rahulgopi 

Jenne, if you read only one trading psychology book, read "Trade Mindfully" by Gary Dayton. I read this after few others recommended it in this forum and it really is good book. Thinking (heuristics or mental shortcuts) is as important as emotions in trading. It will give you a reason to practice mindfulness. Lot of people fail with mindfulness is when they try to control "quieting the mind" or thoughts and get upset when it is not that "quiet" as expected even after trying "hard". This by itself is causing stress and anxiety. Managing discomfort is key to successful trading and looking at discomfort as a cue to be objective will greatly help you. Bottom-line is do not fight them but accept and use them.

high rahul hope u r doing good in trading....

any tricks u know to come out of stress(suffered thru huge continuous dd)?

thanks
happy trading

FXwulf 

Threads like this really get to the heart and soul of who we really are as people IMHO. Thank you everyone for being vulnerable and expressing your stories, feelings, and journey on here. I apologize about the length of this but I hope it reaches some traders and perhaps opens some eyes. In my very humble opinion making a career as a trader has much to do with sacrifice. I often sit out on my surfboard in the open ocean and reminisce about my journey to become a successful professional trader. Although I have "made it" , and achieved consistent financial independence over the past 6 years, the cost has proven extremely great. I was 26 when i started trading, I was a professional bodybuilder and fitness trainer with no formal education in anything remotely close to finance. I had a young wife who was my lifes love and 2 children (6 and 10 years old at that time). Clearly defining what i took as my "strengths' that gave me success in my life( Iron discipline and the ability to execute a plan unerringly), I took to the markets guns blazing. Guys Im really not trying to discourage or encourage anyone. I am mearly attempting to inject a dose of realism into a trade where unrealistic expectations run paramount by sharing my experiences and the rewards/repercussions of it. I hear stories all the time of people saying how they are the types "who never give up", or who " will always persevere no matter what because they KNOW they can do it!" And other such colloquialisms. Such a pollyannic attitude of thinking that "if you just hang in there long enough eventually you will win out", or that "if you win some sort of war of attrition with the market ultimately you will become a great trader" is just suicidal. We are inundated in society with the "Rocky" movies and other such "against all odds" type scenarios. Fellas, there is a REASON that these are movies. They are the dream, and they are absolutely the exception to the norm. Primarily done by exceptional people with untapped exceptional qualities. We ALL want to be like that. We all love to think we are able to separate from the masses. And possibly in some ways we can. In fact I happen to have been an extremely successful champion bodybuilder. It took a massive amount of dedication, work, discipline and fortitude to bring a 265lb shredded physique to a stage. THAT was my gift and I found that trading took that PLUS a WHOLE lot more. I put in my 10,000 hours of trading forex. I went to the ends of the internet and back. I focused on money management, risk analysis, price action, fundamental analysis, etc etc... ENDLESS hours with no sleep... studying studying... persevering in some blind hope that I could achieve the same successes as many we hear about... But... Success escaped me.... The doors just kept closing, accounts just kept slowly dwindling down... and the dream was dying a very quiet death.... All the while i found my interpersonal relationships with my wife and kids starting to suffer... More on that later.. I think perhaps it boils down to more than just "Can i make it in trading?" It is more a question of " Do I want to LIVE the traders life?" Frankly I feel that the vast majority are not near adequately ready to answer that question nor are most in anyway prepared for what an undertaking it is. Being a zero sum business it is truly a journey into a complete unknown hostile battlefield for most without the help of even a compass or a weapon. In alignment with that analogy the odds are overwhelmingly against most. As somber of a thought as that may be, it is the hard truth. I personally went through a very in-depth study of the marketplace after my first 6 months of floundering about. I studied the infrastructure of what creates the markets(forex, futures, equities, options, bonds, warrants, etc..). I studied how liquidity works, how are orders are filled, the interbank system. I learned about all the players across all the major markets, how they place their orders, what their aims are(commercial, institutional, CB's and retailers, etc). I studied Price Action for endless hours, staring at charts, plotting lines at support/resistance/supply/demand levels on all time frames to trade to and from. I studied the intricacies of market timing, the Gold fixes, how swap works, how brokers work. I went into in depth studies and read books on fundamental analysis. I learned a tremendous amount about the bond markets, yield curves, gold/oil ratios, correlating markets. I read every central bank book I could find. I know about the Fed top to bottom, the ECB, the RBA, the BOE. From the major players in those banks to how they originated. I studied fractional reserve banking because i wanted to learn how to asses how any of the policy makers could move the prices of currencies in relationship to one another. I read endless books on orderflow and macroeconomics. I strived to try and understand how and why certain policies and catalysts around the world would move one currency agaisnt the others. All this time endlessly looking at charts. Hours and hours spent putting in demo trade after demo trade testing and endlessly testing. I never believed in any technical indicators. I still dont. I always just traded Naked charts. Maybe at the most I used a stochastic early on but id be hard pressed to explain what almost any of the other lagging indicators does. To me they have never made sense. Trust me, I studied ALL of them in massive detail. I placed together my system using multiple time frames with S/R, S/D zones, fundamental drivers, watching for news catalysts, my endless charting knowledge of PA, my risk management in place, looking at market timing, pre-panning my trades, etc etc..... it met with failure time and time again. days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months as I tried tweaking and adjusting, studying harder, working more and more. I REFUSED to be