Same as the other guys said, don't be a hero next week. It's only mid-May. Plenty of time. And so what if you didn't make it to 500k? Even if you made it back to where you were last week, you've already done really really well. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. I'm still rooting for you.
Neke, One rule I have is to always have some kind of account stop, i.e. a pre-determined total amount that I'm willing to lose on any given day. Technically this amount should be a fraction of your largest daily win, but we all know that most of us can't do that. At least make it no greater than your largest daily win. In your case because you are swing trading, perhaps it would be a weekly loss rather than a daily loss. Bottom line, I made this observation a few years back when I was going through one of my periodic observations on my trading. I would slowly, methodically build up my account over the course of a month and then blow a large portion of the monthly profit at the end of the month. The thing of it is, the slow, methodical days were the bulk of any given month. Remember, you have to remain in the battle. Large losses that wouldn't have occurred had you maintained the discipline of the slow, methodical rise will not allow you to stay the course. Keep on with what you know works. It can be done. You've proven it already. John
I agree with KGB about taking guts to post. Actually it may help your forward focus and hopefully help to prevent you going through a week like that again.
Hey Neke This type of a situation happened to me last year. After making big gains in Jan 06 had the whole months earnings wiped out in 2 bad trades in Feb. Actually did not take any unusual risks , just happened. Hurt my confidence a lot. So cut out on swing trades and took a lot of small trades to get myself out from the hole. The whole time during the drawdown the focus was to find and take trade setups that had very low risk. From your trades you seem to be using averaging down without a strategy. Only Hedgefunds and longterm investors can get away with that. Hope to see you back to winning ways soon
I think theer are two problems: 1. You pre-set a goal. You want to turn 76K to 500K by the year end. My experience is that whenever I set a goal(no matter for a day, a week or month), I lost big. Take whatever the marekt can give you. Don't set a goal. 2. Emotion got you really good. When you were making money, you confidence went too high and traded against all your rules. Now you had some drawdown, and your confidence went down. Try to tarde like a machine. It seems to me that you do have an edge, but you need to tarde with good attitude. P.S. I don't believe that you should change your game plan to trade with low risk, blah, blah. Risk is irrelevant, only thing matters is risk/award ratio. Some stocks have low risk, but the award is also like zero. What's the point? Trading low risk/award stocks is equvalent to give all the money to commissions and fill spreads.
Low risk does not mean choosing low volatility stocks. It just means waiting for the right setups and to focus on taking only perfect trades per the system followed and avoid average probability trades. Also means giving up more risky methods like averaging down. Hope this clarifies.
Probably the most insightfull statement made on ET in a long time. I printed this statement in a 20 point bold comic sans font and taped it to the top of my monitor.
This latest downturn is nothing more than a bump in the road for a trader like you, there's no need to allow it to turn into a tailspin. The more discretionary elements you remove from your trading and the more systematic it becmes, the better it will be over the medium to longer term, and the smoother your equity curve. *** One more thing, you're already using a very aggressive method for position sizing and your money management is on the aggressive growth AND income side of the meter (which actually is great, because it shows traders what is possible). But you've got to cut-out the averaging down routine, even if using that technique wins 80% of the time for you (and yes, I know it can be very seductive), when the security you're trading doesn't turn and starts trending, boy does it hurt. Good trading, JJ