yeah, all he knows is he couldn't make it, but I will give him credit for one thing, he is persistent.
Get this. I showed a guy 2 years ago a trade setup on the 5 min CL chart where he could lose 80% of the time and still come out a little ahead over the long term (1-4 setups in each morning session). He could not emotionally handle even TRYING it in a sim account even though I challenged him to take 20 losers in a row to get to one big winner which could wipe out all of those losers and learn to conquor his unfounded fears. We're talking ZERO risk and he can't take and execute the trade sequences which are very mechanical in nature. I was this close to just giving him a program (I wrote) which completly managed the trade (after initial entry is chosen by discretion) so he could have walked away from the PC if it were too unbearable to even watch it trade for him. But my common sense took over and knew what to do...it's better to let him find his own way in the trading world. Someone who cannot trust and follow simple instructions in a sim account has personal issues beyond my abilities to help. So maybe what you should take from this is to start looking for ways to survive in trading being no worse than 30% winners and no better than 40% winners. See and understand how the math works over the long haul. Solving the jitters is easy. You KNOW you're not going to win that often so set your stop and target (i.e., your RR ratio is dialed in) and walk away from the PC so the winners don't get cut short and come back for another trade when you hear an audible fill notice. Your edge will work without having to watch the candles behave like pogo sticks between closings. Many beginning/intermediate traders out there easily experience 50% winning systems yet they fail by having terrible RR ratios and/or avg win amounts in relation to that. Widening stops or making them initially larger than necessary (e.g., to give a trade "breathing room"), adding to losers, starting large and dumping shares/contracts as the trade goes YOUR way...my gawd...the top 3 ways to self-sabotage in trading comes naturally to the forefront of the human mind! You've got to be pro-YOU. I have many trade setups on the CL where I will gladly lose if it goes only 5-7 ticks against me. The point is, I know that kind of trade will shoot 2x-4x in my favor within a couple of mins (heck, sometimes seconds) when I'm right. I fully expect to be wrong 6 out of 10 times on avg and being wrong 7 times won't cause significant drawdowns. In 9.5 yrs at this (futures) I have never been a high winning pct trader. I learned very early on that winning at the 40%-50% level range is plenty to make a very nice living. My acceptance of this saved me from myself because then I could focus on how to take trades which didn't penalize me in the long-term for being more wrong than I initially thought I should be. I asked the guy I mentioned above what his goal was to be from a RR ratio and winning pct standpoint. He said, "winners 2x the losers and 50% winners". It's far more realistic for a beginner/intermediate to get that at the 40% winners level. At 50% (*all* trades count in this stat), you are bumping up against the top of the food chain in the at-homer world. So you see? He still has little idea of what is genuinely possible for him to reasonably achieve. The negative emotions frequently take over when the goal has little chance of matching the "doable reality." (he believes the goal is modest even though, in reality, it would make him a statistical outlier...a trading superstar.)
I am a technical trader, but I trade a single instrument to keep it really simple. I trade four core setups with explicit rules for entry, stop and target. There's no question about what to do because it's either a setup or it isn't and it either fits my criteria or it doesn't. Occasionally while in a position one direction an opposing trade signal triggers before my stop loss is touched. This is the only place I have discretion: I can either leave my stop loss in place, assuming the conflicting signal might be a trap, or I can place orders to stop-and-reverse at the appropriate price level for the new trade signal. This is a somewhat rare occurrence and so it doesn't affect my net result enough to worry about. If you get excited and trade out of plan regularly, you should consider just trading a micro Forex account or trading 10 shares of the equities you trade, just for the excitement of trading, but do something different for a living. Making a living trading without a solid plan you're able to follow is about as easy as making a living as a heart surgeon without going to medical school.
My win rate today was 37.5%, but like you I keep the losers tiny and let the winners run and that's all it took to have a very profitable day.
Thanks Steve for your help.. Nodoji - today is my first day adding more explicit rules on my entries and hopefully, that will help.. I'm starting to believe that this is the solution.. I will keep updating my progress here..
Today is my second day of trying to be discipline.. I've added more strict rules and somewhat following it.. 1. My first trade today was a 10 cent loss.. My emotions started running high and I was upset with myself.. As you can see, I have more work to do.. These are the emotions I'm trying to subside. 2. I did spot another great setup which again worked well. I'm slightly progressing but still needs major improvement..
you are very needy, you just need somebody to pay attention to you. If you started winning and nobody cared anymore, you would purposely start losing so they would talk about you again.