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Please please please continue trading "pretending" that the Daily Loss Limit has NOT been hit.
You will be surprised at the 10x amount of LEARNING that happens after the pooooof release of stress that frees up your vision that would otherwise be on the P/L number.
This had happened to me and I kept trading with faith (faith in myself, just to be clear) and the losing part actually showed me how I was trading NOT to lose instead of trading to win.
We are here to learn to trade to win and not to trade to not lose.
I was sorry to hear this too but the market is a hard taskmaster. (If you had posted this at the start of the month I would have thought it was an April Fools joke, but sigh!)
I don’t think I’ve ever truly succeeded at anything in my life.
I don’t know if I will ever be able to not have blowout days in trading. This is my second one in 12 months. All it takes is ONE every 100 months to matter.
I know exactly where to exit trades for small losses. I cannot follow that rule 100% of the time.
I don’t know if I am cut out for trading. I know that I’m not cut out for trading if I cannot fix the problem, and the problem is me.
I don’t know how to fix the problem. There is a way to take the responsibility off myself and only keep enough margin in my personal account to where I’ll be hitting a margin call around the time of a daily loss limit. So that’s one thing I can do, but it doesn’t satisfy the root of the problem.
Honestly I’m tired. My arms are up in the air. I almost just don’t care.
This painful experience WILL NOT BE ENOUGH to change me. I’ve had plenty of them through the years, and I still go back to letting a trade get out of control from time to time.
Sorry to hear about your combine but again that's a start ... i had a similar problem like you mentioned just it used to happen every 3 months not 12 ... the only solution i found i already shared with you .. Control your gains .. i know you already told you are against it but try it now that you have nothing to loss ... i will tell you y and again this is what i had came up with when i was in same place like you .. when you trade freely like you are doing mind gets into habit and that habit is carried forward to day's like today also where your mind sub consciously knows that if you trade enuff you can come out of whatever hole you are in and that's where instead of taking losses and calling a day you keep on trading / adding on [whatever you do] your mind is heavily invested with your opinion.. On the other hand when you trade with fixed parameters for example in my case say 20 ticks win/ 40 loss if i have a bad day i know i have to stop as my hard stop is already double my average ticks my mind knows that , my mind knows that i wont be able to dig myself out as i always exit at fix target when i am right and even if trade goes 100 ticks in my favor so it does opposite of what it does in your scenario, it is scared in mine and after few losses starts to trade defensively [see i know this is hardly perfect but this is what i had to do to turn try it probably it will help you there is no certain way of telling unless you try] you said you don't know what to do .. then swing the bat one more time .. Best of luck with your future trading plans you are good just you need to get out into unknown for you something that hardly make sense i know but trading is a place where thing that doesn't make sense are the things that will work TRY IT [I am not a stat person like you are, but i can tell you this simple process has changed my Trading fortunes for last few years now ].
Merritt, I'm reading what you're writing here and first of all I'd like to say that you have my 100% respect for your candor and honest attitude about how you feel. Too often we pretend we don't care about losses, etc., and truth be told, none of us like to lose. I had a down day today myself and quit, because it just wasn't working. I'm not pissed, but would I have rather made money? Hell yeah.
I doubt I can say anything that will "cheer you up" right now, so maybe it's best if you just go to a batting cage or a driving range and beat the hell out of some balls of some kind; I don't know if that's healthy or not but it sounds good to me.
The first bright spot is that you did not lose $3000 of your own money. Yes, you paid a combine deposit so that was real, but you actually still get to use that for practice if you like, and it was $400 by comparison. To me, that's the point of this whole process--we get to work our shit out without losing more than is necessary, while still risking enough to "keep it real."
Secondly, if you look at what happened after you stopped out, you realize that the loss limit served its purpose. That's the whole point of having it. You lost 3 grand. But how much would you have continued to fight the market and lost if that limit were not in place? It sucks losing $3K, but it's devastating to lose $10K, $20K, etc.
When I have blown up before, it's because I thought that the big down move was about to reverse, and after losing a trade or two, I didn't want to "miss out" so I hold in hopes that it turns around, which of course it usually does not. Maybe that's your thinking as well, which makes it hard to close. You'd hate to close on the tick just before it goes your way, so you hold, thinking it might just work. You will have to work it out, but that's one possibility.
