You went on tilt and lost your discipline. Now you must remaster it. The answers you seek lie within http://prismintraday.com/readings/Disciplined_Trader.pdf
I have had similar problems. I believe the issue is before you get into the trade. You need to say to yourself, this is the last trade for today, it does not matter if I win or lose. Since you are having an emotional reaction to the loss. This happens especially when you have been doing good for awhile, and don't want a losing day. For the past 2 weeks, I have not had a losing day, but I know I need to except the fact, that eventually I will have a loss, and not try to make the money back by over trading on that day of a loss, instead manage my trades correctly. Today, I woke up late, and did not think I would get any good trades, but I was able to take 1 good one. I looked at the chart, and said, well if I woke up earlier, I know I would have taken these setups, and then I saw it a good setup. Once you start revenge trading, you are no longer able to look for good setups, you are just picking a random direction hoping to make your money back. Or once you get in the hole, you say, ok, I am down $ 700, I may as well keep trading, sometimes you make it back, and sometimes you keep losing. The goal is to prevent yourself from losing more than you usually win during a day or at least not kill yourself with losses even if you have a little bigger loss. Sometimes you just need a break from trading for the day. It may take years to prevent yourself from making this mistake again.
This is pretty common psychological issue... How do you think yourself: why do you keep trading despite your plan says stop trading? What is your own opinion about the cause of it?
Honestly if this is a reoccurring problem for you you should trade through a piece of software like excel or some other system where the unemotional state of the computer can "assist" your trading. Basically the program would detect that you've had 3 losers in a row and therefore close itself or even just shut down the computer, you could restart the program or something but you can always develop it further to prevent it from executing any trades for that day. And yes you can always somehow someway find a way to execute another trade ie phoning your broker or something, but the point is that these additional hassles will remind you that you should in fact stop trading. Also, once you get used to executing trades on only that platform, the foreign nature of executing trades via another method will serve as an additional reminder that you shouldn't be trading. To give you an basic example, i have an addon for my firefox browser which prevents me from staying on a site too long, ie i'm on facebook for more than 6 minutes it'll automatically send me to a new site, in my case marketwatch.com. And although i can cheat the system and open internet explorer, the simple fact that it pushed me out of the site was a good enough reminder for me to just give up browsing facebook for the time being. And only 1 in every 20 times this happens will i actually go open IE. It works. The only thing preventing such a system from being developed is time or money. To show you another example, I'm currently starting to figure out how i can develop an excel system, trading through IB, where it slowly scales up my trades and shows everything in %'s rather than actual dollar profit/loss. I figure this will help me in increasing my size slowly and consistently as grow my account. So the unemotional state of my computer will go larger size quite simply because my account got larger o the last trade. Likewise, it will decrease my size because my last trade was a ls on a $10,000 or billion doloser. 1% win is still a 1% win whether itlar account. Try giving that a shot. extraordinary problems require extraordinary measures... or something like that.
I have the same problem, this one I can't manage to remove, as I wrote yesterday on my journal, it took 4 years to manage not removing stops, add to a loser and taking profit as soon as I see green, and actually I have the opposite problem now, I don't take profit and often I give it all back, but when I try to pick a reversal, I can't stop, I have a max daily loss rule to prevent this and also a max number of trades as I'm trying to pick a reversal, but no way, no way, I think for me the only way is to have a broker who close my position for the day as soon as I reach my max daily loss, (I have one account with a broker who do this but it is in margin call and I'm now using tradestation that doesn't do this), also I have rules regarding how much profit I can give back if I'm in green for the day, I mean if I'm up $200 I can't end up the day at less then +$100, if there would be a broker that allowed me to change during the day the ammount where I have to stop that would be a very good thing, I mean if I'm up $200 and I have a last trade where my stop is $50, I could set up in a form to stop me at +$150 and if I reach this ammount it will close my positions and the trading privileges for the day. the other solution is to have a person with you, another trader, or even someone else that shout down your pc. I actually decided to move to an office to share it with a friend to try this but he delayed 2 months and I found my self here alone and I made the same mistake a lot of time... and now it is too late, my account is close to margin call and I have to simulate. sorry for my english...
yes, we have similar rules but when we hit that mad/idiot state of mind, that "person" don't follow rules and make his own unconscious decisions. it's like a split personality when trading (unconscious incompetence) and after trading (conscious competence).
i am taking up your challenge, and to fix my own demons too. i did well today but i know full well that didn't solve the REAL issue until i get myself into a bad losing day and in deep trouble, that's when the mad state is out of control and i go back into the abyss i worked so hard to get out of. however i will start my count today: please ignore the statements as i wanted to prove to bstay (and myself) that i did not adjust the report to show only good trades and that they are in proper sequence no fakes. demo account. Day 1 challenge, +$603 demo. (5 more days to go before i go back live account, and hope to re-master the discipline i lost so suddenly)
you have become quite the troll on these forums lately, huh ? Its bad enough ET is full of crap. We don't need u adding to it !
You still have not answered one of the questions asked above, have you figured out WHY you are unable to control yourself on that 7-to-0 losers day? Someone said character flaw but that's not wrong to ask of a trader psychology. If you don't know the cause, it will happen again after a series of winning days. And then it hits you hard again, hopefully not as bad next time. But I predict it WILL happen again to you.