my journal 2

Status
Not open for further replies.
I just wanna tell you that i'm sorry to hear the bad news :( .
I dont have to tell you that your problem is with discretionary trading, but i think that you have to figure a way to limit a possibiliy of placing a discretionary trade. Maybe you could use one computer (at your home) and another (at server) and only to have a possibility to see possitions, P/L, and possition size from your home comp.
Or you could program (like Neke from Elitetrader.com) who had the same problem, a script (or program) that automaticly closes all discretionary opened possitions, or all averaged down possitons.

And look at this link: http://www.zumo.com/index.html
It's a place where you can trade in low amounts of money. In that way you could trade all your systems.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for your advice and support. Greatly appreciated, since you're one of my biggest readers. I will read Neke's posts on elitetrader.com.

Regarding zumo.com, I don't think it's good for me, since I can only automate trading systems with IB's API software (I use excel), so I can't really switch brokers that easily.

Regarding the automation of some discipline, as you suggest, it's hard to implement such a thing, because if I can't even refrain from connecting to the server and placing trades, it's pretty unrealistic to expect me to develop and turn on a program that will undo my discretionary trades. If I did develop such a program, I wouldn't turn it on, because if I had the strength to turn it on, that same strength would allow me to not connect to the server to trade.
 
Last edited:
You got hit by the juggernaut. Wow. So you still haven't graduated into the 95th percentile of people who don't lose in the markets. Basically what you are saying is that you don't respect the markets. If you had respect for them, you wouldn't double up. You'd just get out of the losing trade. The market's telling you you're wrong, but you don't believe it. You don't respect it.

Still you're not flat broke - do you have enough to carry on trading your systems?
 
learning to juggle with knives

Yeah, a little bit left. But I still haven't closed a couple of positions, because as i said I can't close when I am losing. We'll see how it ends up. I could recover some of the losses or lose everything.

As far as respecting the markets, your usage of "respecting" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It sounds like "I don't respect air". Respect by my dictionary would mean "don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you". Since I would like to take money from the market but I wouldn't want the market to take money from me, then I guess - if we were to consider "the markets" like a person - we could say I don't respect the markets. But it doesn't make much sense. I also think I am smarter than the markets or I wouldn't be trading, so once again I don't particularly think the markets are intelligent, so I don't respect their intelligence could be a good statement. But the markets are not a person. I have no feelings towards the markets.

On the other hand, if you were to say I don't respect the driving forces of the markets, or even better "I underestimate" what the markets can do, then you'd be quite right, because I basically tend to believe i can predict them more accurately than I actually can. And then I stick to those predictions of mine longer than I should. We could sum it up as "i underestimate the markets and their capability to keep on falling lower and lower" and "i overestimate my capability of trading rationally", in that i keep on making the same mistakes over and over again. I make a wrong prediction, and instead of closing my trade, I double up or even just keep one contract open until i blow out my account. I seem to base my trading on the belief that I am infallible or on the refusal to accept that I can make a mistake.

I don't know: i am not in touch with reality, in many areas of my life. I am in denial in many areas, but trading really forces me to face the consequences of my losses: my account's balance forces me to face reality. It tells me "you're not getting that girl because she doesn't want you and not because you don't want her". It is clear to me that i want money, and that instead i am losing it. Trading is forcing me to see reality by showing a very clear financial balance, which reflects the consequences of my actions, and which has been telling me for 13 years that i am doing something wrong. I've been listening to this voice for just the last few years. Or rather, I've been hearing it. I've been realizing that I am doing something wrong, but I still haven't been able to stop.

On the other hand, all this is not enough to make me change my behaviours, even though I see the causes of my losses, so clearly.

This is because if it makes sense to go short at -3% (in my bottom-picking trading), it makes even more sense to go short at -4%, which will then make me double up. But then i am forgetting that the markets can lose 3% every single day, and yes they do bounce, but only within a day, so the % points lost do not add up for a super bounce.

In other words I fall into those many traps that are called "the counter-intuitive nature of trading" by stuart mcphee, in this video:


If i were given money endlessly, I might be able to learn, just like you learn to walk and ride a bicycle. But the problem is that with trading you don't get much practice before you run out of money. It's as if you were to learn to walk while someone kicks you in the nuts each time you trip as a child, or ride a bicycle while every time you fall, they take it away from you for a couple of months. This is why so few people ever become profitable. Otherwise everyone would be profitable just like everyone rides bicycles. Of course then no one would make money in the markets, or I don't know how the markets would be affected by this. But what my point is: give anyone endless money to invest, and sooner or later they'll learn. As they say, practice makes perfect. With real capital, you don't really have a chance to practice a lot. And you are scared of practicing, and if you're scared of falling you can't learn to ride a bicycle. It's like learning to juggle but with knives. Few people can learn how to juggle (i did), but even fewer could learn if they were told they have to practice with knives from the start. That's what trading is and that's why it's so hard to learn. You get hurt while you practice, and you don't have much time to practice because you're going to get hurt so badly and so quickly that you'll have to stop for a while.

