You want to ride your winners and cut your losses, that is correct. But you need to understand that prices trend and by trading with the trend you put yourself at an advantage. It sounds like maybe you are paying for some "system " to provide you with entry signals and that you have now idea how it generates the signals. Most of the "systems" that are sold are complete garbage. Instead I suggest that you develop your own signals using moving averages, MACD etc. I would also suggest reading Stikky Stock Charts. Also check out seykota.com. Ed Seykota is one of the most successful traders of all time and answerers questions on his FAQ, primarily about his beliefs about psychology. In the charts section you can see stocks that are in historic trends.
Regardless of what you choose to do, either now or in the future, it is essential that you somehow get past such feelings. If you do not, then you will be faced with potentially debilitating stress that will likely impede your performance.
cold or whatever your name is ,if you want to learn how to trade there are plenty of people on here to learn from,if you put half the energy into trading as you do in following jack and spyder around you might become a success and lose the need to bash
I find writing poetry to be particularly soothing: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1865711#post1865711
Re pressure/ Stress: If you decide to only take trades that have at least a 1:2 Risk-Reward relationship, your stress might be aleviated a lot. Ask yourself where your trade is supposed to go to succeed and where your stop should be, and ruthlessly throw out all trades where that relationship is not present. Helped me a lot, because you could have less than 50% winners and still be profitable, which takes a lot of the sting out of taking a loss.... until you learn to read the market better. These would be the trades that Jack H. would call "trading the long diagonal of the parallelogramm" or some of the like.
Meaning, unlike reversing at turning points, taking only the retracements in the direction of the trend. If you see price as moving in channels and then take only the trades that go from the right trendline to the left (both in Up- and in Downtrends), they would form the long diagonal of a parallelogram, together with the trendlines. Make a sketch and you will see what I mean. I am NOT a JH expert, and will not get in a JH discussion, please! but I understand some of the things he is talking about. I just posted this as a help to the OP. To the OP: if you want to obtain a Zen state of mind, practice meditation and then apply it during market hours. Don't try to learn it during trading, that is expensive. All you might learn is to remain equanimous during losing. You don't want that: you want to learn to win first.
Comparing yourself to others for your self-worth is a mistake in my book. Because no matter how well you do, there will always be someone doing better. But thats just my opinion and I could be wrong.
In addition, I realized that I am getting older and I felt that I am stuck in a stage of life while everyone are moving forward and leaving me behind. Pension_Admin ---------------------- You're too young for a mid life crisis. Maybe later I'll start a thread on male menopause.