Hi MetalTrade

Let me address your raised issues as follows:

First, I used to be a perfectionist .. rarely (almost want to say never) think I did well even my employers/customers/co-workers/friends praised me all the time. Being in the trading business for almost 2 years, I have been scoring myself in the red zone since Day 1. To be an over-demanding boss (myself), it's very challenging to perform up to par so far.

Second, it's a solid reality that no 100% profitable holy grail out there. If there's a thing (or more than one) that I can do to add an extra % to the win rate, I will. That explains why my never-ending interests in trying new indicators/methods that may come my way. For example, the most recent addition Ergodic. I spent over 50 hours to better understand a few things on the lines. Time well spent? Yes, even it's tough.

Third, dealing with a losing trade esp its fullstop was hit. Really hard. Used to feel very bad/sad for the whole day (even in my dreams). The last double-SL day (5 Jan) taught me a big lesson. I believe I am better equipped (mentally) for the next one which is inevitable. I hope I am more competent in managing "losing" trades and enjoy some post-trading satisfaction.

Maybe it's in my blood that I take every losing trade too seriously .. like a personal defeat! Did I mention before that I am a hyper-tension type? It's getting better after relocation .. still there 80% lol!

Beth

I hope you succeed, I can't help you. I had to help myself. I had to make the mistakes and feel the pain so I won't make them again.

But after 2 years you are so low in volume of taking trades, and it scares you to take some trades ? Is that a good direction you're heading ? I personally don't think so.

Last 2 weeks I had only 1 losing day of $15. Let's not call that a BE day, because it's important that I succeed in stopping with $15 and not getting bigtime in the red. You have to know my daily stop loss limit is $1000. I had days I lost close to $3000.

I changed after I did some serious revenge trading in January. The result is that I just take the trades and don't think too much. I think about my rules. I have a slight feeling you think too much. Do big traders think too much ? Is trading for you ? Would you do it again if you would have known 2 years ago how you would feel like you did this week ? After all that money/time/blood and tears ?

I would do it, because I know exactly what's keeping me out of profit. If I can control it like last weeks, I'm extremely profitable. I never really hesitated to trade like you did though. If I hesitate or in doubt, I skip the trade, forget it and look for the next. No need for drama.

I hope to see some changes in the right direction from you and wish you all the best in achieving them. Life is hard, but trading must be harder than life, being a profitable trader is as hard but also as beautiful as a diamond. Many people think they can do it, only a few succeed.

Beth,

I was you, I am you I am extremely risk averse, and I could not deal with losses. Before starting to trade full time 5 years ago, I was an engineer working for Oracle for 11 years. I had to be right in everything, you cannot be wrong in that kind of job. So losses in trading were hard for me, every loss told me I was a failure, and I'm gonna get fired. I had to come to the realization that trading is one of the only professions where you are expected to be wrong a good amount of the time, and it is a normal part of the job.

My other problem was also pulling the trigger, but I realized I needed to pull the trigger a lot in order to feel comfortable with it, so after months getting comfortable pulling the trigger and refining my system in sim, I wanted to feel comfortable pulling the trigger live, but I wanted to do it with the minimal risk possible. So I started trading the ETF equivalents of the Futures contracts I was interested in, GLD for GC, USO, OIH for CL, IWM for TF, etc. I used the same setups on these ETF's and traded minimal shares like 10 to 100 shares, so I would only loose $2 to $10 on each loser.

In the beginning the $2 commission was more then my trade was worth So for a couple of months I did that because I could take 10 trades a day, loose all of them, and only be out $50 to $100 at the end of the day. It was not about the money, it was about getting use to pulling the trigger live, and also proving my method in a live market, with my training wheels on. At the end of that period, I was actually making $50 to $200 a day taking about 10 ETF trades per day. I could actually make a living out of that! That gave me the confidence to move back to my original intended futures markets.

If you can't fund a stocks day trading account, you can alternatively reduce your risk by trading the cheaper mini futures contracts like YG, 6B, YM, NQ. The YG is $3.32/tick and has good volume and moves very much like the main Gold futures. You can take 3 losses on the YG, and it's equivalent to 1 loss on the GC, that means you can pull the trigger 3 times as much, and get comfortable 3 times faster. If your system is decent, it should make the transition from one of these mini contracts to the larger with minimal issues. Just some ideas you might add to the consideration pot.

found this pic in my 1000+ collection

look like hand drawn arrows.