Trading is easy - making money is hard

[rathcoole_exile]

I trade 2 or 3 times a day .. a set up, which is simple, .. more mechanical,

just curious, and I'm not advocating either way: could your set-ups be automated or do you still employ a certain amount of discretion ?

 

[rathcoole_exile]

My big losses have come on crude. I am limiting myself in the amount of contracts now. Crude is so hard because it makes so many fakeouts one way or the other, but the times it is not a fakeout can be huge moves in a matter of seconds.

seriously, although you might well fall asleep waiting for triggers, try swapping Oil for Corn.

 

[fxfxmmm]

It's been one full year now of daytrading full time, and I am at the point where I am very confident in my trading abilities, and find it almost easy to make a consistent, reasonable profit day in and day out. HOWEVER, I am still losing money overall.

Every time I tie together a consistent profitable run (sometimes as much as 10-15 days straight of winning) I find myself taking more and more risk and eventually I give back all of my profits and then some. Is this common amongst those of you who trade full time? What I'm saying is if you give me a $10,000 account and say make $200 today with less than $200 max drawdown I'd say there's a 90% chance I can do it. But if you just put $10,000 into an account and let me do what I want with it, I might run it up to $12,000 over the course of 2 weeks. Then I'll say why $200/day, I can double my position sizes and make $400/day. Next thing I know I'll find my self on the wrong side of a trade that I believe will come back to me, double down, and it takes off even further against me and I'll lose all of my gains and then some. All on one really bad trade that I was significantly overleveraged on.

I've done this about 3 times now and need to stop before I run out of money to trade with. Anybody else have or had this problem and solved it?

I am in a similar boat. In my case I average 80% profitable trades, but so far end up giving it all back in what I call catastrophic loss's that have a psychology connected that I always fall into. It is this psychology that I am putting my efforts into understanding now

 

[wallstreetking]

I am in a similar boat. In my case I average 80% profitable trades, but so far end up giving it all back in what I call catastrophic loss's that have a psychology connected that I always fall into. It is this psychology that I am putting my efforts into understanding now

I had 35% profitable trades and I finished 2017 with over 30% ROI.

Whats the secret? Cut your losses and let your winners run

 

[wallstreetking]

Yes, I've had the same problem and here's how I solved it: I quit discretionary trading and opted for automated trading.

I've been trading for over 12 years. For the first 10 years, the experience you described wasn't the case with me, because I almost always lost, for several reasons: wrong broker, wrong instruments, wrong strategy.

After solving those problems, I still didn't become profitable, and, for the past 2 years, I've been exactly in the situation you describe: I'd win for 2 straight weeks or so, and then, in two days, lose everything I had made and more. I guess because of wrong money management, but also, after a while, I'd start screwing up on the strategy itself, because I can't keep my impulses under control, and because, if the strategy is discretionary, it is not defined clearly and univocally enough to resist any trading urges. I double up on losers because I get mad and irrational. I stop waiting for the right opportunity, either because I am mad for having lost money and want to make it back quickly, or too confident and excited for having succeeded. In discretionary trading, there's when to enter, when to exit, and how much to bet. Those are the three things you consistently have to do correctly in order to succeed, but "correctly" doesn't mean "successfully": you don't win every time just because you're doing things rationally. Well, for self-control problems which I couldn't solve, I cannot even do those three things rationally. And I am not saying I can trade rationally for 2 weeks and then stop. I can trade rationally for maybe a couple of days at the most, then start pushing my luck more and more and sooner or later I blow out my account. And it's pointless to keep on trying, after over 12 years. So I quit and now I just focus on automated trading, which is so much easier. Actually I sometimes wonder why I didn't quit sooner, when I am so much better at automated trading. The reason is that I was taught to do things that challenged me, and this seemed like a challenge I could conquer. But I was wrong, I couldn't fix my mind, and it now makes sense to quit my efforts to learn to trade discretionary, because the point of this is to make money and not to challenge oneself.

With discretionary trading I have not had a single profitable month within the 12 years I have been trading. With automated trading, it tends to be the contrary, because there's no impulses to worry about, the strategy is a good one because it's been back-tested and forward-tested. Everything seems to be perfect. It really makes you wonder why isn't everyone doing it. Partly because it seems too easy, and so some people don't even try it because they think it's an illusion. But mostly I think it's because it requires a lot of work, and most of those who try it, stop before doing what's required. I don't even know if I've done what's required because I haven't made any money with it yet (actually I have made it but then lost it with discretionary trading). Certainly for me it's much easier to make money with automated trading than discretionary trading.

Quit Day Trading.

 

[neil]

Quit Day Trading.

That post is SEVEN YEARS old......do you really think he is still around !!
Hope you pay more attention to your demo trading.

 

[wallstreetking]

That post is SEVEN YEARS old......do you really think he is still around !!
Hope you pay more attention to your demo trading.

It's my first day posting after many years. so take it easy. Stop biting...

 

[rakhi123]

When you look at a price chart--whether it be a stock, forex or futures chart--it looks pretty easy to make money. Our eyes gravitate to the big moves and we think "If I had gotten in there I could have made a fortune.

 

[Daru]

Analysis isnt easy but easy to believe that you are good analyst. But earn money is a hard process in any way, in any business. Only with a good base of knowledge you can earn with stable process but it will never be easy.

 

[Gavin_ron]

Well said. Trading isn't a hard thing, what's tough is to earn money and for which one needs to bring consistency to their profits, then only you will be able to make money from it.

 

[Tor_88]

That's right, every other person can trade. But what is not easy at all is to bring out profits from those trades. According to me, profits come to only those who are passionate about trading and do not leave researching and learning till the end.

 

[hatemypips]

It's been one full year now of daytrading full time, and I am at the point where I am very confident in my trading abilities, and find it almost easy to make a consistent, reasonable profit day in and day out. HOWEVER, I am still losing money overall.

Every time I tie together a consistent profitable run (sometimes as much as 10-15 days straight of winning) I find myself taking more and more risk and eventually I give back all of my profits and then some. Is this common amongst those of you who trade full time? What I'm saying is if you give me a $10,000 account and say make $200 today with less than $200 max drawdown I'd say there's a 90% chance I can do it. But if you just put $10,000 into an account and let me do what I want with it, I might run it up to $12,000 over the course of 2 weeks. Then I'll say why $200/day, I can double my position sizes and make $400/day. Next thing I know I'll find my self on the wrong side of a trade that I believe will come back to me, double down, and it takes off even further against me and I'll lose all of my gains and then some. All on one really bad trade that I was significantly overleveraged on.

I've done this about 3 times now and need to stop before I run out of money to trade with. Anybody else have or had this problem and solved it?

From your words you focus too much on money. Focus on developing a trading system that has some edge. Don't think about trading in terms of money, think about competition, beating other, not the prize.

 

[Latty12]

I can’t agree that it’s easy to trade, here you really need to be fully involved.

It actually takes a lot. I can not imagine that i take trading so lightly and still earn good.

 

[Henow1969]

People are making money with Forex trading and more people are interested in trading to start. But also there is a risk of losing money because some traders start trading having no knowledge and skills. Why you are losing money I do not know, have your plan, strategy and money management to start trading?

 

[Henow1969]

In fact forex trading not easy and all the people think that forex is money machine but in fact this trading may give you huge money but after learning the secret of the earning .forex trading attract all the people to trade and achieve their goals but after training and practice on demo to save their money and survive.