squall321
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I'm a masochist & it's hurting my trading :(
- Thread starter Masquerade
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Masquerade
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Minor crisis, part 2 might be postponed... :|
Masquerade
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arhg!!
(tearing tickets to pieces and leaving the theater kicking popcorn bucket and strangers on the way out)
Crisis averted, just a bit of miscommunication. I'll get to it either tonight or tomorrow.
Put it in the freezer, not the fridge!
donaldduke
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I think you got the perfect experience and skillset to become a trading vendor i.e. many years of trading experience and you don't mind lying a bit to get a sale.
circa 99% of vendors don't/cant trade. They nearly all lie about the fact.
If you do decide to stop trading, consider this option. You could probably make a living out of it.
There seems to be no shortage of dumb suckers willing to hand over large amounts of money in order to chase the trading dream.
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Masquerade
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I can't tell you the number of times i've had friends and people I just met (who weren't rich) willing to hand over 5 figure sums without even asking to see a trading statement. I've met people and they want to take my number so they can call me and talk about some weird stock in Azerbaijan that no-one has heard of and about other instruments.
Sadly I don't think i'm cut out for the scamming business. I have a moral compass and would feel guilty if I lost someone's money if they gave me money on the pretence that I was living the trading dream and they could join me if they hand over their money.
Sadly I don't think i'm cut out for the scamming business. I have a moral compass and would feel guilty if I lost someone's money if they gave me money on the pretence that I was living the trading dream and they could join me if they hand over their money.
maxima
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I dont know why people call vendors scammers... surely where is large percent of them are scammers but also there are bunch of them who are genuinely want to sell their help..
The biggest problem is that general wisdom says - they all cannot trade overwise why would you sell it...... it is plane stupid to say. none of sports coaches were great sport stars themselves. I spent 4 yrs in pro sport and i know what i am talking about. there is no link between know how and do. coach interest is to transfer his know how to people who can do but dont know how. not only share the knowledge but make it stick on that person.
nothing wrong with that. cmon stop sulking and go and sell something.
The biggest problem is that general wisdom says - they all cannot trade overwise why would you sell it...... it is plane stupid to say. none of sports coaches were great sport stars themselves. I spent 4 yrs in pro sport and i know what i am talking about. there is no link between know how and do. coach interest is to transfer his know how to people who can do but dont know how. not only share the knowledge but make it stick on that person.
nothing wrong with that. cmon stop sulking and go and sell something.
Bint_Crusher
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I had a guy last year who had with the advice of his wife (who must have been a ****ing bimbo) gone out and bought e-signal. His plan was to watch bloomburg, use esignal to analyse his stock and tell him where to enter. He did this with a little success for the first stock so he upped the stakes and bought £8,000 of Barclays. The stock promptly dropped but rather than take the loss and live to trade another day he let the price fall further in the knowledge that the share was bound to come back up to the entry price. As it turned out in this case the price did rally so he took the trade off at breakeven ish. Quite pathetic. When he asked me about it I told him that he was a pillock, but he would have none of it. I explained that the reason I knew him to be a pillock was that he did not have a trading plan and he was living in the same air headed world of his wife, buying esignal? He offered to hand over the money to me to manage which for a commission would have been attractive but apparantly his wife wanted a guarantee that I would make month on month success.
I offered to shag his wife for him but he declined although I don't think he even asked her and at the time I last saw him he had decided to give up being a trader because it was costing him too much in losses.
Masquerade
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Recap: following my birthday I had been reflecting on events of my life, how i'd spent a lot of time and made some big sacrifices to trade. All I had to show for it was some big red numbers looking back at me in my trading account and it all felt pretty hopeless. I had been bouncing between profit on my account to losing 20% in trades and then rebuilding only to do the same. I just couldn't get on the run I had back when trading was easier. So I gave myself a time limit of 2 months to rebuild or go do something else.
Objectives
- Only trade if there's a reason; I felt this would help with my patience aspect and would keep me out of the bad trades if I thought to myself "why am I trading?" rather than just trading because price hit point X.