The point is that I should either not trade, or I should not double up on losers and close them instead. But I am blinded by pride each time, so i already know from now that the next time I'll be in this situation, I will be blinded by pride and double up on a loser again. It just keeps on happening, over and over again, year after year. In the same way, even if I know I am an unprofitable trader, I keep on relapsing and resuming my discretionary trading, time after time. There's no escape. I either change the way I am, maybe as I become older, or as long as I'll be the daring and proud person I've always been, I will keep on being broke and unprofitable.

Now (later edit) yet another contract has been closed due to lack of margin, but do you think I will be closing the last contract open? Nope, unless it gives me back some of the money i lost. I lost almost 10k trying to avoid a loss of 200 dollars (kept on doubling up). Will this teach me to not double up? Nope. It hasn't in the past. Will this teach me to not do any discretionary trading? Nope. It hasn't in the past. This journals has witnessed the whole thing of relapsing.

I may quit discretionary trading, in disgust, for a few days or even weeks. Then I'll forget about what happened, see my small account (whatever will be left after the last position will be closed), and I'll try to help it. I'll make a few thousands. Then one day I will be wrong on something, and probably I will have the capital to double up or if I won't, I'll keep my trade open, forever. So I will keep on going my whole trading career: one step ahead, and three steps behind. My discretionary trading has never brought me any money. If I deduct the money lost with discretionary trading from the money made with automated trading, I would even say that I've lost 70k with one and made 50k with the other. Still, this doesn't help me quit.
 
Last edited:
Re: learning to juggle with knives

As far as respecting the markets, your usage of "respecting" doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

from Dictionary.com:
- to hold in esteem or honor: I cannot respect a cheat.

- to show regard or consideration for: to respect someone's rights.
- to refrain from intruding upon or interfering with: to respect a person's privacy.

You know what the markets can do, but you don't respect that when you trade.

You also know how to make money in the markets too, after all you have stated on your journal. You know there is a very limited number of things you can do to make money from the markets, essentially cutting your losses and letting your winners run, whether you do it with discretion or with a trading program.

But you don't respect that knowledge either.

This 'respect' issue is something you should have learned to overcome by now, judging from your journal. You say you might be able to overcome it with more practice - so get a small account and trade small lots until you're happy at that size, then ramp it up slowly.

Look at it like this: imagine you're a priest, you've sworn celibacy, and in the little town where your church is, there's a hot babe who you know wants you so bad, so what are you going to do? You have to remain celibate for the good of your soul, but every day this temptation eats away at you. You have to pray like crazy, fight the temptation with every thought. It's the same with the markets and your insane doubling-up.

Good luck. Boy, she's hot though. Oh man, you've got a difficult job ahead ;)
 
Yeah... it's going to be hard if not impossible. I may have to stop this journal, and stop writing on any forums or chats and stay away from computers altogether, except for turning on my systems in the morning. All this time on the web is not a good influence, because it increases the chances of taking a peek at the markets.
 
Last edited:
Your adventures in discretionary trading keep making me think that I could do that - and in fact I think I might have to. My deadline is approaching pretty fast - I'll need to make some money trading by the end of June, and I don't know yet whether the mechanical trading system is going to provide enough on a regular basis.

It's pretty ironic since you've just blown half your account doing it. Hardly inspiring.

But have you ever scalped? Just watching the 5 minute bar and trading that on its own? I reckon you can make enough to take $2000 a month out.

Scalping in my demo account for 10 to 50 pips made me think that might be a cure for your trading psychosis. Just put on a position, watch the market, if it's wrong, pull it, if it's right, let it run.... Just an idea. You wouldn't have any reason to get attached to a position. You'd see you're wrong, and get out. It wouldn't be like your trade was some kind of statement of your brilliance or anything. It would just be a scalp, sometimes wrong, sometimes right.
 
with every mistake we must surely be learning...

Thanks for asking, because you're making me reason more about it.

