Kevmiester You must have felt somewhat relieved today on any of the stocks you retained from last week-I know I was. Although I felt an incredible sense of wanting to trade, I was very apprehensive, since there was no immediate charting history to guide me, not to mention the emotions in the market. For whatever reason, I decided to only go long(not that I'm a raving patriot), but I used 1/2 lot shares and played twice as many positions as normal spread over several sectors. My normal style is 3-4 intraday trades to short term swings with relatively tight stops, however I am still holding five of the twenty trades I made last week. Somehow inspite of all this irrational and undisciplined behavior, I ended up positive. Whom knows what this means-just hang tough Kev and you will live on to trade another day. Thank God Elite Trader is here for us to vent
"The speculator's chief enemies are always boring from within. It is inseparable from human nature to hope and to fear. In speculation when the market goes against you hope that every day will be the last day--and you lose more than you should had you not listened to hope--to the same pioneers, big and little. And when the market goes your way you become fearful that the next day will take away your profit, and you get out--too soon. Fear keeps you from making as much money as you ought to. The successful trader has to fight these two deep-seated instincts. He has to reverse what you might call his natural impulses. Instead of hoping he must fear; instead of fearing he must hope. he must fear that his losses may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a bigger profit. It is absolutely wrong to gamble in stocks the way the average man does." ...... Jesse Livermore " The unsuccessful investor is best friends with hope - and hope skips along life's path hand-in-hand with greed when it comes to the stock market. Once a stock trade is entered, hope springs to life. It is man's nature to be hopeful, to be positive, to hope for the best. Hope is an important survival technique for the race. But hope, like it's stock market cousins: ignorance, greed and fearall distort reason. " ...... Jesse Livermore Kev, take some time off and read the new Mark Douglas book: Trading in the Zone
Kevmeister There is an issue of self sabatoge in your trading> You were lucky today MON but you need to figure out where it is coming from. Why do you break all your rules? Why did you overrun your system? Why did you allow your risk to get well out of hand. THe first thing to do is accept that this part is inside you. Sit down with it and try to figure out why your body created it. Ask it it's purpose and work on an arrangement so it will allow you to trade properly. I can relate to having a part of me wanting to self sabatoge. It took me awhile to find that it existed and to deal with it. THe self sabatoge for me came from my parent's divorce. I was completely emotionless during the entire process. Meanwhile my father had completely moved to the other end of the country. I felt deep down inside abondoned, and worthless. It was one of my big goals to constantly prove myself to him that I was worth something. Now meanwhile this was purely my own belief. I don't need to prove anything to anyone because I am a person. I've dealt with the emotions that were trapped inside me and they no longer have any control in my life. I'm commenting on all this because I see part of my self sabatoge in you with the beginning of the thread. rtharp
i would like to echo previous replies and also thank kevin for posting his experience. it is very humbling to read his "story", we all have made what we feel are "BIG" mistakes and the reality of reading someone's fresh mistake gives me a healthy dose of respect for the markets. ego doesn't always have to be brazen for it to teach us a lesson. clear your head, lick your wounds, and come back small.....hit some singles and doubles for a while and your confidence will return. good luck!!!!!
there are many ways of self sabotage and for better or worst you should dig until you find the reason. A person will never become a great trader unless he/she solves this problem. It can also be that ones core personalty/circumstance is NOT suited to day trade and to attempt it despite is a self suggested idea coming from reasons like hate ones job, nothing better to do etc. It's not for everone.
I want everyone to know I sold all positions today. (Actually got most of the highs today) Couldn't take it anymore and needed to "clear my head". I'm going to take some time off and absorb all of the advice offered. I want to thank everyone that responded to this thread. What a great group of people on Elite Trader. I've just taken a big hit but I have the confidence I will overcome this and come back much stronger. Thanks again everyone Kevin
Kevin I need to address you again. There is a pattern here and you have told us about it. It has happened over and over and deep down inside you formed a belief that has caused this pattern to reoccur. You need to figure out what is causing this pattern to show up. It will surface again and again until you do. I imagine it also comes up in other parts of your life, but not might be so obvious (trading it's easy to spot). Think why did you break all your rules? What did you have to gain? What did you have to lose? again what did you have to lose? please keep us updated on what you discover. rtharp
This is a classic, The old mix-the-time-frame devil of the stock market. The OPINION factor. Kev, thanks for sharing this story. It has all the elements that make many successful traders blow out. And many on this forum touched on the different aspects and factors of discipline, risk management etc. What I find fascinating about your story is that you had no plan other than to buy an oversold market and see where it takes you. I have done this in the past and although I knew better, I still thought that I was smarter than the market, and we all know what happens next ... My suggestion to all traders is to remember that traders do not predict markets - they react to them. In other words, there is no room for OPINIONS while trading. Investors can predict and have opinions. Traders cannot! In this thread http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2254 I mentioned an article that helped me make a lot of money this last year. What I failed to mention is that this article also saved me a lot of money, because my nature in the past would have been to have an opinion on the market, such as, the market cannot go down any lower and buy and hold stocks (losers). Because of this article, I decided to trade with the market. I played both sides. I reacted to the market and did not try to predict it. I made about 60% of the money from swing trading both long and short and 40% of the money from intraday trading mostly on the short side. Another lesson I learned about OPINION was from Brandon Fredrickson (while a member of his chat room). Brandon used to trade futures. He was long a bunch of contracts and the underlying went down below cost of production. He always said, "in my widest dreams I did not expect it to go below the cost of production." He got blown out. I remember him telling us this in his chat room in 2000. While everyone wanted him to call the bottom, he kept saying, "it can go much lower, the trend is down and we should be short." He learned the lesson from the futures market and his story and guidance helped many stay in business. So, no more opinions as far as my trading goes and I have it posted on all three of my monitors. Good Trading Bill
Wow, it is weird reading my story after all these years. How times have changed. I'm still in the game. Made some money and lost some money. Still working full-time like always, but love trading. I also like my job. Thought everyone would get a kick out of this. Kev