I can state from personal experience gamblers are degenerate types. My ex's brother was one of these types. The ahole caught the gambling bug and it's been downhill since then. His wife kicked him out of the house now he lives with his old mother and managed to get his name on all her accounts. Now steals her mortgage money and takes cash out of her credit cards, yells at her to go get a job so she can give him money to gamble. Told the ex the only way his family can make him stop is to hire someone to beat the ahole into a coma.
Well, not much to say now, but to learn from your mistakes and don't repeat them again. It is one thing to lose because your strategy did not pan out, it is a whole different thing to lose because of poor execution or other silly things not related to the strategy. I think you should not wait until 4k before you stop. I think you should stop if you make another mistake in the next 4 weeks. This will teach you the discipline. And return all of the money to your family and friends. That's just a bit of friendly advice, do not trade for them unless your strategy is rock solid and you have a track record with the strategy. It is not worth it to lose friends and family over trading seed money. It is better to just work a job a bit longer and collect a bank roll to start. Down 50% in a week, that's gotta hurt a bit. I started my own aggressive FX account in mid Oct, and the strategy caught unfavorable conditions and started down 25% DD as well. It has recovered nicely, and I'm currently up ~10% on the account. So you can come back if you stick with your strategy. If the market takes your account out, then at least you can live with it. It beat you. Just don't beat yourself.
Delayed update for the Week 3: Down 2k, Start Balance 13k, End balance 11k. It was a particularly volatile week for the markets and I should have made money. I shorted index futures on Wednesday, made quick bucks as markets dropped real quick, but then found it hard to stay in the short trade. When it seemed price is due for a bounce, I switched to long and that caused me to lose. I committed the error - Cutting the profits short. Thursday was a partial carbon copy of Wednesday. Shorted 20 minutes after the open, it was the perfect short for the day, within a point of the high for the day. Made money and then covered way too soon. When I covered, I had the option to bring stop to breakeven and let the trade run, I was estimating the probability to get a R:R 10:1 at 70% and above. But, I passed such great odds, covered my trade and then went long :eek:. Well, Price kept going down - ended up losing when I should have made money. My account went below 10k, and since my stop point for trading this account is 4k, I was worried. I kept couple of contracts overnight and traded them for 5 points or so. Helped bring my account above 10k. Friday was better in the sense that I not only recognized the market direction, but my execution was also clean. I went long early in the day and rode ES for 8 points. Then covered as Obama was going to speak, after which I mostly sat out for the day, other than couple of scalps. Got the account above 11k and have got tiny amount of confidence back. Overall, a discouraging week as I under-performed my model, especially when the market was very favorable. A good thing is that I identified that I still suffer from 'not letting the winners run' syndrome. So once I recognize what errors I do which cost me money, I can work on them. And I am hopeful that I won't be repeating this error in future! Giving a peek ahead on this week - Today i.e. Monday has been pretty good (both in recognizing trades and executing them flawlessly), my account is up and my confidence is back.
Made this comment last Friday, I have tested only 1 setup completely by now and another setup only partially. It was a lot of work and I underestimated the work. As far as writing the step by step procedure to follow before taking the trade, I have not written it down yet. These are the advantages of taking notes. If you falter and fail to do something, a quick re-look at the notes can remind. Note to self: I will work on the step-by-step procedure tonight and tomorrow.
GMST: WHAT IS YOUR PLAN? I guess I still don't understand it. I'm sorry but I think you have major psychological hurdles to overcome. Did all of your actions conform to your plan, or not? If not, at this point, you should be honest that you just can't do this at this time. You either do not have a concrete plan in place, or your plan sucks, or you simply can't follow a plan. You only need three things to succeed: 1. Some kind of edge (probably the easiest part), codified into a comprehensive trading plan that includes all contingencies. 2. Discipline to follow the plan. 3. A little bit of money. Anyone can scrape together some money. Anyone who is fairly bright can, with a bit of hard work, develop some kind of edge. But even if you give someone a million dollars, AND an edge, in most cases, they'd go busto. Either they couldn't follow the plan, or they'd get overconfident and scale up too fast, or they would pull money out of their trading account too often... So why do 95% of traders lose (they just lose!) becasue of the psychological stuff, 95% of people can't get over the mental hurdles...
Sim is your friend when finding an edge. A month or two evaluating or re-evaluating a strategy is a great break for your brain and possibly your account balance. This is easily stated by yours truly in hind sight as it has proven true over time. Tough to see when battling it out day to day, but a tactical pause does the mind and account good. Hang in there bro, you have the desire.
I may be wrong but You appear to be letting arbitrary account values change your trading plan on the fly. Now if those changes were part of your plan that's fine if not you are letting the market kick you about and you just got lucky to survive that particular round. This will end badly because "YOU HAVE NO DISCIPLINE., even if you have a legitimate edge or strategy. An edge requires you to use it and play your game not dance to the market's tune.
I had this same experience with paper trading - my impulses were exactly wrong, 100% of the time. Sounds like you're almost there, just need to rein in your impulses and stick to your tested strategy.
You are still learning and developing new strategies and setups which is good, but why are you doing it with real money that is not even your own and losing them in the process? You are still re-writing your plan and testing things over the weekend. All this is good, but it should not be done after you started live trading. It should be done prior to that. When you have a plan that you`re ready to go live with, you should not be making major changes to that plan or discovering new setups from day to day or week to week. And if you discover that the plan that worked well on the drawing board or in simulator does not work in real life, you should not have to lose 24K before you realize that.
If you have a system that is going to give good returns, which you say you have, you won't really lose anything in the long run by waiting a few weeks/months to run it on sim first. But you have everything to gain.