As I said before, I can make money on the chart game. And I can make money with real-time paper trading, as long as I wait long enough and don't get bored in the meanwhile, which is rarely the case... yeah, let's put it like this. If you asked me to focus very hard and produce money within the next 10 trades, I would be able to do it.

But by default I do all the wrong things, and produce losses. That default mode never goes off, because it has a lot to do with how I am, with boredom and pride, and those two things never leave my mind. It pisses me off to be wrong, and it bores me to wait without doing anything. So I can make money, but in the long run I lose it. I cannot adapt to 2 of the many requirements of profitable trading: patience and lack of pride.

I can't compare this to anything immediately self-evident in my life, or i wouldn't have kept on losing money. I can't find anything that:

1) I want to do (or I think I want to)
2) I can do
3) I don't do
4) I waste money because of not doing it

Usually, I'd say I either want and get something or I don't waste my time and money trying. In this case, on top of it, I can get it, but I somehow avoid getting it. It's as if there was some subconscious barrier.

The question is not just why I don't want to (or "can't") stop my pride and impatience and be profitable, but also why, since I can't be profitable, do I keep on trading. It would be best compared to people who smoke and can't quit. They say it's bad for them, they say they want to quit, but then they don't quit. People call this "addiction". So for a while I've been calling my problem "compulsive gambling", but I suspect there's a little more to my problem than just "compulsive gambling", because I never did any compulsive gambling at anything other than trading (such as casinos, lotteries, card games, none at all).

Another interesting question would be why I am so obsessed with top and bottom picking, since it's so hard to make money that way. For 13 years, the only way I've been trying to make money is by looking for tops and bottoms. If I see a market going down, I have to look for LONG opportunities, and cannot do otherwise.

And if I am wrong and losing money on a trade, I will double up because that market is now even more oversold/overbought. And that is, once again, how I blow out my account, over and over again. And, despite how clearly I see that I can't control my own actions and end up doing unprofitable things, I still keep on trading, on and off.

This happens because I am sure I could make money with automated trading, so this forces me to see the markets on a daily basis, and get tempted. It would be equivalent to this: someone has to quit smoking, but at the same time he has to sell cigarettes. Or this: someone has to be on a diet, and yet he sells cakes at the same time.

In the past few months, I have come to the realization and final decision that I had to quit discretionary trading and not rush my automated systems, and allow them to make money at their own pace. Instead here i am, again: I have blown out my account once again with discretionary trading, just as I wrote in my profile 9 months ago.

At least I realize that I am past the stage of saying I am trying to figure out what I have to do. I have figured out that I have to quit discretionary trading a long time ago. But I haven't quit. So I am not entitled to write things like "ok, here's what I'll do..." anymore. I am not credible to myself.

I can just say: who knows how I will solve this problem. I don't know. I said I'd quit, but I haven't. In this field, I don't seem to be doing what's in my best self-interest.

Even as I was writing some earlier posts today, I was placing trades. I was writing one thing and doing another. I doubled up on a trade, because intraday margin became effective again, and I was able to double up. So now I am long again on the EUR, two contracts. Here I am, writing about quitting, and doubling up my losing trade in the meanwhile. I've just got to pick this last bottom. Every time it's "the" last trade of my life...

Yeah, essentially this is why I do top and bottom picking. The markets most of the time go up and down, and if you get into this cycle at the right time, you will be right most of the time. However sometimes, less frequently, the markets go up and up, or down and down. In those cases you need an exit strategy or you're screwed. Instead of exiting, I double up, so I end up getting screwed. And each time, even just a week later, I forget how badly I had gotten screwed. A lot of people with my strategy and problems similar to mine, must have gotten screwed with the EUR lately, since it's just gone down and down and down. But it's not the EUR to blame, just the strategy which needs an exit strategy. You can't just bet your balls on a bounce the way I do.

Maybe the best thing would be to allow someone else to handle my trading account with my trading systems on it, but it's not a feasible choice, as no one has either the knowledge or the trust required.

There's only one person I am allowing to see my systems (the guy who runs the server), but I can't ask him to get up at xx AM each day and turn them on. And also, I would be missing out on a lot of useful information (bugs and performance by systems) if I didn't turn them on and off by myself. But by following them myself, I get into contact with markets, and this hasn't really allowed me to quit my discretionary trading.

Only good thing about today is that I didn't go to work and I got some sleep.

I've spent hours on this journal complaining about how much damage stupid people produce, but so far my so-called "intelligence" has produced more damage. A stupid person plays the lottery, and by today has lost much less than I've lost with my addiction. With all my perfectionism and pride, I've actually produced more damage than a regular stupid person. The stupid person advances and gets promoted at work, whereas I don't. The stupid person saves money, whereas I didn't.

