Yes and it happens to everyone... you can control it though via this method of loss from top until you teach yourself to hold on to profits. Look, no traders really trade during 11:30-2pm BUT I find this can be my most profitable time as I spot all the setups I want when the afternoon trade starts. Screen time can be boring but screen time is profitable... try sitting there and no entering a trade and just watch the action without an biases... guarantee you will read the action better then when your in a position. I watch the action for my setups.
+1... thats more like! Oh and Nooby_Mcnoob... I won't take up any more space on your thread as I think I have given you enough advice. Optimism, determination,perseverance and a little bit of skill will get you 90% of the way there! Good trading and I will be watching your journal to see how you prgoress...
Well, the thing is that I've changed trade sizes down so that I can train myself to catch bigger moves so the average up day for the new size is pretty low. However, the average profit per share traded including buy/sell on an up day is about 0.01. I'm trying to find ways to improve this. If I can get this to be 0.50, then I'm laughing. Still, this is probably the worst time of the year to be starting, there is absolutely no volume! Edit: Also, I'm still trying to find the psychology to stick with my one trade per day strategy. I think until I can do that consistently, I will not worry about the loss.
Dec 30, 2010: Net of sales: $151, Net of commissions: $131.5 Average profit per share traded (sell 1, buy 1 = 2 shares): $0.042 % on capital used: 0.59% % index gain (as of writing): 0.18% Trade size: 300 I'm so pissed. I entered my "one trade" (downside) after a few scalps and I got distracted by the #@#$ing insurance company (we had an accident, so need to replace the car) so I decided to get out. I would have made an extra .50c/share had I stayed in the trade. The trade hit my target SO beautifully I would have cried had I stayed in. Apparently distraction is going to cost me a lot of money. Not very happy with this. Grr. On the plus side, in the time between when I entered the trade and when I got out, I kept myself busy by working on my trading journal software. I've also started tracking the "Average profit per share traded" which includes both buy and sell so you can roughly read it as "half profit per trade".
trading means trading in isolatoin: everyone I know that does this for a living does it like that. I don't take phone calls, I don't answer the front door while trading, I answer e-mails at best. Especially when learning this you will need lots of focus to remember things and look at things in the right way and in context ... EDIT: only exception: I have a chat open, but only look at that one if trading is real quiet.
IT's ok, don't feel bad. You MANAGED the trade given the circumstance. You should be happy. It could have been a looser too !!! you never know. My advise - dont get happy over winners and don't loose ur heart on loosers. Try Numb. This will help you look at P/L as numbers and not monies !!
Totally. I already have relative isolation when writing software but trading seems to require even more! I turn off Skype and email. Now I have to turn off everything else!