Most software engineers probably make lousy discretionary traders. So they should stick to what they do best and build 100% automated systems.
You are down "only" about 6.8% or so based on the total trading value (of all the accts, which is about 1/4 of your total worth). How much do you make on average p.a.? Btw, what do you mean by this:
"... and I'm looking at spending at least 500.000 on colleges the next four years." Children's edumacation. Deutsch folks generally don't fok around and specialize in gender studies. Or welsch on student loans, lol. Those are Democrat party educational system enhancements to further include drag queen story time. We can expect some fine engineers in our future, bearded balarina tutu's and all, lol.
$60,000/yr/kid x 4 years x 2 kids = $480,000 That sounds about right. Graduate school extra. And you also need to include increased cost of support through age 18-22. Cars, clothes, travel, etc. That’s a lot of pressure to put on your trading. You can always go the Al Brooks path and become a vendor.
Got the cars covered - I'm fairly cheap and my high schooler has a 2002 Nissan Xterra - seems perfectly fine for a 17yo. My daughter is in Boston studying data science and we're paying 80.000/year, the idea is that both kids get 300.000 for college, my daughter burned through her first 100.000 after the first year and summer classes.
Definitely can see the your European side with the use of decimal instead of comma to delineate your money. Relative to your net worth, being down $80k isn't a "oh my god, what am I going to do" moment, but then again it can be distressing as evident by your title. If your systems were positive EV up till this year, it would seem that they don't work well in a bear market so it might be time to reduce size or stop trading. If you are overriding your system with your discretionary trades then it's a matter of psychology. To overcome this, I have a broker stop loss, if I trade poorly, then I'm automatically stopped out for the day. Punishment for letting emotions get the best of me. This work wells since I don't ever go broke by trading poorly.