- Keep leverage low; I reflected on my losses and saw that over-leveraging was a common denominator (along with trades not being so good) but I wanted to be able to make the best decision, rather than have the decision made for me because I overleveraged and risked losing a large %.
- Avoid Fridays; for some reason I just really don't like to trade a Friday. There's a few reasons, one of them being by the end of the week I just feel tired for it. Another being I just don't fancy losing a lot of money and wrecking a good week (I have done this in the past) and then have to hold positions into the weekend. The squaring off of positions leading to strange moves and just the general feeling of pressure that the market closes on friday and I can't stay in for too long amaong other reasons.
- 5% ROI/week; I didn't want to go too risky. Someone suggested I put 50% of my account on one trade and see if I make it so I can rebuild fast. But I didn't want to risk it on one trade. I felt 5%/week was an achievable target with my risk profile/leverage and I would compound the account so after 2 months with 5%/week i'd have made a significant dent on my losses.
I'll go on to the trading. The past 2 months have been highly turbulent in the markets and I have found them more challenging than I can remember them being lately. Sentiment flipping multiple times in a day, the relentless woes of the euro-zone and just as one thing is put to bed another decides to be brought out. It really felt like there was an agenda based on speculation against the euro.
July
The first few weeks of July were very steady for me. I was getting in some good trades and avoiding getting into big losses. I was careful to manage my position size and ensured that I didn't start taking positions which were uncomfortably big. I was taking moderate profits (30-40 pips/day) but on the week they were adding up. I averaged about 3-4%/week for the first few weeks.
During the first two weeks I felt this frustration inside me. I found myself taking trades and then getting out of them when I felt there was more left in it. Watching the trades became stressful and I was closing trades for the sole reason of not losing my profit. A solution to this was after taking a trade, I decided to turn off my trading screen with my charts and not look at the markets for about an hour. That way I wouldn't get stressed out by small movements and it'd prevent me from interfering with the trades. Admittedly, I still looked a little bit just to make sure of spikes but I wasn't looking at anywhere near the frequency as before.
I am sure a better trader than me would have had much more impressive results on the month of July than I had considering the number of good positions I got into. The rest of July was a slight improvement on the first two weeks of July. More importantly, I was feeling better about trading because I had consistently returned a profit on each week and felt it was a good foundation to work on. I finished up +19% on the month.
August
I had my first minor scare on week 1. I had previously been watching the market on Sunday night (I don't like to trade sunday nights or overnight in general) and had a good idea that I should be buying the dips. I woke up on monday and got to the computer and within 10 mins the first thing I did was buy - there was no real reason to be bullish. The trade didn't go well and my position wasn't large. Needless to say, I was confident it would rally and I bought some more and again as the market fell.
I could feel myself falling into the cycle and feeling that hopelessness again. I was looking at a 10% loss on account on the day. The market did bounce and I got out of the trade on Tuesday for a profit. I felt frustrated that i'd tied up my capital and wasted that time and taken those risks and vowed to not just trade like that again and think a bit more about why i'm taking the positions. Despite being down 10% or so on the week I finished up about 5% on the week.
Week 2 started off very similar to week 1. I had this new-found monday morning impatience where I wanted to start the week on a good note and get some money in the bank. Once again, I got in a trade where I didn't have much underlying logic for it. I averaged on the position and held (over the week 1 and week 2 averaged trades, I held much smaller positions than previous overleverages due to my awareness of where my losses came from. I still shouldn't have taken the risk, but the risks weren't the same.)