So far my intelligence hasn't paid off. I have been ruined by its side-effects, among which pride. Stupid people sleep well at night, whereas I suffer from insomnia. When am I going to get some benefits from my hard work and intelligence? All I've gotten so far is problems. I work, but I don't get promoted. I lose money at trading, because of excessive pride. I don't sleep at night... I am tired of putting up with negative effects of good behaviour, intelligence, hard work, fairness, honesty.

At least I want to be able to sleep well from now on. And not worry about work or anything. I do more than everyone else, I don't get promoted, so I shouldn't be concerned about all problems at the office and take them home with me. The maid is retarded? Screw her. Let her buy the wrong food. I don't have to train her by going with her to the mall, as I did last week. She's worse than a chimp. Let's get rid of all worries at least. No point in being worried about anything.



Tough life for a bottom picker...

Snap1.jpg
 
Last edited:
Something

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something


Many believe that Harrison's inspiration for "Something" was his wife at the time, Pattie Boyd. Boyd also claimed that inspiration in her 2007 autobiography, Wonderful Tonight, where she wrote: "He told me, in a matter-of-fact way, that he had written it for me."

However, Harrison has cited other sources of inspiration to the contrary. In a 1996 interview he responded to the question of whether the song was about Pattie: "Well no, I didn't [write it about her]. I just wrote it, and then somebody put together a video. And what they did was they went out and got some footage of me and Pattie, Paul and Linda, Ringo and Maureen, it was at that time, and John and Yoko and they just made up a little video to go with it. So then, everybody presumed I wrote it about Pattie, but actually, when I wrote it, I was thinking of Ray Charles."
 
leaving on vacation for two weeks

Soon, next week, I'll be leaving on vacation for two weeks, so I probably won't post until I come back in late May. I don't want anyone to worry that I may have committed suicide for these recent losses. It is indeed the most disastrous set of trades I've had in years, maybe ever since i started. But I'll never commit suicide because of blowing out my account. I always want to live to see if the systems will work or not. However, this is terrible. The EUR just kept on falling lower and lower, from 1.33 to 1.25, without ever bouncing back. This is really awful for someone looking for bottoms.

Snap1.jpg


Not to suggest that there's any reason to be mad at the EUR of course: it's my methodology which is wrong. I wish this could at least cause my suicide/death as a discretionary trader, but even this last disaster will not be enough. I've been just as frustrated before, yet in a few weeks all will be forgotten, and i will be ready to implement more disasters. This is like smoking and other addictions. You can't just say "it was my last cigarette" and expect it to work. Every time someone quit, they say they suddenly quit, but there's many more times when someone says "this was my last cigarette" and it wasn't.

I know, this journal knows, that this is not the last time I ****ed up and not the last time I have blown out my account. There's no telling. Who knows. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Getting burned with trading has never been enough for me to wise up. At least I am not making the mistake any more of saying "never again", because it'd be bull****, as i've said plenty of times already.


As stupid as the maid

I guess we're all stupid in one area or the other. When it comes to (discretionary) trading, that's my stupid area. I am as stupid as the maid is at doing her job. I don't learn from my mistakes.

I went to the supermarket with her: we bought toothpaste, shampoo, and milk. I showed her specifically the products, the brands, how expiration dates work (she can read). After months of her buying the wrong milk, toothpaste... I had to do it. You show her the toothpaste, you tell her "buy this". She comes back with a toothpaste by the same brand, but different type of product. Retarded bitch.

Even after taking her to the supermarket, I stressed out to her, "don't buy wheatabix because i am soon leaving for two weeks and if you buy it be careful of the expiration dates". Yesterday she bought wheatabix expiring in 10 days, when I'll be gone, and i still half a box to finish. After three months, I am concluding she is stupid.

More stupid than any person I've ever met. After watching the chimp documentaries, I've considered bringing some sugar with me to train her.

Anyway, when it comes to trading, I am like my maid is with shopping: retarded, illogical, irrational, stupid, inefficient. The same mistake of doubling up on losers and keeping them open forever, the same mistake since 13 years ago. Maybe there's something in her mind that keeps her from thinking rationally about expiration dates. Maybe she sucked at math just like me, but even worse, and her mind turns useless when she is confronted with dates on a box. If that's the case, no wonder she is a maid and not an engineer. On the other hand, I see her as a chimp, but what do i do with trading? My mind stops working in the same exact way when i am confronted not with an expiration date, but with a loss.

