How do you cope with a bad trading day?

[grubs50]

How do u cope with a bad trading day?

I am interested in knowing how ppl react to a bad trading day or even a trading mistake which u think could have been avoided, personally it seems to play on my mind for awhile but not to d extent that it neccesarilly affects my judgement subsequently...............but it is always at d back of my mind......what do u guys do?

 

[Glenn]

Treat it as a learning experience.
Be grateful that you have some new information to work on about your system or yourself.
Seriously analyse what happened. Was it your system, or you ?
If it was your system does the 'bad day' fall within the the way the system works ? - as nothing works all the time.
If your system has stopped working, review and modify it.
If it was you, then you must try to understand how you were thinking, and why, and learn from it. Did you lack discipline or confidence and fail to take a signal, or jump in on a whim for the hell of it etc.
Three maxims
1. "When something goes wrong you do two things - first you fix it as best you can and second you put measures in place to stop it ever happening again."
2."Live to fight another day"
3. "The person who never made a mistake never did anything".

Glenn

 

[JonnyT]

Don't have them.

Set your rules be it max loss, number of trades etc and stick to them.

JonnyT

 

[peedee]

Im no expert grubs, but i personally just think about my methodology, i know you know this, but as they say you have to be comfortable with a loss as well as a profit. Saying that, ive got to admit i hate getting it wrong especially when at the back of your mind your telling yourself "i knew that would happen" but for some optimistic reason your pessimistic reasoning lost out ( if that makes any sense! ). The way i deal with this is a method called the 'JACK DANIELS WAVELENGTH', it comes in handy quite often.

 

[FTSE Beater]

Hi Grubs50

I agree with much that Glenn has said. There are just a couple of things to add.

You have to put bad days into the wider context. It's very easy to get to involved in the here and now, without looking at the bigger picture

The other thing to add is analyse your trade once you've had a chance to calm down. Looking back on bad trades is pointless if your in the wrong frame of mind. Personally I go golfing for a few hours, come back, find out where I went wrong, learn from it and then get trading again.

Hope this helps

 

[Newtron Bomb]

Agree with JonnyT

Your losses are a part of your strat, when it goes wrong outside of this ie computer or net problems stop and live to fight another day. This is a job and i intend to being doing this for the rest of my stay on this planet or until my earth visa expires.

Regards
NB

 

[boy]

lol

 

[dax]

This is the most useful thread for any trader. I have known a couple of big traders in my career and I have seen them recover from absolutely massive hits in an amazingly short space of time.

Notice how the thread "How to make $150,000 before getting out of bed" or whatever attracted over 1000 views and this only has four. Psychology is more important than technique -- after all, the markets willl always be driven to extremes by fear and greed.

Grubs50 -- how to handle losses is the best question a trader can ever ask. You can't be a winner unless you learn to lose.

Easier said than done though ...I work on it every day by drilling into my mind that losing is part of the game. As long as I stick to my game plan and take the trades that I know I should, it's inevitable that some will be losers. I define my risk before pressing the button.

If you are not comfortable with the amount of your loss, adjust your game.

 

[grubs50]

I agree with and understand Glenn's points and i do most of those things but i just can't get the nagging feeling out of my mind, maybe it's just my nature! Luckily i haven't had many moments like that in my short period of trading.

 

[barjon]

I first look to see if I obeyed my rules. If not (mostly the case) I stick a post-it note on the screen saying "obey the rules". When I can't see the screen for notes I go to discipline classes

If I have obeyed the rules it's just part of the ebb and flow. :idea: I suppose one could chart daily points - if the result looks like RB chart over the last six months you'd be happy, if it looked like MKS (or if you hadn't bounced from fib50%s!!) you'd better change the rules before you go broke.

 

[theblackmamba]

learn to love small losses

i am assuming when i say the above that your methodology makes money. my hit rate is only just over 50 percent, but have consistently made money by making sure that i keep avg losers bigger than avg winners.
if i get hit big unavdebly ie being long a profit warning, i swear get emotional, but after an hour or so realise its unavoideble every so often, then just get on withit, as i know for a fact that i will continue to make money if i stick to my methods. as long as stratergy is sound the odd hit has to be accepted. i treat losers as a business cost. instead of paying someome a wage, my costs are losers.

 

[Mr. Charts]

hiya tbm!
will ring b4 xmas
r

 

[options]

"but have consistently made money by making sure that i keep avg losers bigger than avg winners."


Now that is a neat trick.

 

[JonnyT]

Yes but he does have a 99% win rate!

 

[grubs50]

keeping d average losers bigger than d average winners?..............i don't quite understand the logic.........or is it just a typing error?

 

[theblackmamba]

typing error.
make sure avg losers are smaller than winners.
the averages are using about 500 trades of data.

 

[grubs50]

ok

 

[zow]

All the above is good advice for dealing with a bad trading day.

Just wanted to point out that it is all EQUALLY relevant for dealing with a particularly GOOD trading day!

 

[dax]

Zow

Spot on.

Forget your losers. Forget your winners even quicker

 

[al-motor]

you are right there Zow-

I think over confidence after a good run can cause disasters- i.e. thinking that u know it all...............


Al