Can't do anything right.

Is it just me that's going through a really bad patch? Every single thing I do at the moment is wrong. I've had 1 breakeven, 1 small win and 8 losses in my last 10 trades this year. On more than one occasion I've basically bought the days high or sold the days low. I've been up and down in the same market getting busted out both ways repeatedly.

Time to give it a break for a while?

brewski1984 said:

Is it just me that's going through a really bad patch? Every single thing I do at the moment is wrong. I've had 1 breakeven, 1 small win and 8 losses in my last 10 trades this year. On more than one occasion I've basically bought the days high or sold the days low. I've been up and down in the same market getting busted out both ways repeatedly.

Time to give it a break for a while?

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Hmmm possibly but you really need to analyse and be honest with yourself. Were you just pissing in the wind with those trades,chasing,breaking the rules,just risking a couple of hundred more etc. Be honest, does this happen every time things go wrong? do you then take a break and come back more determined and then go through the same cycle again. We are creatures of habit so it becomes hard to break.Sadly Ive been there many times.

Could just be a bad run,we all have them,but only you know the truth. If it was a bad run then fair enough,pick yourself up and of you go. If history is repeating itself then thats different.

It's going to happen, get used to it.

This is unlikely to be the last time you go through it either.

Try reading Reminiscences - you'll look at things very differently when you've finished.

Yeah thanks Leopard, I have read Reminiscences a few times and every time I do I find another reason why it's a great book.

I think there's a little truth in your post Flash, I am going to take the rest of the week to work out where I am. It's these times that seperate the winners from the losers.

I would be asking myself if I followed every rule in the system to the letter: if not go back to following the rules. But if they were all respected, that's a more difficult problem - but there's nothing to be gained by sitting out: just make sure your position size is within tolerance. Check -
have they been proven good under a wide range of actual market conditions?
so, is this just an unlucky bad streak?

Even on such a bad result, it's probably an unusually unlucky streak. Unusual, but statistically probable eventually.

brewski1984 said:

Is it just me that's going through a really bad patch? Every single thing I do at the moment is wrong. I've had 1 breakeven, 1 small win and 8 losses in my last 10 trades this year. On more than one occasion I've basically bought the days high or sold the days low. I've been up and down in the same market getting busted out both ways repeatedly.

Time to give it a break for a while?

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Everyone goes through bad spells even longtime traders. It happens. Just make sure you are following your rules properly and use good money management. Maybe scale back on how many lots/contracts you trade until you get through it.

Peter

wackypete2 said:

Just make sure you are following your rules properly and use good money management.
Petr

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But what if they're the wrong rules? That's quite possible too. My scariest and most important lesson as a day trader was early on when I realised after a long winning streak that all I'd done was to be long beta in a trending market, and I wasn't a trading god after all. Would have been very expensive had I just carried on applying my rules through a choppy market. If the OP has lost confidence then better he takes some time out to reassess IMO.

Jack o'Clubs said:

But what if they're the wrong rules? That's quite possible too. My scariest and most important lesson as a day trader was early on when I realised after a long winning streak that all I'd done was to be long beta in a trending market, and I wasn't a trading god after all. Would have been very expensive had I just carried on applying my rules through a choppy market. If the OP has lost confidence then better he takes some time out to reassess IMO.

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Yes, good point and very true. However if you haven't followed your rules properly in the first place you wouldn't know if your trading methods contributed to the problem or not.

Peter

brewski1984 said:

Is it just me that's going through a really bad patch? Every single thing I do at the moment is wrong. I've had 1 breakeven, 1 small win and 8 losses in my last 10 trades this year. On more than one occasion I've basically bought the days high or sold the days low. I've been up and down in the same market getting busted out both ways repeatedly.

Time to give it a break for a while?

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Can you put your trades up on the board?

To help one would need to see your entry point, your stop level, and your target for each trade.

If you can do this then you may get a better response, and possibly get the feedback/pointers you are looking for.

Over to you!

brewski1984 said:

Time to give it a break for a while?

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That's a good idea - take time off and forget about the markets.

Once you come back you'll be thinking more clearly.

What's your win rate? You can do a model showing the probability of x losses in row for a given strike rate.

In fact, you should do it. The result will likely be enlightening and terrifying.

It's possible that your strategy only suits a particular market characteristic and it changed temporarily (how long is the issue). I would look at identifying when your system works and when it's not very good, then try to figure out how to identify suitable conditions. The alternative is to just accept drawdowns but I prefer to figure out why something that did work is now not working than hope the drawdown period is short.

brewski1984 said:

Yeah thanks Leopard, I have read Reminiscences a few times and every time I do I find another reason why it's a great book.

I think there's a little truth in your post Flash, I am going to take the rest of the week to work out where I am. It's these times that seperate the winners from the losers.

Click to expand...

I'm gonna give you a better book to read...

