looked something like this (btw; I started with a 5K account, trading YM exclusively) 1) MAX contracts per trade... 1 2) MAX loss per trade... $75 (15 YM pts, not inclusive of commish) 3) MAX loss per day... $190 (not inclusive of commish) 4) No limit on number of daily trades, so long as result remains below MAX daily loss value. 5) Stops are not the only way to exit (or enter) a trade!!! When in doubt, get out, calmly! If feasible, try for an exit at breakeven NET before taking a guaranteed loss. The most important thing to note is that these self-imposed "rules" focus entirely on loss, not profit. Secondly, minimum and/or maximum numbers are just that, minimum/maximum. Because you qualify for a million dollar mortgage, doesn't mean you have to buy a million dollar property. Lastly, market conditions change, as does your account value. Self-imposed rules MUST reflect those changes. For the record, I am an index scalper. Although volatility causes me to trade intraday-swing more often, whether rightly or wrongly, my trading philosophy remains... I trade to make money, not to be right. I trade to make money, which is not the same as maximum profit. Good trading Osorico
Omigosh - this is so true. Great trading is about automated response, reaction time, instinct. Thinking is not in the equation....especially for short-term day trading. Yeah, doing big deals like Stevie Cohen's Wet Seal stake requires much research, analysis and "thinking". That's a whole different "ball game"....and ET Sponsor Timmy Sykes discovered that the hard way.....and lost his shirt on a single big deal when he should have stuck to his original game plan.