Certain events stop our reasoning

Maybe it's from my childhood and my dad always criticizing me for doing anything less than perfectly. I've turned into a perfectionist and cannot accept the sight of a loss, which I see as my mistake. Basically, when i see a loss (no matter how small), i stop being rational. Yet the same happens in many other fields in my life and it must happen to everyone else in other fields as well.

I guess this is one way we could define our intelligence: the fewer the fields where our mind stops being rational, the more intelligent we are. My maid's brain stops functioning when she sees an expiration date: it just overeats and freezes, and she has to reboot but to no avail. My own brain stops working when I am confronted with what i perceive as a mistake, or maybe just a loss, a trading loss. Let's not generalize too much.

Other areas like this one for me?

My parents. I don't act rationally: I hold a grudge. I am vengeful towards my dad in particular. I won't act rationally. But maybe, because of not loving him that much, I am actually more rational that those who feel love and affection for their parents. In a way love implies ceasing to be rational.

Other areas? A girl of course, or rather, a woman. A woman I find attractive. I stop being rational once again.

A complex formula. Instead of trying to figure it out, I feel stupid, feel some phobia for it, and avoid it, run away from it. My mind goes blank. I refuse to even try to understand any complex formulas, those with sigma symbols for example.

Loud noises. If I hear someone slamming the door or laughing loudly, he bothers me so much that i hate him, and resent him. I feel like they're doing it to spite me. Anyone being loud. I feel like it's an aggression against me. Whereas it is not. The person doesn't even know me. But I feel like they're attacking me physically. This is a stupid reaction, just like my maid who keeps on buying almost expired milk and other products, even after she realizes they have to be thrown away.

Or as stupid as people who are not orderly and fill up their desktop with icons, so many that their desktop becomes useless. Or people who have their favorites all in one group, without any subfolders, which, after you have 100 favorites in there, makes them totally useless.

The only difference between my irrational behaviours in general and trading is that trading forces me to realize I am doing something wrong, like in a lab test. It hits me where it hurts most. And my financial balance is telling me this:

1) you think you want to make money
2) you think you can make money
3) but you do not make money

And therefore it raises these questions:

1) do you really want to make money?
2) can you really make money?

I have some possible answers:

1) Maybe i don't want to make money (and avoid losing money) bad enough to overcome my bad habits (pride and impatience), to which i am more attached than to money
2) I am not really sure if I can actually make money, because i do have an edge, but that edge disappears when i am upset or impatient, which tends to happen all the time, so maybe the answer is that I cannot make money, because there's too many negative impulses to control them all.

The conclusion is that I am incapable of trading profitably, for one reason (not hungry enough) or for another (too many impulses interfering). I should not do it. But the crazy thing is that I cannot even refrain from doing it, because I am forced to watch the markets every day because of my desire to at least make money with discretionary trading.

Once again, I can't promise anything and it would be ridiculous to say "never again..." after all the times I've said it. I don't know what I'll do: the easiest thing would be to quit discretionary trading rather than trying to do it right. However, even that seems to be too hard. There's a pressure in me to increase capital, and that pressure every once in a while makes me resume discretionary trading. To speed things up. Now it would be easy to say "never again" and to believe I have learned my lesson. But pretty soon, once i've recovered to a reasonable capital, I will do it again. It's happened too many times to still believe i can quit it. The situation has not changed over the years. I lose, I recover (almost always by wiring more money), i do it again. I've changed platforms, instruments, increased my knowledge, but i always lose at the same rate of blowing out several accounts per year. I used to blow out 2k dollars accounts and now i blow out 20k dollars accounts. I used to not be able to make any money and now I've been able to multiply my capital by as much as 5 times, before blowing out my account as usual.

I am tired of being myself, I would even say i will stop writing this journal. But i know i will feel like writing on it again in the future. And i know that I will feel like trading again in the future. I know i will do the same mistakes again. The mistake is not really making a given trade. At this point it's clear to me that my mistake is keeping my losses open, and even worse doubling up (tripling, quadrupling) on my losses.

Just like for compulsive gamblers, there's no end to this. I keep on making money at my job, and i keep on wasting it here. And now, for the first time in my life, I have blown out an account entirely made with money from a loan. But this won't change anything. Or maybe this lack of hope and despair i am feeling is the beginning of a change. But maybe not. 13 years. I would say the problem is getting more and more into focus. My technology is improving (server), my systems are improving (more systems, all forward tested, better understanding of money management), but I feel time is running out more and more and this makes me run out of money instead.