undone! I changed my risk management, time frames, used only PA I thought had the BEST chances of working. I called on help from every trader more veteran than myself and they all gave me advice. Still, I failed. I figured it must be my psychology. So I delved heavily into self exploration, meditation, read books. Sought out gurus, got my mind right. Tried to identify my fears of losing or attachement to money. I made Goals, endless goals. Every day. I planned my life 10 years into the future in every aspect i could to achieve the "trading mindset". I felt as ready as ever and went back into the market. More months fell off the chart as my accounts kept slowly dwindling down and dying. If I was using a 3:1 reward to risk Id lose 4 out of 5 trades consistently. It was always a slow bleed. I then went the path of trying to find a mentor. Someone who could help me to identify my flaws in my trading/self and guide me to correct them. At this point years had already been spent and frustration was starting to set in. I had sacrificed much. My family had fallen apart, my work was suffering, as was my health(which I had prided myself on for my whole life) from the many nights up late trading and focusing. Trying to self sustain on negative returns. Relentlessly I pushed on. The mentors all were dead ends. I was watching my close friends starting to achieve success. They tried to help me, going so far as to try and copy their systems. All met with more failure. More years went by. My wife and love left me with the kids. I made sure the door didnt hit them in the ass on their way out....Such was my obsession to not be undone... Success did not come with it. I moved into studying the quantside of trading. Learning to program code. Momentum trading, mean-reversion trading, Sharpe ratio, etc etc. Trying to learn to achieve positive kurtosis through algo identification of price trends. I delved deeply into this thinking that maybe, just maybe it was my only way. I ran into a brick wall. My algos would get taken out, my hidden markov models did not have the proper risk management protocols built in to keep me safe from many of the hidden liquidity issues in the fx markets and again.... suffice to say, I again was met with more defeat At this point, utterly defeated, not knowing where to turn. I withdrew deeply into myself and saw what my life had become. I had become a shell of who i once was. I took a long break and a long period of self reflection and came to the end of my rope. I was busted, homeless, alone, living in my car and sustaining on $.29 taco Tuesdays at taco bell. I showered at the gym and studied trading on Starbucks Wifi. I had no idea where my wife or kids were until the divorce papers showed up at my parents house since i didnt have a physical address. When doors open in life. It is wise to walk through them. I believe we all have a calling. Im not religious, but I believe in a higher "self. To listen to the signs of life makes life much easier and it goes more smoothly. It was only after this realization I finally made my decision that the doors were firmly closed on my decision to become a trader. I learned a great deal about finance, markets, ect... but Mostly about myself. I am far from a fascinating case study. I committed to giving my all to learning these markets much like many other aspiring traders start out. I was never one to easily give up on anything in life. Tenacity and discipline has given me many of the things in my life I am the most proud of as well as thankful for. There just came a point to where the cost benefit of working to master the markets and live the "lifestyle" became more than I was willing to pay. I ended up one night sitting on the beach, utterly destroyed, with the barrel of a loaded .44 between my teeth. I sobbed and sobbed and cried out to whatever powers that be that if this was the end for me just give me the strength the pull the trigger.... I got my answer when i woke up in the morning, soaking wet and freezing cold, but alive. That was my bottom. I was still certain it was possible to trade these markets successfully. There is far to much evidence to support it and I would never be so obtuse as to argue in opposition. I simply came to the simple realization that we are all NOT created equal, nor do we all have the same capacity for successes and failures in different ventures in this life. I ultimately realized the fact that maybe I had overcomplicated a more simplistic business. That being said it is quite a feat "unlearning" everything. Armed with the knowledge I had nothing to lose I resolved to cut out as much as possible to create a trading system that was simplistic, profitable, and viable. With what i had been through the concepts of losing money being the worst thing that could happen simply disappeared and I started to see profit in my trading. Then more profits, and MORE profits. To my astonishment in less than 12 months I reached a peak watermark in my finances for life. Unfortunately I cannot say the same about my health or my relationships. I have never met anyone else and feel as though I have truly sacrificed my true soulmate for my fiscal successes. My children dont want to see me as Im afraid I destroyed those relationships too in their formative years in my unrelenting pursuit of success in trading. All this being said, I have accepted my life where it is. I am listening more than ever to my "inner-self" and going along with the type of life that I feel is more in alignment with who I want to show up as in life. I opened up a small training studio and have rekindled my passion for helping others through fitness. The vast majority of traders are extremely introverted and highly analytical. While I am certainly the latter, I am by no means the former. Trading is a lonely business. Traders do not really give anything meaningful back to society in the way that doctors, engineers, teachers, and any other more humanitarian type career does. I personally always had a difficult time with that aspect. As a personal trainer by trade I have always loved the aspect of helping people look better, feel more youthful, and improve the quality of an individuals life . It is a different sort of gratification than watching the GBP/JPY go +50 pips in profit. I am sure we have all heard of and possibly lived(I know i have) through a personal relationship falling apart due to the demands of the financial markets. It, by the very nature, breeds isolation from the rest of society. Knowing who we are from what we are not is an integral part of our lessons in this world. Once you do know who and what you are it is wise to act in accordance to it. Make certain the cost of what you want to do with this business is what you are prepared to bear Wulf