Technically, consider this--if I jump in the market without extreme confidence in my location, I am much more likely to take more heat than I should. For today, examine your entry points and ask--"did I have a very good reason with 100% confidence in entering here?" If you have a great reason, and you're confident that this is where you want to buy or sell, and if your stop is placed at a point where you honestly think your premise will be invalidated, then you should be able to more easily take your stop. However, if you think 65 is a good buy, and so is 64 maybe, and maybe 62 too, then when you enter at 65 with a stop at 63, you will not have extreme confidence that you will be wrong at 63, because you see 62 as a possible good buy too, so you will have a tendency to give it a longer leash. While I am not happy with my 2 losses today, I can say this--I was 100% confident in my location, and 100% confident that even if my stop was hit and it reversed and went my way, that I simply could not have known this (said another way, the low would be in a "random" or "middle of nowhere" location per my analysis) and that I had put the odds in my favor on this trade.
In the end, you are too good of a trader to let one day wipe out your confidence. Look at what you can improve in your entry/exit strategy, and in your own mind, and get back on the horse dude.
I have been there it7. On the combine no less. It sucks, but josh is spot on, this is the whole point of the combine; to work these bugs out.
When you are ready, pick yourself up and get back on the horse.
If I may, can I ask a few technical questions about today?
- Do you define your stop when you place the trade? Do you ever allow yourself to move it once in the trade. If you do, you must not move the stop.
- I would highly advise you to not add to trades. I'm not saying this is bad strategy, but it is much more complicated to manage risk. Leave this to the experts.
- Lastly, on your next combine, size your trades smaller. Two consecutive losing trades shouldn't hit your loss limit. For my style of trading, I allow for 5 consecutive losses and will still be ok. I'll likely have to stop for the day, but won't run into the loss limit.
I'm speaking from personal experience here. The first two problems were my downfall in my first combine.
The old adage "If it were easy, everyone would do it" I'm not going to bs you, still learning this myself, I am by no means an expert. I did sit in on one of your screencasts a month or two back and if I may make an observation: You trade A LOT. You can tell me to go fk myself by all means, and I mean this with the best intentions but it seemed as if you were overtrading hardcore. Personally I didn't learn jack sim trading, I don't know if it is my personality or what, but once I transitioned to 1 lots (which I still do almost all of the time) everything changed. Accountability, accountability, accountability is what it took for me. Take it for what it's worth. Have you considered limiting your trades? I mean having some serious patience to take say, 3 trades a day and stick with it? This might force you to only take the setups you deem superior. Perhaps you have altered your trading style since the screencast or maybe that was just a bad day. If this is the case, disregard. Perhaps screencasting again will force you to be accountable. Either way, keep at it man, GRIND!
I typically don't interject in these kinds of situations, because you're going to get plenty of advice. But since we've talked some and have become "friends," I will.
I've been where you are on a cyclical basis for 2 decades of my life. It seems that I've always been good at things I've tried at the beginning, but never fully succeeded at anything "important."
The frustration, demoralization, depression, and defeat that I've experienced in my trading "career" are branded on my psyche for the rest of my life. They're like some of the scars I have on my body - they will never go away. But I don't want them to, because they show me where I've come from and they remind me that because of them I have been made stronger. They remind me that I'm still here. That I'm still fighting.
Which is why I started the exercise I'm currently going through. I had to get away from trying to make money or figure the market out or meet some certain criterion.
I had to start from scratch. It has been difficult because I already knew so much about trading. Why would I want to "dumb myself down" and start over? And it seemed very slow at first, but I so badly wish that I had done this a long time ago. It has changed me as a trader and a person. I have more confidence in myself with regard not only to my trading, but all other aspects of my life.
Finding another "passion" is completely acceptable and I have the utmost respect for a decision like that.
But every time I "quit" I could never really quit. So if you decide to try again, consider starting from scratch and building a solid foundation. It will not be wasted time.
All the best to you man,
-AT
"Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitude. It's having the right attitude that's hard." - Robert Pirsig
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Merritt you've shown a lot of skill most traders lack. Take a couple days off, clear your mind, and then start again. Every time you move forward you are gaining more experience.
You said you blew out twice in twelve months. Was this blow out less severe than the last? If so, it is improvement. Keep improving. Trading is all about small incremental changes that once tallied up will be the sum of your game, your edge. There is no single one thing that makes any trader a good trader. It's all about having all the pieces come together in the end.
Besides, a master trader is just someone who has made all the mistakes.