Week 2 started off bad (I was looking at another 10%+ loss on the day) and I found myself watching the market like a hawk. A computer was pretty much always beside me except when I went to the toilet or had a shower. I was up till 4am and beyond some nights and sleeping till economic announcements at 6.30/7am then trying to sleep for 30 mins between announcements in the morning. Over 2 days I probably managed 6 hours sleep. I started to feel myself getting ill again and decided that maybe taking a loss was inevitable so I could just move on to the next trade. I had been tied up in this trade for 3 days when on thursday I saw my trade slip into profit. At this point, I reasoned that I had spent 3 days in the trade and now that it was turning good I may as well make it worth my while and hold. The trade went bad again and i'd had enough. I decided to take my first loss and finished down just over 3% on the week. It felt like a small victory considering the damage I faced.
Over the period of August I started to feel this recklessness building inside me. I was happy with my consistency, but I was starting to think about just putting it all on one trade and trying to double an account. I knew my returns were good but I still wanted more. I had been trading smaller than I should have been as I felt markets were pretty uncertain/volatile and didn't want to lean on leverage in case I decided to take another trade alongside an existing position.
Following the loss of Week 2, I came back on week 3 and made sure I didn't make a repeat of the previous 2 mondays. I had a pretty consistent week and ended up recouping my losses and making a bit. Week 3 was +4%.
Week 4 (this week) and i'm finished for the week. I normally don't bother with bank holidays, but I had a go. It was such a grind but I made a little bit scalping taking small profits and getting in and out of the market to make it worth my efforts. I looked at 1.45 on Monday night and considered selling but I don't like to do overnights, I really thought there was a good chance euro wouldn't go up much overnight and it'd drop. I woke up on Tuesday to see euro falling and all I could do was just sit and watch. I got in a few trades later in the afternoon on a risk on rally and made a bit but I wasn't planning on sticking around in the market with a long.
The rest of the week was fairly low profile as I was trading smaller and trying to not do anything too stupid so I wouldn't look like a moron who had been trading well for the 7 weeks or so and then busted it all in the last few days I had a minor scare yesterday, nothing too bad (about -2% on the trade) but I got out of it on the risk on rally. So total for this week despite the bank holiday, my trading smaller and the markets grinding away was just under 4%.
I did include 1 day of September as it composed of my trading week but August was a +15% ROI month. (numbers for each week were rounded so it might work out a little differently but that's the ROI for the month)
Conclusion
After the last 2 months of my trading, i'd secretly hoped to have improved upon my objectives but in hindsight I can't complain with the results. I achieved what i'd set out, my account had vastly improved and more importantly I was getting consistency back in a highly tumultuous market. I feel that if I reign in the trading on a whim (which I managed apart from those 2 mondays) and manage my leverage there's no reason that I shouldn't be able to achieve these results on a consistent basis. There will obviously be drawdowns but if it's 3-5% in a week i'm comfortable with that.
Here's the tricky part though; towards the end of August I was feeling that maybe it's time for me to see what opportunities are available for a guy like me in the real world. I'm at this fork in the road (truth be told, I might be past it) where I have to decide if trading/something else I do is going to be the way I commit to in life or if I go look for a conventional 9-5. It's been 7 years since I made my first trade and by no means do I intend to stop in some shape or form. Just i'm now starting to question if I should take a break from the day trading and go do as my other peers have done for years before the boat well and truly sails off.
It may seem counter-intuitive to stop now after my efforts, but trading like this certainly won't be the glamorous life outsiders will think it to be and it's going to take me some time and hassle to get to where I want to be. Saying that, I haven't felt the trading malaise/boredom lately that I used to feel and building an account has been a satisfying experience. So now i'm a bit stumped for what i'm going to do on monday.
Objectives
- Only trade if there's a reason; I felt this would help with my patience aspect and would keep me out of the bad trades if I thought to myself "why am I trading?" rather than just trading because price hit point X.
- Keep leverage low; I reflected on my losses and saw that over-leveraging was a common denominator (along with trades not being so good) but I wanted to be able to make the best decision, rather than have the decision made for me because I overleveraged and risked losing a large %.
- Avoid Fridays; for some reason I just really don't like to trade a Friday. There's a few reasons, one of them being by the end of the week I just feel tired for it. Another being I just don't fancy losing a lot of money and wrecking a good week (I have done this in the past) and then have to hold positions into the weekend. The squaring off of positions leading to strange moves and just the general feeling of pressure that the market closes on friday and I can't stay in for too long amaong other reasons.