If I really feel restless, I should work long hours at my job. I should work a second job, to produce capital to invest. I should go swimming. Anything but discretionary trading, which actually decreases my capital, each and every time (in the long run). The rate is about this: 9 wins out of 10 trades, and the tenth trade blows out my account. Martingale madness basically, to sum it all up. With an unlimited capital you would never lose, but without it it's pure madness. Sooner or later, like in these days, there will be a EUR that goes down without ever looking back. It went down for 3 straight days. And obviously, just like with a coin toss. If you double up each time you lose, sooner or later if you run out of capital, you are screwed by the coin.

But this is not wisdom. All this will be wiped out in a matter of seconds as soon as I am trading again. I knew all this stuff even today, and yet i did it again. And i knew it 3 days ago. And a year ago. And all this time I've kept on losing by doubling up on losing trades. It is a perfect method for someone who doesn't like to lose .You win 9 times out of 10, and that last trade you blow out your account. I am so pissed off at the market when it proves me wrong, that I'd rather put my balls and my whole account on the line, than admit i might have been wrong. It will happen each time the market tells me i was wrong, and that will happen each time I place a few trades. So I cannot trade, because I will not change. I will always be a proud perfectionist and won't ever accept that I can make a mistake. So i cannot trade. But i will trade again, because the capital is low and the capital is low because i've been losing it all these years. There's no escape. All life pressures cause me to trade and the consequences add future pressure to my life and this in turn will cause more trading... endlessly. At least up to this very moment I have been in a vicious circle.

Someone had told me on this journal to take a break for a few weeks if I didn't feel calm. I didn't listen to them. I told them there was no reason to take a break, because the systems were going to trade and not me, and taking a break was useless, because actually I would have wasted opportunities. The problem is that, little by little, i got cockier and started trading again... and it happened again: I tried to force the markets to give me money (by doubling up).

Now I still have some capital left, and what is it doing? Still trading one contract from this disastrous EUR trade. Probably, as soon as the EUR will start its bounce up, I will be satisfied and get out and miss most of the move. This is what happens with me. Take huge risks to be LONG exactly at the bottom, and when it happens, i get out almost immediately.




 
Last edited:
trading and personality

I am recycling this post (with a few changes), after posting it on Adamus "deadline June" journal.

Being a profitable discretionary trader has almost everything to do with personality.

If you're someone who can stick to his plan, that's a very good start and that's saying a lot about your potential profitability. I was never able to stick to any plans for longer than a a few weeks (even when they worked). Also, someone who can watch the markets for a few months, and not place a single trade would seem very promising to me. It means you have the right attitude and psychology for the markets: patience and self-control. As long as you don't catch the gambling addiction once you start trading, but that is unlikely.

On the other hand, I cannot look at the markets and do nothing or just paper trade. If I have capital and I look at the markets, pretty soon I feel compelled to place a trade (I see opportunities that I just cannot miss). Then, once I'm trading, I don't stick to any plans, and I'm out of control: especially as far as exits. If the market moves against me, I double up and all that stuff I explained on my journal. So, I couldn't tell someone unprofitable (like me) how to become profitable, but I can tell when someone is different from me, and you seem to be quite different in all the things I mentioned.

I think there's a small minority of people who have what it takes for profitable discretionary trading, and they're profitable pretty much from the start. The others have ego, self-control and patience problems, and it's close to impossible for them to become profitable discretionary traders. After almost 13 years of losses, I can safely assume that. Yes, I am probably the most untalented person as far as discretionary trading, but I am quite confident that I share many personality traits with the large majority of unprofitable traders. These are my conclusions after trading unprofitably for 13 years and writing many posts about this topic (e.g.: here): you need a certain personality to be a profitable discretionary trader, more than intelligence and knowledge. If you don't have it, it's almost impossible to become profitable just as it is almost impossible to change your personality.

I have acquired a lot of knowledge about the markets and certainly i am not stupid, but I am not profitable, and never have been. Speed doesn't do it. The right broker with cheap commissions doesn't do it. Having an edge doesn't do it, because even just 10% of losing trades, if handled wrongly, can wipe you out. The right instruments (futures) won't make you profitable either. I am just as unprofitable today as I was when i started. In a way my personality makes me stupid. I know by now that I should not double up on a losing trade, but close it. I shouldn't put myself in a kamikaze position where I either am right on a trade or I blow out my account. And yet I do it every time, why? I am not stupid, not by the dictionary. When I am trading, my pride and impatience blinds me and takes over. There's no reasoning any more: in fact I do become stupid.

