I gotta learn to be not afraid of heights! I jumped at the day's HIGHs on NG and it still rallied after that point. Gotta condition myself to be not afraid of high prices. Who knows how high is high? It can go one for a long long time. When it reverses(who knows when) then I'll be ready to short for profits. It's the NQ and YM that I keep losing money from shorting. Well, occasionally I make over $1K a day one the few days that it's down. Like 12/29/17 I made $1.4K. It was a straight down day. Most days it's just up, up, up, and away! Missed out on the biggest rallies of 2017 and 2016! Ack.
You won't like my response, but I not trying to be cruel. You should put 100% going back into Corporate again and in free time learn to automate. We PM'ed Sept 21, 2016 and you wiped out a months worth in a single trade as you not been able to put in protective stops in ####, your inability to do right in #1) "Protect your capital", tells me you are very very long way to overcoming this problem if you still doing after this amount of time. People violate this rule as they see loses within subconscious to be of loss of self image and you not looking at this as a complete Business. You subconscious will generate physical pain within your brain when you entered at wrong time and instead of already having a protective stop in place or you had one and deleted, pain increases, more of you being a where of pain you get can help you along the way of your future. I remember the very last time I deleted protective stops was 1990s, instead of taking a quick $300 loss for day trade in T-Bonds, I rode that baby into over $10,000 over the course of 3-4 weeks at the Mid-Am! I was deer in headlights till broker called and asked if I was going to fund another one, was a year before I opened another Commodity account. And yet I traded stocks well, which in a way took longer to figure out commodities. When you have 3 million in the bank, have tripled your account three separate times, then you have less pressure to do again, or automate it, place system on cloud and be almost anywhere in world and watch it while working corp. Wives can be very supportive, but most all have that point. To have margin used when you not "Master of your domain" like tossing frozen turkey in a fryer on that special day. You let your trading account based on trading one contract for each $3,000 at a min, yes many firms require less, but should another 911 occur and exchange stop and you were long... You get more aggressive when your knowledge expands and not just you have a sizeable account, learn to buy support/sell resistance and risk next to nothing, whereas you do breakouts-stops have to be farther away. Learn from your winners, how many bar it take for you to get to breakeven plus one tick, so maybe it is 3, at 4 bars you looking to take a tick and get out-don't want to overstay your welcome. Being "occasionally" is not banking anything, it like betting on the red/black, and having high winning percentages means little when your losses are huge. When you trade, think in terms of percentages and concentrate on getting losing % AND ave loss lower than getting profitable % higher, less you lose, profits take care of themselves. I wish you Good Fortune Sir
Handle123, Thank you for your thoughtful and sympathetic feedback. In no way is it cruel or harsh. I really appreciate that and recognize many of the issues you highlighted. Yes, overleveraged is one problem. Taking large losses is another huge problem. Countertrend trading is another. Getting rid of all three would make me a consistent winner. I learned daytrading in 2001-2003. We were in the midst of a bear market. Every long got crushed. I think I got "traumatized" and now I can't even go long. Every time, I tried to short rallies I get run over! When I go long indexes I hold for seconds. That's how much fear there is for me to go long indexes. Seconds! I'm a chart trader not a scalper. And my chart patterns tell me to hold for multiple bars. But when I go long I'm that afraid of reversal that I get out in seconds. Then just now I gave up and bought which was a high then got shaken out by the pullback! wtf?!! The one saving grace is when I'm wrong on a long on the indexes I get out VERY quickly! But when I'm wrong on the short indexes I hold until maximum pain and then get out. Well, lately that amount has been going down. So each wrong short on the indexes is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Which is a good direction and improvement. But the best improvement would be NOT to enter those short index trades in the first place when my chart patterns and setup screams buy! I mean cutting losses and keeping them small is nice and all. But would have been better to AVOID those losses and GAIN from the upward pattern. I can go long other instruments but not the indexes(YM and NQ). There's so much pain, trauma, and psychological biases that screws me up there. In fact the bias is so bad that even when I look at NQ/YM chart and it says this is the perfect long setup, my hands automatically hit sell! Either I stop trading the indexes and focus on other instruments that I have no problem holding long and for a good ride. Regardless I need to learn to cut losses! Higher percentage winning is fooling me. In fact, I would say 99% of my losses can be attributed to these biases and traumas. I do have good trades mind you. It's just the bad trades overwhelm my good trades. One time I was long the NKD(Nikkei Futures) when Brexit was announced toward the bottom. Made $19K that day. That was by far my best futures trade. My best equity trade was on LFIN. Made 86% in one trade in an hour. But those super trades are all erased by this persistent short biases. I finally got rid of all of my bad trades last month. Got out of TVIX(the worst trade of my life!). I'm glad I got out since then TVIX had dropped significantly. That drop never ends. I got out of TECS. Whew. So no more short bias ETFs.