- 5% ROI/week; I didn't want to go too risky. Someone suggested I put 50% of my account on one trade and see if I make it so I can rebuild fast. But I didn't want to risk it on one trade. I felt 5%/week was an achievable target with my risk profile/leverage and I would compound the account so after 2 months with 5%/week i'd have made a significant dent on my losses.
I'll go on to the trading. The past 2 months have been highly turbulent in the markets and I have found them more challenging than I can remember them being lately. Sentiment flipping multiple times in a day, the relentless woes of the euro-zone and just as one thing is put to bed another decides to be brought out. It really felt like there was an agenda based on speculation against the euro.
July
The first few weeks of July were very steady for me. I was getting in some good trades and avoiding getting into big losses. I was careful to manage my position size and ensured that I didn't start taking positions which were uncomfortably big. I was taking moderate profits (30-40 pips/day) but on the week they were adding up. I averaged about 3-4%/week for the first few weeks.
During the first two weeks I felt this frustration inside me. I found myself taking trades and then getting out of them when I felt there was more left in it. Watching the trades became stressful and I was closing trades for the sole reason of not losing my profit. A solution to this was after taking a trade, I decided to turn off my trading screen with my charts and not look at the markets for about an hour. That way I wouldn't get stressed out by small movements and it'd prevent me from interfering with the trades. Admittedly, I still looked a little bit just to make sure of spikes but I wasn't looking at anywhere near the frequency as before.
I am sure a better trader than me would have had much more impressive results on the month of July than I had considering the number of good positions I got into. The rest of July was a slight improvement on the first two weeks of July. More importantly, I was feeling better about trading because I had consistently returned a profit on each week and felt it was a good foundation to work on. I finished up +19% on the month.
August
I had my first minor scare on week 1. I had previously been watching the market on Sunday night (I don't like to trade sunday nights or overnight in general) and had a good idea that I should be buying the dips. I woke up on monday and got to the computer and within 10 mins the first thing I did was buy - there was no real reason to be bullish. The trade didn't go well and my position wasn't large. Needless to say, I was confident it would rally and I bought some more and again as the market fell.
I could feel myself falling into the cycle and feeling that hopelessness again. I was looking at a 10% loss on account on the day. The market did bounce and I got out of the trade on Tuesday for a profit. I felt frustrated that i'd tied up my capital and wasted that time and taken those risks and vowed to not just trade like that again and think a bit more about why i'm taking the positions. Despite being down 10% or so on the week I finished up about 5% on the week.
Week 2 started off very similar to week 1. I had this new-found monday morning impatience where I wanted to start the week on a good note and get some money in the bank. Once again, I got in a trade where I didn't have much underlying logic for it. I averaged on the position and held (over the week 1 and week 2 averaged trades, I held much smaller positions than previous overleverages due to my awareness of where my losses came from. I still shouldn't have taken the risk, but the risks weren't the same.)
Week 2 started off bad (I was looking at another 10%+ loss on the day) and I found myself watching the market like a hawk. A computer was pretty much always beside me except when I went to the toilet or had a shower. I was up till 4am and beyond some nights and sleeping till economic announcements at 6.30/7am then trying to sleep for 30 mins between announcements in the morning. Over 2 days I probably managed 6 hours sleep. I started to feel myself getting ill again and decided that maybe taking a loss was inevitable so I could just move on to the next trade. I had been tied up in this trade for 3 days when on thursday I saw my trade slip into profit. At this point, I reasoned that I had spent 3 days in the trade and now that it was turning good I may as well make it worth my while and hold. The trade went bad again and i'd had enough. I decided to take my first loss and finished down just over 3% on the week. It felt like a small victory considering the damage I faced.