Epic story; huge thanks for sharing.

haraj 

high rahul hope u r doing good in trading.... any tricks u know to come out of stress(suffered thru huge continuous dd)? thanks happy trading

There are few things you may want to figure out to address the stress and learn from the experience

Does these draw downs resulted from trades that where taken as per your trading plan ?. IF yes , then you may want to revisit the trading plan and calculate the expectancy, (win / loss ratio and risk reward ratio ).

If the trades where taken outside the plan, then you have some real work to do with managing discomforts ( greed, fear etc ), improving discipline , preparation and focus. Knowing the probability of your trading system and having confidence in it is an integral part of trading psychology. IF you tend to look for new methods, systems, trading rooms , news letters and indicators often is a clear sign of lack of having a trading system or the lack of confidence in the one you have.

As for stress from draw down , use it as an opportunity to learn your weakness and improve your trading system and plan as required. There are no mistakes unless you fail to learn and improve from it.

Stress is mind created. One simple technique I use is to separate thought from content / story behind the thought. For e.g imagine you have 1 million $ in your account, really see the amount in your minds eye. You may notice other thoughts associated with this one, like buying a car you always wanted or house or what ever. This is the story / content of that thought. IF you observe the thought of huge dd, you may observe the content / story associated with it, in the form of disappointment from your family or other stuff. Story or content of the thought is the part that cause you stress or discomfort. Developing this awareness and separate the thought from content / story is a form of mindfulness practice as this will awaken the observer. This is a simple technique I learned during mindfulness practice.

