Have you considered trading 100 (or less) shares of SPY or QQQ using ES or NQ as your trigger. This may help you forget about the money part and get you back on track to pulling the trigger without fear.
Good idea.....I used to trade QQQ and did well with it. Might be time to let the futures account rest
Thanks for pin pointing your problem so well. At least it isn't the market. As you let us know at least the market you are looking at, I will nail it down for you in a few minutes. It's tough to find it necessary to give it back. You have a couple of "pictures" I need to erase; that's all that's left to do. it will be exactly like taking somthing equivalent to "don't fall down on the ice" and changing it to "Walk carefully on the ice" Forget about the new ideas to add to your trading approach and changing contract size and taking a break, etc. You have gradually build a play in your mind. A drama. You can look back and see when you started running it. It now eats up a lot of acting energy. Lets just drop the curtain on this one, once and for all. Chuck the script too. To do that, just say what you want it to be like. Do a step to actually approve what you said you want. And just move on. This displaces the play you are currently running. What is best is to find the picture that is screwing it up. This is just NLP lingo for a bad scene. We see what you are saying; now lets erase the causes.
what i have found for me is that when i attempt to use trading to make money for specific things... i flub it. when i trade for tradings sake... i make money. you say your're not scared money... but perhaps fear of not being that world sailor/trader is finding it's way into your trades. for instance, whenever i have a good day i really try hard not to envision myself surrounded by beautiful girls on my tropical island making trades inbetween laughter and swims... it tends to distort my perception of reality and is usually followed by a losing day. all traders deal with this at some point. live in the moment. you're only as good as you are. onelot
bobcathy1 - I make a good living from the market, but it only began when I could admit to myself that I was trying to make discretionary judgements about my trades, and it was being clouded by fear and greed. And I paid a big price for it. I was then fortunate enough to develop a system with carefully defined entry, exit and stops. With that in place, I just trade the numbers. It is simply an exercise in statistical probabilities. Boring sometimes, and very impersonal. But it works. My point? If you have a system that works, and if you can define precisely what it is...then get the heck out of the way and let the system work. If you CAN'T define how it works, then probably you don't have confidence in it, and shouldn't be trading it until you nail down the numbers. David
FWIW I find this a difficult market to get a handle on and I've been trading a lot less myself as have many of the other traders I hang out with. Also I sense that many of the traders I do hang with that have maintained their levels of trading seem to be wrong more often in their trades. Spreads are tight, the trend has been down for the most part but there's a lot of tight range chop especially after the first hour or so. And today, as we saw there was a big time intraday bounce which was mostly short covering it seems. So take your time and choose your spots or as some have suggested take a break and don't trade at all for a while and just get away from the market. But I do agree also with most of what's been said here. If you do trade, trade smaller and also don't discount your sense of caution in difficult conditions. One doesn't need to trade all the time. Sometimes it does make more sense to just sit on your hands.
Onelot.....you make a lot of sense. Lindq.......I seem to have trouble following the rules for sure. And it is even more frustrating when the rules actually work well. I know, I am my own worst enemy.
BCE.....you make me feel a lot better about my lack of action. I read all the time, trading well is knowing when not to trade. Last year I could detect a daily bias. Now it seems all my indicators are broken, a flip of the coin would work as well.
Jack.....I feel more like "a comedy of errors" than a drama. I think that is a problem for me.....the script I write for myself lacks humor. I need to make this an enjoyable task, not a chore.