Over the period of August I started to feel this recklessness building inside me. I was happy with my consistency, but I was starting to think about just putting it all on one trade and trying to double an account. I knew my returns were good but I still wanted more. I had been trading smaller than I should have been as I felt markets were pretty uncertain/volatile and didn't want to lean on leverage in case I decided to take another trade alongside an existing position.
Following the loss of Week 2, I came back on week 3 and made sure I didn't make a repeat of the previous 2 mondays. I had a pretty consistent week and ended up recouping my losses and making a bit. Week 3 was +4%.
Week 4 (this week) and i'm finished for the week. I normally don't bother with bank holidays, but I had a go. It was such a grind but I made a little bit scalping taking small profits and getting in and out of the market to make it worth my efforts. I looked at 1.45 on Monday night and considered selling but I don't like to do overnights, I really thought there was a good chance euro wouldn't go up much overnight and it'd drop. I woke up on Tuesday to see euro falling and all I could do was just sit and watch. I got in a few trades later in the afternoon on a risk on rally and made a bit but I wasn't planning on sticking around in the market with a long.
The rest of the week was fairly low profile as I was trading smaller and trying to not do anything too stupid so I wouldn't look like a moron who had been trading well for the 7 weeks or so and then busted it all in the last few days
I had a minor scare yesterday, nothing too bad (about -2% on the trade) but I got out of it on the risk on rally. So total for this week despite the bank holiday, my trading smaller and the markets grinding away was just under 4%. I did include 1 day of September as it composed of my trading week but August was a +15% ROI month. (numbers for each week were rounded so it might work out a little differently but that's the ROI for the month)
Conclusion
After the last 2 months of my trading, i'd secretly hoped to have improved upon my objectives but in hindsight I can't complain with the results. I achieved what i'd set out, my account had vastly improved and more importantly I was getting consistency back in a highly tumultuous market. I feel that if I reign in the trading on a whim (which I managed apart from those 2 mondays) and manage my leverage there's no reason that I shouldn't be able to achieve these results on a consistent basis. There will obviously be drawdowns but if it's 3-5% in a week i'm comfortable with that.
Here's the tricky part though; towards the end of August I was feeling that maybe it's time for me to see what opportunities are available for a guy like me in the real world. I'm at this fork in the road (truth be told, I might be past it) where I have to decide if trading/something else I do is going to be the way I commit to in life or if I go look for a conventional 9-5. It's been 7 years since I made my first trade and by no means do I intend to stop in some shape or form. Just i'm now starting to question if I should take a break from the day trading and go do as my other peers have done for years before the boat well and truly sails off.
It may seem counter-intuitive to stop now after my efforts, but trading like this certainly won't be the glamorous life outsiders will think it to be and it's going to take me some time and hassle to get to where I want to be. Saying that, I haven't felt the trading malaise/boredom lately that I used to feel and building an account has been a satisfying experience. So now i'm a bit stumped for what i'm going to do on monday.
FarQuinnell
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After reflecting on the two months, try answering these questions:
1) What are the flaws in your trading?
2) What are you going to do to help improve upon these?
3) How do you intend to monitor your progress?
1) What are the flaws in your trading?
2) What are you going to do to help improve upon these?
3) How do you intend to monitor your progress?
KenMedanic
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Hi,
I suffered from the same thing.
It might be hard to believe (perhaps) but it is based on a subconscious belief of undeserving.
"I don't deserve things to go this easy."
"I don't deserve to make money this easily"
"Who am I to be this good"
and the best one and deepest one is:
"Why am I so special."
The strangest thing about trading is that success is so easy because success always comes from when we are at peace. Peace allows us to better digest all the information that is coming our way as we decifer between securities.
We sort out so much noise, this is impossible if we bring inner noise into our work.
In other professions people have an hour, a day, a week and even a month to adjust their proposals etc etc. We don't. We get an instant response from the market.
The market tells us whether we decified things correctly or not, it tells us what our state of mind was in those few moments.
To what degree of regret and resentment is hidden in your subconscious mind is the degree of success a trader has during his career.
