Lilduckling, Glad you are doing well. I hope 1 day you will come back to trading. All the people in ET that started around the same time as me has left. Only 1 is left ie Coolweb. Sure missed all these posters. They were an inspiration to me to continue trading.
"yes... i explained it in some posts a while back.... although i got lucky on my last all or nothing trade by correctly stating where the mkt was going..(the call is in one of the threads somewhere on the futures forum), i decided to take my $ and run. I spent quite a bit, and the rest i put it all on mutual funds (which are doing awesome). Dont know when i will trade again. I was not living..... just exsisting in a room all by myself for 8 to 12 hours a day... never enjoyng life.... like a prisoner. Sinse then i have gone through a transforming on my outlook in life... although i still follow the market some what and drop by here once in a great while.... i have found that there are much more inportant things in life... like living life to the fullest in a way you have no regrats if you were to die tommorrow.... like in a constant state of Zen." I dont mean to insult or offend you, but you sound like an undisciplined unbalanced individual. You go from one extreme (trading 8-12 hours a day) to living life to the fullest. I mean isnt there an in-between, a balance? I dont believe quitting is the answer even if you made a pile of cash. Eventually you will burn through your cash. It may not be next week or next year, but sometime in the future. . .On the other hand, working 24-7 is not the answer either as you just burn out. As for living life to the fullest, it will be fun for a while, but then things will get old and you will lack purpose. You will find yourself looking for something different. . . The key to a successful enterprise is balance and discipline. Going to an extreme is a means to an end. . .
<p>I am not trying to be argumentative. What you term stress is something to which I would give another term. The term would be urgency which is the antidote to complacency. I, too, have had the experience of starting the day in the hole, and followed up with a very good series of trades in which I felt my decision making was very crisp and I was trading at the optimum pace. To go back to sports analogies, you will often hear sports commentators remark that teams are not playing with the sense of urgency necessary to be successful. The team will fall behind and then start playing much better and with that sense of urgency. Obviously, as traders we do not look to get in the red so that we can achieve that sense of urgency that is often gets us on the track of trading well. I try to get that sense of urgency by telling myself if I can hit my target by a certain time, then I will take rest of the day off. This keeps me from sitting on trades too long and waiting for what may or may not occur. After all the only reason I trade is to be profitable at the end of the day. If I lost some before I made some or I did in less than a full trading day really makes little difference.
Yes... thats why im no longer day trading, but moving my $$ around in a much longer time frame. My last trading call here a few months ago makes your point...... even though i ended up being right, it was still reckless.... brought on by several reasons, and i knew i had to get out. Knowledge without discipline = bye bye $$. Now i focus on the time frame I am best at. Best trading to you. And bow your head if you ever step into my time frame!
Livermore's exact quote from his book Reminiscenses of a Stock Operator: "There isn't a man on Wall Street who has not lost money trying to make the market pay for an automobile or a bracelet or a motor boat or a painting."
Trading with your own $ is alien at first. But it will become comfortable then comonplace and then boring. Making purchases on future gains is just another credit card syndrome. I would rather have money than things because they don't take boats at the grocery store. Akuma
might i suggest this...........find a signal that works.........enter when you see it ......all things being favorable....and "all things" should not be overkill, too much stuff to give the mind the opportunity to override the signal...to avoid the pain of losing again.and again..........be the robot.....when u see it.....can be severity of angle 45degrees......can be crossing o f lines proven a few hundred times live.....etc.......high probability is alll u can get, as no one knows for sure what the next bar will bring, intraday trading eminis only....stop loss setting/trade/money management and trailing is the killer for most...........nobody will accept the other guys stuff anyway....all these posts are wasted time.......ego won't allow...for most....it must be theirs....how can we brag on other guy's stuff? ...thanks for the space ...porgie