Try Humphrey B Neill - Tape Reading & Market Tactics. It was written in 1931.

You did mention buying the tops & selling the bottoms. This book gives a very good explanation of why you are doing this and why the market is engineered to get people trapped in such positions.

It's not a work of fiction like the Lefevre book, it's a book mostly on price action as well as volume. It's not really a book on Tape Reading in the sense that a modern day scalper would use it - more in the sense that they the ticker tape was what they had to base their trades off. He was a swing trader mostly.

The key points in this book are how larger players build and distribute positions in stocks and the extent to which this involves suckering people in. If you are buying tops, then you are being suckered in...

BTW - You might want to ignore the "Nigger in the woodpile" comment on page 80.

I nearly fell off the step machine when I read that.

A bad run like this, assuming your trades are based on a rational strategy that has a good track record in the past, raises the question of why the strategy ceased working. When I have floated this question in the past, it is rare that a change in market conditions visible on the charts is pointed to as the cause. Even with hindsight, there is ususally nothing on the charts to show why Strategy X ceased working for a period (unless you're using something simplistic like MA crossovers or RSI extremes).

This suggests that system dry periods will occur sooner or later but on a random basis. Knowing this, surely, the rational trader should have a small battery of stategies, say 3, running in parallel at all times, so that when one is running dry and needs to be scaled back, the others continue to raise revenue. A diverse portfolio model. Or is it better to have 2 strategies in reserve ready to go in when the front line strategy is running dry? Sort of like crop rotation if you remember that from school days.

DionysusToast said:

BTW - You might want to ignore the "Nigger in the woodpile" comment on page 80.

I nearly fell off the step machine when I read that.

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Different times I suppose. I couldn't condemn anyone writing in 1931 on that sort of expression alone.

Im sure we all mean well,but I think weve not just loaded his head with everything he could be doing wrong. Take the bits you think are relevant and remember the things you did right

Hi Brewski

Sorry to hear your bad luck a break may be a good idea and if you do decide to continue may be worth considering the following:


1,Have you got your your head right for trading most people have not and it can take a long time to get your trading philosophy right and some never do crack it,a good test is how comfortable you are taking losses and do you move stops?The disciplined trader by Douglas is the bible in this area he reckons 55% of trading is phycological and I agree.

2,Cutting your stakes right down to really small amounts until you feel more confident with your trading has worked for me time and time again when I have a bad spell.

Good luck.

tomorton said:

Different times I suppose. I couldn't condemn anyone writing in 1931 on that sort of expression alone.

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Fair enough. Although the term was considered derogatory (although not as bad as it is today) long before the 1930s.

This is from King Solomon's Mines - published in 1885:

"I, Allan Quatermain, of Durban, Natal, Gentleman, make oath and say—That's how I headed my deposition before the magistrate about poor Khiva's and Ventvögel's sad deaths; but somehow it doesn't seem quite the right way to begin a book. And, besides, am I a gentleman? What is a gentleman? I don't quite know, and yet I have had to do with niggers—no, I will scratch out that word "niggers," for I do not like it. I've known natives who are, and so you will say, Harry, my boy, before you have done with this tale, and I have known mean whites with lots of money and fresh out from home, too, who are not."

The problem here is that from the replies you have been given you have to decide why you take the trades you do. This is really the only way to progress. There is no need to have these sort of bad runs, no matter what anyone says. If you know the reason why a trade should play out in the manner it does, then you simply wait for what you understand and take the trades.

Do you base your trading on random cycles, or cycles of consequence? Between the two, which will enable the trader to achieve a higher rate of consistency with regards to winning/losing streaks?

Most on this forum trade based on a random cycle, hence the experience of losing sequences. Some even try to diversify to hide themselves away from actually having to admit they are somewhat behind the game.

It is not enough to buy the market just because you or your system gives you the go-ahead, you need to know how the market will progress, if not you get stopped out of the trades which may have potential in your original direction.

So you are now at the point where you realise this maybe is not as straight forward as you first thought. Text book theories, and common held believes hold little weight in the real market place. There is a lot more to this than meets the eye (not trying to be patronising). So-called experts write articles about subjects such as the order book, volume etc. that are so far off base its untrue, but they cannot see it because they only look at the market from one viewpoint.

For example if you cross a busy road, you want/need to get across safely; what are all your considerations to achieve this? If you only focus on one direction of traffic you will eventually come to your demise (i.e. losing streaks in your trades). So just as much as you plan to get across the road safely (hopefully every time) you should aspire to be correct on your trades nearly every time. You choose to cross the road just as you choose to enter a trade; the only difference is that you understand the consequences of crossing a road with not enough information, there for you do not take RISKS based on the information. Can the same be true about your trade selection?

PS. It would still be beneficial to see all these trades, and the reasons why you took them.

Good Luck:clover: