Hi traders,
I am not the kind of person who would normally take the time to share personal stuff on social media or blogs, but this time I decided to give it a chance. After working on my trading style for such a long time, I feel now I am really close to being profitable. Objectively, I should not be optimistic since today I just broke a rule in my ProAccount with TopStep, and tomorrow I will start again from step 2, however given the circumstances of 2020 the only thing I am left with is the goal/dream of becoming the trader I want to be.
****MY PERSONAL BACKGROUND***
Since this is the first post of the Journal, I will give you a little background about myself. I promise that next posts will be shorter.
I am 38 yo, I was born in a remote area of Northen Italy, so remote that until ten years ago internet was unavailable. Since I was a child I dreamt of travelling and discovering the world, and the only way to escape from my region was to be good student. So I studied Electronic Engineering at university and graduated with honors, and this allowed by find a paid position as researcher in applied math in a big university in Switzerland. I didnt like the job and I left after one year to pursue a Master in Business. The master was half in London and half in Paris and it was supposed to pave the way to a bright career. Unfortunately the 2008 crisis began just as I was entering the job market, so I was really in a bad position to find any good position.
I ended up finding a job in Valencia Spain, and I lived there for over 10 years. In Spain it was the most beautiful time of my life and I was extremely happy. I got married and created my own company, I was trading pharmaceuticals products profiting from difference in prices within the European Union, I was a trader of physical goods.
***HOW I STARTED IN TRADING***
In 2017 my wife bought a book about trading and left it in the bathroom. That book cost me around 85.000 euro (to this date and being optimistic).
Since I read about trading I was immediately captivated by the idea of finding anomalies in the market and making a quick buck. Since I did not trust YouTube videos and fancy platform I started trading with my banks platform, there were not even graphs on it. I started by buying warrants (that are basically options in which the only seller is an institution). Then I moved to forex and later to CFD. This was 2017 . I had no clue. With these experiments I lost around 30K in around 1 or 2 years.
In 2018 I discovered market profile and auction market theory and everything started to have a sense. I started to use a serious platform and analyze markets with TPO profiles, I thought I knew it all and I didnt. I put 50K in one account and blew it up in 5 months.
After I rationalized it I had nightmares and depression for months and months, not only for the money but because I had no idea of how to find capital to trade again and become good.
I knew and I still know that trading is what I like to do.
Later at the end of 2018 I discovered TopStep trader, and since then I trade with them. The first time it took me 6 months to pass both steps of the trading combine, last time I passed them it, I passed both steps in only 15 days.
Since I have always worked from home and I was my own boss, I can watch the markets and trade without interruptions whenever I want. Living in Europe is a big plus, since I can trade part of the Asian session and all the regular trading hours of the US market.
*** THE 2020 SITUATION***
Now lets talk about 2020. The year that changed it all.
My family house is only 10 km away from the small village where there was the first covid19 death in Europe. So this gave me a very tangible idea of what was going to happen, very early on.
When the first death happened I was in Spain (1.600km away from my family). Italy was upside down and locking up every activity, while Spain was doing nothing to prevent the spreading. I saw it was going to be disaster so I bought food and water for 6 months and locked myself in the flat without …