Important thing is not to get stressed about the stress itself. From what you wrote, I can see that you are worried about the stress itself. This is another way to manufacture stress. Stress is nothing but your body's way of letting you know that there is some sort of imbalance. IF you learn to use it properly, stress gives you an opportunity to be aware of the discomfort and release any negative energy associated with the emotion itself. If you react unconsciously using an automatic pattern, stress will do more harm. Awareness is the key ,learn not to fight stress but to use it to release the energy form the emotion itself. Few techniques are mentioned in this forum itself ( Sedona Method, Emotion Code, Techniques by Dr David Hawkins etc ). Most will suggest to refrain from suppressing or expressing the emotion but to accept and welcome it, be with it until you feel the feeling is gone. Try it, it works.

This thread has been amazing.

There are so many good posts. I'm just starting out as a trader and only have 2-3 years of experience and no profitable track record.

The perspectives on here are really valuable.

Thanks everyone.

FABRICATORX 

I'm glad I came back. I started out, while in the middle of my education program, and couldn't focus on both. I quit trading because I fit the description of someone who should have quit. I've finished my program, I work a stable job that supports me and my family, and am seeking the greater challenge. I don't need the money, as I could retire five times over. Something I read in this thread defined my desires for me: risk management, human psychology, and strategy implementation. They aren't different, but rather they are limbs of what constitutes trading. Anyways, I'm an amateur, and look forward to losing all my money

So I guess I'm on my third cycle; I joined in June of 2013, that post quote was from November 2014. It's now July of 2015.

What's changed for me this time, is I'm not doing it for money, and I'm not doing it for myself. I feel healthier this way.

Also, I now have the support of my bride. This means a lot.

I spent my time studying human nature, and general psychology. I didn't know this would lead me back into trading, but it did.

Anyways, to quote Simon Sinek, “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe”.

I was trying to use trading as my "what" I want to do...without a clear reason why I should do it. I didn't want money (well, above a comfortable yet humble lifestyle) and I didn't want prestige. I found that my reason is philanthropy. I want to serve people.

As soon as I figured that out, everything started locking into place. I began focusing on the trading itself, and less on the byproduct of trading, which is $$$.

Big Mike 

So David let me ask a blunt question... hope you don't mind or take offense... why do you believe trading is right for you? OK let me back up to be fair. Do you believe that anyone can be profitable at trading? Or do you believe that some people are not cut out for it? Some believe any skill can be learned, others believe that there are some things they should accept are not their strong suits and move on. Mike

I saw this question and it is thought provoking so I will answer it.

I believe anybody can be profitable at trading granted they are willing to examine themselves and figure out what it is about their mindset and current skillset that is helping and hindering them. We promote those things that help us such as a good mind for having many strategies on-hand at once or the ability to deal with fear and act in uncertain situations and we either find ways around or change those skills that hinder us such as ease to anger and make "revenge" trades or being stubborn thinking 'this time is different' and not following our rules. Granted, few people are willing to spend the time to look at themselves so introspectively but those that are able I believe already have an edge... because if they understand what makes them act and react, then they can be more mindful of what they are feeling as they look at the market and can try to gauge the "why's" of market movement beyond the "what".

I also do believe any skilled can be learned but only if one has the passion and will to want to learn them. Learning anything, whether it be a sport, instrument, or game not only takes a flexible mind but more importantly, the will and passion and reason to push through all the pain and agony it takes to learn that skill. If we are also constantly focusing on the reasons motivating us, then we can have the emotional and psychological fortitude to push through the many challenges that will cripple us and make us want to quit.

I do believe that a person who's 6 foot 5 inches is going to play better basketball than a person who's 5 foot 11 inches but only given that both of them have equal amounts of skill.

