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Adding to the advice already given to you, if you really want to continue (which is not a bad thing), I'd say for you to stop trading LIVE. Yep, if you are already down to a 1/3 of your account, there's no point in continuing trading live, unless you have a burning desire to throw away that remaining 1/3...
Now you already know the psychological effects of putting money on the line, what you need is to develop a better trading methodology and an edge. And how can you do that without burning any more capital? SIM. Yes, SIM is perfect for that.
But you need to take the SIM "experience" very seriously. If possible, use the same platform as you already use for live trading to keep it even closer to the real thing. Treat the sim money as if it were your own. Don't be reckless just because it's sim. It can be a little hard at first, but make some effort in this path, it's worth it.
Then start exploring the different methodologies you might think of. Put those ideas to the test in the sim account. Try trading more contracts (by scaling in or out) and see how that affects you and your bottom line. After a while, you can find out which "numbers" you are able to be comfortable with. Both in terms of contract size and account PnL fluctuation.
Spend some time on this, don't expect to figure it all out during the first week. It may take a few months of serious and dedicated sim work. Do this daily, or as often as you plan to trade "for real".
Meanwhile, keep investing in those bio-tech stocks as you said you did earlier. If that was a winning proposition, no point in leaving it behind. Your money will be growing as you grow your skills on the sim.
If you have to juggle a full-time job, don't try to trade the whole day. Find out at which times the market behaves the way that's more appropriate for your edge and focus on those few hours. I like to trade for about just a couple of hours after the open. Find out what works best for you. Use the sim to experiment the various hours to help you with that as well.
In short, take advantage of the sim to explore different methodologies and edges and their effect on you and your bottom line while not risking any further capital. Once you find something that is consistently profitable on the sim for about a month or so, then you may be ready to transition back to the real account. Just keep doing the exact same thing you did on the sim.
And congratulations, I believe there aren't many females seriously interested in trading. A big kudos to you!
I'm one of the few, it seems, who disagree with going to sim.
Instead, just reduce size. If you are down to 1 contract ES, then futures are too big. Trade ETF's like SPY instead. Reduce your position size and increase your trade duration. Whatever you do, don't scalp. I've repeated this a thousand times over the years, and the ones that follow this advice have come back and told me it really made the difference for them.
I will agree with you that maybe sim isn't for everyone. If the person is not able to take it seriously and think of it as a video game where you can press "reset" as many times as you wish, the sim will do more damage than good.
But I believe that if taken seriously (as in treating the sim money as if it were your own), it can be a great tool for exploring different possibilities. Don't do in sim something you wouldn't actually do on your account. You can, however, do on sim something that you would be afraid of doing on your account, or something you are not so sure about the results. To me this is the greatest value of sim. You can use it as a tool to overcome fear, improve execution and try out new ideas.
Thank you very much to ALL of you. The truth is that I do not want to stop which is why I probably was so taken aback at the very first post.. but you could not know this and it's probably the right thing to say to someone just seemingly throwing away money.
No this is of course no money which pays bills. it's my hard earned personal savings (not even family money) which I have decided to put aside to learn the business. I am basically holding this for margin and also still invest in biotech (not much at the moment since it went down so much and I better like the long side). With the family we have had costs on the house etc but I have already told my husband that I feel comfortable enough to invest our common money, in the future. so actually many thanks for confirming that I seem to have an edge in this!
I think what I was probably hoping was some advice to help me define the edge with ES. I just have this feeling that I would really like to master this - I was generally able to master quite a few things in life so I would hate to just give in.
As mentioned, I have thought long and hard what works well. Market times are a major factor and I personally like between 3.45 and 4.10 (US time), after that it immediately goes to sleep for a while. I also like the often smoother trends in my early evening but I often have family commitments so that's difficult.
I am testing different "system"/ approaches but it's difficult to compare once discretionary decisions (within the rules) come into play. true testing only works with full automation I think but that's not for me. so I am trying to eliminate what I have found are my biggest blunders, such as holding over night without a stop, or trading in not perfect conditions (eg during a Telephone conference). I tend to think I might have an edge already (I have quite good set ups - I think) but it's the circumstances which come in the way.
I do agree with the different comments made on sim trading. Truely it's difficuclt to take it as serious as real trading. you just don't, since you end up trying different things. Actually I am currently doing much better trading real than on sim - as long as I stop in time. So I seriously take your point Big Jim regarding ETF trading. I have never thought about that (at least not adapted to size). Actually I am much better trading longer trends (also with the biotech shares), than the short hops in and out. I just can't afford/risk anything else with ES since for longer trends the your stop is just out of reach. so thanks for mentioning this and I will consider how this would work
Big Jim here -- welcome to the forum, start reading and participating and you'll start improving your trading. I recommend spending as much time as possible in the webinar section to start.
If you want honesty, here it is. More than likely you are going to blow-up. Yeah, I said it. I think anyone who has been around and learned how to profit, at least from leveraged products, has blown an account or two up. It sucks. I'm saying this from experience so don't think that I'm being mean or unsympathetic. I've blown two up myself and it was just about everything I had both times. Luckily, I was young (I'm 30 now). Just keep taking everything as a learning experience and try to take the most out of every loss or win that you can. For example, if you get absolutely rolled on some wild reversal where you shorted the low tick of the day. Spend an hour that night figuring out how you could have been on the right side of the trade. Ask yourself, what did a they see that I didn't? Was it tick? Or a breadth divergence? Was it that my big picture analysis was poor? Do the same thing on your big winners as well. What made this winning trade different? Did I hold it for max profit? Is my goal max profit or should I be taking pieces off on the way up way down? Also, while you are doing all this try to nail down a "methodology" that is all your own. For example, after a million mistakes I know I have to try and sell or buy tops and bottoms. If I attempt to take a trend trade, I am always way late and wrong. It's always made in an emotional state that doesn't produce good trades. I do so much better waiting for the market to hit xyz as an entry point. I was able to build a winning methodology around just this one piece of self analysis. Of course, it took me blowing up two accounts to learn but that is part of the process.
One of my favorite quotes is Rich Dennis from market wizards. He was asked what to tell beginners when they are starting out and I believe he said something like "When you start you are going to be as bad as you will ever be". Stuck with me through all my losing. I knew if I could just improve each day that maybe one day I would find my way out.
Ed Seykota said "everybody gets what they want out of the market" I think many of us who have got into trading know about the 'action' and can relate to your words that I've quoted, so this isn't me being down on you. You either stop trading and re-group, continue and blow your account or continue with a SIM only account and keep your $7k. I think option 1 looks pretty good right now. Clear your head and revisit your methods, the markets will still be here in a months time. If you continue with SIM or real money then you risk repeating the same mistakes when you might need some personal reflection time. Don't under-estimate the power of simple decisions in trading.