What maybe could be done is to be profitable via automated trading, but even then you need to be able to not place any trades and that is really hard when you're looking at the markets more than once a day, to make sure your systems are behaving correctly.
 
automated trading update

It was a really bad week for my own trading and for the systems as a group, but the 9 best systems, which I've picked a long time ago and are performing well since I've identified them (no overoptimization), have performed well even this week.

These 9 systems with big gains and low drawdowns from the start of the forward-tested period, have made 25k with a max dd of just 1.5 k and a required capital of 5k. That's about 3k per month, which is more than 50% return per month.

Yes, it's a very small absolute return, but it's also very good when compared to its drawdown.

This series of losses, in both discretionary and automated trading, has forced me to select the best of the best, and finally come up with a combination of 9 systems that have a very low drawdown. I could double the contracts on these systems, while using constant contracts on the others, and the outcome would be very good.

Here's the best 9 systems I am talking about, for future reference:

ES_ID_3
EUR_ID_6
GBL_ID
GBL_ID_2
GBP_ID_3
YM_ID_2
YM_ON
ZN_ID_2
ZN_ON_2

Here's what their equity line since July 20th looks like (at the start I wasn't using all of them, as I've created them later):

Snap1.jpg

With these 9 systems I could even sleep on it. I could just let them run for a year without worrying about them. I know that they will make money.
 
Re: automated trading update

Totally forgot to mention, but there are actually brokers that will run your system for you lock stock and barrel. Can't remember their names - perhaps one was called Robins - and I don't remember how they charge for the service, but that would mean you would only get statements from them, or maybe a website interface to stop and start the trading.
 
Re: automated trading update

It was a really bad week for my own trading and for the systems as a group, but the 9 best systems, which I've picked a long time ago and are performing well since I've identified them (no overoptimization), have performed well even this week.

These 9 systems with big gains and low drawdowns from the start of the forward-tested period, have made 25k with a max dd of just 1.5 k and a required capital of 5k. That's about 3k per month, which is more than 50% return per month.

Yes, it's a very small absolute return, but it's also very good when compared to its drawdown.

This series of losses, in both discretionary and automated trading, has forced me to select the best of the best, and finally come up with a combination of 9 systems that have a very low drawdown. I could double the contracts on these systems, while using constant contracts on the others, and the outcome would be very good.

Here's the best 9 systems I am talking about, for future reference:

ES_ID_3
EUR_ID_6
GBL_ID
GBL_ID_2
GBP_ID_3
YM_ID_2
YM_ON
ZN_ID_2
ZN_ON_2

Here's what their equity line since July 20th looks like (at the start I wasn't using all of them, as I've created them later):

View attachment 82530

With these 9 systems I could even sleep on it. I could just let them run for a year without worrying about them. I know that they will make money.

Small absolute return? Meaningless. As you know, the Sharpe ratio compares return to risk taken, which is defined by the smoothness and slope of the curve. This equity curve must have an enormous Sharpe. If you need higher absolute returns, you can just add contracts...

More models only required once you can no longer trade volume without higher slippage.

I'm sorry to hear about your discretionary sabotage, especially when you appear to have such good models. And these will be ruined if you blow their capital. Why not open a secondary IB account with very little capital. That one you can trade discretionary when the urge takes you. But ensure your models are left in peace
 
Another, perhaps obvious point...

If you are tampering with apparently excellent automated systems, there must be an underlying psychological reason why you don't wish to succeed.

Perhaps you enjoy the struggle rather than risk losing this through success? There are perhaps many other reasons...
 
Re: automated trading update

Totally forgot to mention, but there are actually brokers that will run your system for you lock stock and barrel. Can't remember their names - perhaps one was called Robins - and I don't remember how they charge for the service, but that would mean you would only get statements from them, or maybe a website interface to stop and start the trading.

Not feasible. I don't trust them and I don't want to pay them and I need to watch closely my systems' performance.
 
martingale madness

Another, perhaps obvious point...

If you are tampering with apparently excellent automated systems, there must be an underlying psychological reason why you don't wish to succeed.

Perhaps you enjoy the struggle rather than risk losing this through success? There are perhaps many other reasons...

Many times before I have wondered if there was some self-sabotage in me, if I did enjoy working hard to get things and maybe automated trading seemed too easy. Maybe. However, before getting too deep into this discussion, let's not forget the point is to make money (I think I want that) and not dwell on psychology more than necessary. I'll try, as quickly as possible, to see what works, and I'll try to do it. 13 years of losses is not very quick, I know. On the other hand these good systems have only existed since 2008.