Given a trading environment where 90% are losing proving to us that many who are trading are not doing well, if we can somehow elevate ourselves above the conventional playing field, we will be successful. And I believe the way to elevate ourselves is not a holy grail system or any one method or skill but doing all the little things like limiting those mistakes that we are lucky enough to discover that are taking from us time and time again that we've seen if we just don't do those things, we will be okay like... following our rules to the tee.

If we are not able to look at ourselves in the mirror at the end of the trading day, understand our actions and make strides to correct those things that we do that causes us consternation, we will fail.

Big Mike 

Does this person have any business trading? - Has been trading for 2 years, and has lost 50K out of his kids college fund - Has paid over 20K in "courses" and "trading rooms" for "mentorships" and "systems" - Hasn't told his wife or kids the extent of his losses Mike

He's only been doing it for 2 years. The fact that even with a 50K loss that he is still willing to spend 20k more to pursue some kind of trading knowledge may show that he has strong intent but unless he discovers that it's not so much his trading system but his trading psychology and examining himself and understanding that many of the things he does (such as lying to his wife and kids) that are the cause of his losses, he will lose but he won't know that he needs to quit until he's lost all of his kids' college fund.

guys just my 2c's for what it's worth...as have not been very successful at ES due to past habits, but i know what is wrong in my patterns. overall trading has been fine...but ES is the passion.

in all successful ventures in life & so with trading somewhere along the way comes integrity, honesty and tremendous skill which needs up-dation at regular intervals . w/o that any and all success is meaningless or maybe fleeting as may not be repeatable weather a system or otherwise.

anyways... trading is just another avenue...what we discussing here is e-trading...but trading at it's heart comes in many forms...scrap steel/sugar/etc...etc which can be in physical trades or e-trades. One needs to be good at the art else there are sharks waiting in the waters. One of the sharks maybe one's own self when we talking about trading as discussed here.

whatever one pursues....weather it's trading or something else....when one gets proficient at it...and when it becomes one's second nature there is a sudden twist which cannot be explained but experienced. If one reflect back at all things we are good in ...you will see its 2nd nature. many good quotes or mentors will talk on 2nd nature and i strongly believe one can be successful with a system/without a system if trading is 2nd nature.

anyways here's a small snippet into the mind by the Dr and is applicable to any vocation not just trading TraderFeed: Self-Coaching and The Sound Training of Traders

anyways...only the best to all...and may yr drmz play out

cheers
s

TraderEnlight 

He's only been doing it for 2 years. The fact that even with a 50K loss that he is still willing to spend 20k more to pursue some kind of trading knowledge may show that he has strong intent but unless he discovers that it's not so much his trading system but his trading psychology and examining himself and understanding that many of the things he does (such as lying to his wife and kids) that are the cause of his losses, he will lose but he won't know that he needs to quit until he's lost all of his kids' college fund.

If someone made $30.00 per day, is this considered a successful trader?

$30.00 per day multiplied by 240 trading days = $7,200.00 extra revenue per year.

In the US, I know people who pay less for their mortgage, pay less to feed a four (4) member family, or covers car payments, insurance, cell phone etc...

My point being is the focus should always be in small trades to extract small amounts from the market, once this is accomplished then move methodically into a space which is still small and returning small amounts.....You do not need to be a PRO GUNSLINGER coming off the bench....One must gain insight and knowledge from your experience trading very small amounts....become a great analyst by understanding what losing positions can tell you about your methods and logical process.

I started out trading an account funded with $50.00 dollars, the account grew, and I learned a lot about how to analyze data and apply that information into a reasonable trading plan.

"Trade the Plan and Plan the Trade" By the way, that is my quote of the day.

gregoryalexandr 

If someone made $30.00 per day, is this considered a successful trader? $30.00 per day multiplied by 240 trading days = $7,200.00 extra revenue per year.

No. At absolute best, that person simply has a hobby, a hobby that with 100% certainty costs him a lot of money and time every year.

Mike