These personal interuptions that show their nature from time to time do so in order for us to address them. Think about it for a second. If some one knocks on your front door it is so that you address them. This is the same with the thoughts that come from our subconscious mind. They need to be addressed so that you can put them at peace.
Enjoy the process of resolving old thought patterns as they once served us, possibly to protect us as children which was the case for me, now as an adult I let them go because they no longer served their purpose. I addressed them said, thought about them long and hard and let them go.
Your trading will show you the result of your internal peace.
Best regards,
Ken
I suffered from the same thing.
It might be hard to believe (perhaps) but it is based on a subconscious belief of undeserving.
"I don't deserve things to go this easy."
"I don't deserve to make money this easily"
"Who am I to be this good"
and the best one and deepest one is:
"Why am I so special."
The strangest thing about trading is that success is so easy because success always comes from when we are at peace. Peace allows us to better digest all the information that is coming our way as we decifer between securities.
We sort out so much noise, this is impossible if we bring inner noise into our work.
In other professions people have an hour, a day, a week and even a month to adjust their proposals etc etc. We don't. We get an instant response from the market.
The market tells us whether we decified things correctly or not, it tells us what our state of mind was in those few moments.
To what degree of regret and resentment is hidden in your subconscious mind is the degree of success a trader has during his career.
These personal interuptions that show their nature from time to time do so in order for us to address them. Think about it for a second. If some one knocks on your front door it is so that you address them. This is the same with the thoughts that come from our subconscious mind. They need to be addressed so that you can put them at peace.
Enjoy the process of resolving old thought patterns as they once served us, possibly to protect us as children which was the case for me, now as an adult I let them go because they no longer served their purpose. I addressed them said, thought about them long and hard and let them go.
Your trading will show you the result of your internal peace.
Best regards,
Ken
maxima
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you are right not to trust yourself.
discretionary trading is very hard job (although you dont beleive it). making the boat float day after day after day is most hard part of it.
it is the same as an ex-alcoholic to work on a brewery. sooner or later you will blow up year or two or the whole life achievements in one very bad trade/week/month.
the people who is going to 9-5 work will be up in those years and you will be in square one with no hope at all...
give it up.
discretionary trading is very hard job (although you dont beleive it). making the boat float day after day after day is most hard part of it.
it is the same as an ex-alcoholic to work on a brewery. sooner or later you will blow up year or two or the whole life achievements in one very bad trade/week/month.
the people who is going to 9-5 work will be up in those years and you will be in square one with no hope at all...
give it up.
donaldduke
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So you seemed to have become more disciplined in your trading in the last couple of months, however the style of trading appears to be the same. You are trading for a high daily win rate, but could still give back a good chunk of your profits with a big losing day. You were lucky to miss two such days where you account was down 10% only to turn around allowing you to get out for a much smaller loss. I would guess you are also still trying to pick turning points in the market and averaging into positions as they go against you.
That is a very hard way to build a trading career. You might be able to make a living this way but it is going to be highly stressful.
A better way of trading might be to trade with the trend, add to winning positions, have many small to medium sized losing days, an equal number of small to medium sized winning days, and a small number of out lier winning days where you score big home runs. i.e have those big 10% days working in your favor.
It seems to be much easier to build a long term trading career based on this approach.
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robster970
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KenMedanic
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To Maxima,
The discretionary element in any trading system is what sorts out the winners from the rest. There is no exception from this rule. And to those who think otherwise remember that the techniques and indicators even the tools fundamentalists use is all based on a discretionary choice. Discretion is a muscle that all would be wise to exercise.
The discretionary element in any trading system is what sorts out the winners from the rest. There is no exception from this rule. And to those who think otherwise remember that the techniques and indicators even the tools fundamentalists use is all based on a discretionary choice. Discretion is a muscle that all would be wise to exercise.
robster970
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You could replace the word 'discretionary' in your first sentence with the word 'random' and it would still be true.
KenMedanic
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Random is a belief held by those who still do not understand.
