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I am also dealing with the same main issue about 2 years in. I sometimes have a hard time making myself walk away on both green days AND red days. Everybody says it, and it's true - it's not the market, it's you. I've read the books, I've listened to countless podcasts, I've watched webinars, etc. but until you can fully commit mentally then it's one step forward and about 3 steps back. I am still working on this.
One of the biggest things for me lately was a progression of installing a daily loss limit. I started with none, then I set a dollar amount (that I kept wanting to change as I attempted to get money back), until finally having my broker lock my account if my daily loss limit is reached. My goal is to hone in on when to call it a day before my max loss is met, but until then having that safeguard protects me from creating huge loss days.
Another one of my main problems was I enjoyed trading too much. It was all I could think about and I became obsessed with the markets - to a fault. Countless days I spent having big losses but I kept on trading thinking "Well I'm just going to see what happens so I can have more seat time in the market to gain more experience." Little did I know that I was doing myself a huge disservice and creating some terrible habits along the way that I am still trying to completely break away from. I always looked back in hindsight and saw my P/L be green early on then continue to bleed as the day went on. Knowing when to stop is a very hard thing (for me) to do.
First post here but I figured this was a fitting one for me, as I am in the same boat as you. Good luck on your journey and I hope you figure things out.
A friend's wife divides her life between working a night shift and riding a bus in the early morning hours to a casino miles away to feed the slots. Parts of your story would fit her's.
If you haven't already done so in your search for answers, google "trading addiction".
Trading requires an enormous degree of concentration. Humans cannot maintain this level of mental commitment for hours on end without performance suffering. In this regard your comment about seeing a positive P/L early on is interesting. Depending on your platform you may be able to graph your trading results by 30 min blocks in each day. If over an extended period of time this shows a sweet spot for you when whatever it is you are doing has better results, then why trade in the hours when those results are not there. If early in the session seems to work well, what would happen if you started your trading even earlier in the overnight Globex session. Might be worth a try.
Many years ago when I was stuck at breakeven I created a database of every trade over the prior two years and broke each day into 5 min blocks. There was a clear profitable bias to the early part of the session and there were actual blocks of 15 or so minutes in various parts of the day where every trade made was a loser.
It is not possible to have a long string of profitable trades. The more successive winners you have the closer you are getting to a losing trade. If this rings true to you and you also have a favorable trading window early in the day, then size up during the period where statistically you do well. If you can figure out if there is an average number of consecutive winners ( 3 or 5 etc. ) before it turns south, when you get there reduce your size if you must continue to trade... or better yet shut it down and go out and enjoy life.
At some point you will be taking all the winners that the market presents you based on your approach and when you get there, if you then want to improve your results, not taking the losing trades becomes just as important, if not more important than taking the winning trades.
"If you don't want random outcomes, don't make random decisions."
Very well said. I especially admire how you were able to go back and analyze your trade history. It always feels good to hear how anyone solved a problem in trading through work. At the end of t day this is work and effort in=results... For the most part.
When I first got into it, I over traded. I got chopped up. After learning more and more about trading, now I wait for the price to come to me instead of chasing it. I have seen lots of videos, seems to me the people that are consistent don't trade more than 2-5 times a day. They don't trade unless they think they have an edge.
Trading: The one I'm creating in the present....Index Futures mini/micro, ZF
Posts: 2,311 since Nov 2011
Thanks Given: 7,341
Thanks Received: 4,518
You need personal development, emotional control, the acquisition of virtues like patience, self-discipline, tact, resilience, perceptiveness, confidence, contentment, moderation, perseverance, and accountability to name a few.
Your problem has little to do with trading. Trading takes one’s shortcomings and magnifies them. A lot. A great way to see what you are made of, for sure.
Ron
...My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy...
The steed of this Valley is pain; and if there be no pain this journey will never end.
Buy Low And Sell High (read left to right or right to left....lol)
I've been working with someone I know who is holding me accountable in trading and that has really made a big difference for me. I discuss my trades with him and send him a video recording snippet of just live trades. He and I have agreed that I'm limited to only taking one live trade per day at the most, maybe even one per week. Even today, I wanted to get back in after taking one trade, but I knew I'd have some explaining to do, so I stopped after one.
What is nice about this is that he found something concerning with my approach today. I was already a little bit aware of it but I kind of excused my own thoughts because it's a pattern that "sometimes" works. I guess I used similar wording when talking while in the trade and he was concerned. The fact that he pointed it out and we discussed it for several minutes helped me clarify that although there were some really good things about the trade, there was one thing that was off and I took the trade anyhow.
We also talked about the amount of work that goes into timing something just right, whether it's trading or performing arts, it takes a lot of effort to work out difficulties. Have you ever notice that you were more ready to do a performance AFTER the performance was over? Or that you were more in shape to run a race at the end of the season than at the beginning? So, sometimes it's just the finetuning that comes through working through a matter over and over that makes the difference between so-so and being at your best. I think trading is similar. There are so many aspects that need to come together to get a great trade that it's not enough to understand just one or two important areas, but it's learning to pull all of them together and all at the right time and analyzing each "performance" is critical to improving.
So, for now, my mentor has said one reason for only allowing a maximum of one real trade per day is so that I will analyze the trade very thoroughly.
Something else we discussed when talking over timing the trade was how to combine the need for being precise with flexibility. If I have a certain number of things that make a good trade, it's rare to get everything lined up perfectly because price behavior isn't usually textbook perfect. But you can look for say, 10 things, and know that if you have 7 or 8, that is actually good enough to enter the trade, because waiting for 10 is next to impossible, and jumping in when there's only 5 does not give enough parameters for a good quality trade. We discussed this and also, prioritizing some of those things. Maybe I need 7 out of list of 10 things, but there is one timing event that I will ALWAYS need to have for every trade, and talking it through helped me to clarify that in my mind. Next thing to do is write that one thing in my trading binder, and prioritize it in my rules.
So, getting help to limit trading is working and getting help to talk through the good and the bad of each trade has been helpful for limiting trading too, because when I'm thinking straight and following rules and waiting for the lining up of everything according to predetermined conditions, it really limits the number of trades taken.
Just thought I'd share an update on how I'm still working through overcoming overtrading.