After all these years, I can summarize profitability in one simple sentence:
to be profitable, you need the right personality or you need to change your personality.
Few people have the right personality (but some do), and so the rest of us either will fail and give up, will fail and keep trying all their life, or will manage to change their personality.
How?
In my case, my problem is not the lack of hard work or persistence (which may be the case for others). In my case the problem is 1) taking things (losses) personally, 2) wanting things to be perfect, even when it's not necessary or possible.
Despite all my skills, which I definitely have by now, these two simple personality features keep me from being profitable. Two things: unmotivated vengefulness (taking things personally) towards the markets (such as in "GBL, you owe me thousands of dollars, now I want them back"), and harmful perfectionism (such as in "this trade must be profitable, too", and then you double up to make it happen).
I have these features in great doses. I am extremely perfectionist and I am extremely vengeful/touchy. To very sick and harmful levels in my daily life as well. I hadn't realized how touchy and perfectionist I am until I lost so much money in trading because of it.
What makes me double up instead of cutting losses? It's wanting to be right at all costs.
Why do I want to be right at all costs?
This comes from both perfectionism and from touchiness. I am mad the markets for wronging me and I want my trades to be perfect, that is the market needs to reward me with money for every trade I make. I cannot be wrong, in my own sick head.
This problem comes from my daily life: because in your daily life, when you do things right, they end up working out, in pretty much every field, except where other people are involved.
That is why I get mad at people who interfere with my work, and get mad at the markets who also interfere with my work by going in a different direction relative to where I expect them to go.
This is crazy, i know, but when you're a perfectionist, things go exactly where you expect them to go, to the slightest millimeter.
I can predict age, I can wake up and know what time it is, I can cook, I can predict what people will say and do... and yet I cannot predict the markets, no matter how hard I try... or rather: I cannot predict them all the time. I can predict them often, but not all the time: that's enough to get my account wiped out.
I think this is my best post ever, on the subject.
...
But I need to add something, because I just read my post,
three posts ago, where I speak of lack of discipline. And even "boredom" and "urge to rebel".
Let's make my mind up on what the cause of my problem is.
Well, we could fit them all in one sentence. My problem is lack of discipline in repressing: 1) my harmful perfectionism, 2) my unmotivated and harmful vengefulness, 3) my urge to fight boredom by trading, 4) my urge to break all rules out of rebelliousness.
So, yes, the problem is a lack of self-discipline, but only in my case I need self-discipline for these 4 problems that are not common to all traders.
1) there are traders who don't have a boring life.
2) there are traders who are not overly and uselessly perfectionist.
3) there are traders don't have an ego that gets hurt and offended by the markets.
4) there are traders who don't feel an urge to break all rules and rebel against authority.
It seems that I don't have any quality required by trading and all deficiencies that keep me from making money, and this is somewhat the case, but the fact is that most people lack the persistence to keep trying, and to keep learning and all that. So I have the most important quality, but along with it, this persistence is also a persistence to keep all the deficiencies that keep me from being profitable. So I don't know if I am gonna solve this problem, within my lifetime. Maybe not.
Recently I've been thinking about this, quite a few times. Sooner or later, my parents will either die or give me some money for whatever reason. They keep throwing it away in various ways, with houses, an unprofitable hotel, getting jewelry stolen by the maid, who still hasn't been fired... many creative ways.
That day I will get my capital back. But then my question is: given my behavior when I already had this capital of about 50k before, and that is several times, and each time i lost it, would I be able to not blow away the money from my parents?
I don't think so.
I don't think that my ability to not throw money away can be relied on, unless I first learn to keep the money I make on my own, and unless I learn first of all, to consistently make money with trading. Indeed, until now I did bring my 4k to about 40k three or four times, and that was amazing, but, given all the times I've tried, that could also have been luck. I am not really confident about my profitability at all.
In fact I do not think I am profitable, but for some reason I also don't think bringing 4k to 40k for four times can only be luck, or that it could easily be achieved by martingale methods. I think I might have some insight about the markets, and that my judgment is better than tossing a coin, but I don't think that I am "profitable", nor "consistently profitable".
FIFTH PROBLEM MAYBE
So, basically, what I am getting at, is that my parents should not give me any money, because I am not ready to handle it. I've lost my capital too many times to be able to say that I know how to protect capital. I don't know if I have some virus that gets to my head when I have more than a few hundred euros in my hands. I don't know what it is, but there might be a fifth component to my madness that keeps me from being profitable, but I am not talking about self-sabotage.
Rather, I am talking about a restlessness that gets into me once I feel that I am also at the point of quitting my job. A cockiness. Something like: "come on, you're almost there, just one last bet...".
I think with another 50k on my hands, I would immediately feel like I just need one more bet to finally quit my job, which is how I felt when I was at 50k in May. I had gotten there so fast, that I felt... nothing could stop me at that point. This delusional state is also another feature of my personality, maybe a sixth problem that I need to add to my list, but it is actually the same as the FIFTH PROBLEM:
FIFTH PROBLEM: delusional state that sets in with high stakes
No matter where I derive that big capital I had, i get the gambling fever, each and every time. So once again this is the list that my self-discipline has to deal with:
1) my harmful perfectionism,
2) my unmotivated and harmful vengefulness,
3) my urge to fight boredom by trading,
4) my urge to break all rules out of rebelliousness.
5) restlessness/delusional state that is triggered by having a large capital
You see, this list for me is so challenging that I am not sure I'll ever master myself enough to overcome these 5 problems. One problem is always gonna get away. One or more problems. We'll see. For now I've failed.