As I've said here:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/trading-journals/86996-deadline-june-15.html#post1122108

I now have three options:
1) keep on doing the same and one day be homeless maybe
2) try to stop discretionary and keep doing automated (with the risk of instead doing more of # 1).
3) quit all trading and at least be sure i won't lose any more money

I want to try # 2, but I know I've been trying it for over a year, or at least I've been saying and thinking I've been trying to do it for a year, but it hasn't happened.

Maybe, after a few more years of endless losses, the lesson will kick in. The knowledge that I am just hurting myself. Deep inside I must have done it because I was hoping to increase my money thanks to my discretionary trades. Which is usually the case, except that one time out of 10, I incur one trade that wipes out my account. The problem is precisely that my losses are not "endless": I win a majority of times, and this always leaves with the feeling that I am actually a good and even profitable trader.

This martingale discretionary trading of mine is very tricky and counter-intuitive, because you get a feeling that you're good, as you make money most of the time, but you still blow out your account several times a year. It's a real nightmare, because it really escapes my subconscious that I am unprofitable, because I'll be making money for a whole month, and then in one day blow everything and more. I've been repeating this and documenting these trades ever since I started this journal in September. It's the martingale illusion (with limited capital of course, because otherwise you never lose). I think the real enemy of all unprofitable traders should be identified as the martingale illusion, rather than all the crap everyone talks about.

But these are all synonyms: martingale means in fact that when you're losing:

1) you don't exit
2) you double up
3) you triple up... and so on.
4) you put your whole account at stake with just one bet on the market

And this cannot end but with disaster.

This has been the cause of all of my blown out accounts: top/bottom picking trades that didn't go well and caused me to adopt a martingale approach, that many times actually worked, and 10% of the time blew out my account.

The fact that you get away with martingale trading most of the time is what makes my stupid mind so unable to grasp it. On any given losing trade, your chance of making it profitable with a martingale method is high. You have a better than 50% chance of succeeding. What screws you is that those few times it doesn't work, you blow out your account. What then screws you is that you remember more all the times it worked, than the few times you blew out your account.

Maybe I am stupid, or maybe my pride and unwillingness to take losses, is blinding me.

You see, when the EUR is losing 200 pips, hypothetically, I will start one of my bottom-picking trades and go long one contract. Let's say I am wrong, and now it's losing 250 ticks. It will make even more sense, with my original bottom-picking approach, to go long another contract, thereby implementing a martingale approach.

All this seems and will always seem perfectly reasonable to me. But what I am doing is something insane. Now I have placed myself in a position where if the EUR keeps on falling I can't get out because my loss is too big.

And this is what happened lately and each time I blew out my account. The EUR just kept on falling, so I opened a third contract, then a fourth... and it happened again.

It starts as rational, and pretty soon you realize you've done it again. Many small rational steps cause an overall insane behaviour, as stuart mcphee clearly explains in this video ("counter-intuitive concept"):


We open the trade, it moves against us... we're now faced with an unrealized loss. It's intuitive to hold on to that trade in the hope that we get back to break-even and we don't lose our money...
and:
When we're faced with a losing streak... it's intuitive to place more money...
and he lists many more good examples (such as top and bottom picking being intuitive, and unprofitable).
 
Last edited:
Many times before I have wondered if there was some self-sabotage in me, if I did enjoy working hard to get things and maybe automated trading seemed too easy. Maybe. However, before getting too deep into this discussion, let's not forget the point is to make money (I think I want that) and not dwell on psychology more than necessary. I'll try, as quickly as possible, to see what works, and I'll try to do it. 13 years of losses is not very quick, I know. On the other hand these good systems have only existed since 2008.

Or a far simpler reason: discretionary trading gives excitement which automated ones don't have. Makes you feel alive. Winning then doesn't matter, as the goal is to feel alive.

If this is the case, there may be far cheaper ways to get kicks
 
Many times before I have wondered if there was some self-sabotage in me, if I did enjoy working hard to get things and maybe automated trading seemed too easy. Maybe. However, before getting too deep into this discussion, let's not forget the point is to make money (I think I want that) and not dwell on psychology more than necessary...

Isn't psychology the most important point? If you thought you were an awful investor, you would invest in a basket of funds, and probably average 10% / year over the last 13 years. But if you think you can do better, there has to be a reason.

Unless money doesn't matter all that much, or is not your internal objective, then maybe "you are getting what you want from the markets"
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top