I also wish you well, Trader99. I think you've just made a really insightful post with no fewer than five important observations, above ... (i) Overleverage problem (ii) Taking large losses/not cutting losses (iii) Countertrend trading (iv) Emotional attachment to shorting indices (v) Being fooled by high winning percentages The last one, in particular, is very commonly significant to people "struggling": if I had a few dollars for all the people I've seen in forums, over the years, who are failing mostly/partly because they're instinctively attracted to high win-rates rather than to high expectancy, I'd hardly have to trade at all! Anyway, good luck and good wishes: your post just above clarified that you're very clearly moving in the right direction.
There's an irony in this, in that I have developed a long bias and am afraid to short. I did manage to get a couple nice daytrade NQ short scalps in on Wednesday morn, was beautiful. The shorts spoke to me. Then on exact same setup on Thursday morn I decided to long into it, same method, and got wasted. Then today, same bloody setups happened again. The shorts spoke to me at the open but I just sat on hands because of my long bias. Thankfully the longs worked later on today, so the time was not wasted. I feel your pain about having a bias. Personally I am trying to shake myself of the long bias because there is something getting very wrong about all this long action. Just going to take more practice with the monies to get back into seeing both directions, not just one.
I just took another big loss for no good reason. I was up a lot on ZW. Then at 9am PST it tanked so fast! I guess I should pay attention to when reports are released. Can't just trade off the charts. Unbelievable. Why does this happen to me?! Made some progress but now this happen out of the blue makes me feel like a total loser. I should have known right? Fundamentals are important too..
I know!! Maybe I should stop trading completely. Practice on a paper account until I'm consistent and recognize the right thing. In theory, I should be able to go long or short. I guess IF and WHEN the bear market comes then I'll be raking it in. But bull markets dominate now and last longer..
Sorry to hear it. I'm afraid so; yes. Scheduled announcements, anyway. I'm a "fast trader"/"semi-scalper" and do my best to avoid "news" completely. It can still catch you unawares, of course, but the scheduled stuff, yes: you have to be aware ... Fundamentals are a PITA. Just my perspective.
This means I'm sloppy. Things are not aligned. It happened like in a second. Tanked. Just like when NG report came out. I was up nicely then tanked and went nonstop. For that one, I held for several days and got out slightly better than even. Thanked the market gods. Then of course after I got out it rallied hard for two days. Something is really off with my trading. There are some good spots, but the bad stuff overwhelms the good stuff. What do you scalp? Futures? Equities?
Everyone gets disillusioned, after big losses. But the comments in your post above (that I commented on) show that you're clearly thinking about things the right way - which is honestly more than can be said for so many people. "Semi-scalp", not "scalp". Really not a scalper at all: some of my trades are 2-3 minutes; others (better ones) sometimes as long as 2-3 hours. Futures only. Mostly NQ; also CL a little (and very occasionally Euro and Pound futures, just because I'm a former EUR/USD and Cable trader from a long way back, when I was starting off). I don't like to trade much on Fridays anyway - Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are always my busy days.