This thread will serve as my daily "post trading" journal for 2017. To give validity to this journal I will start by letting you guys know who (brief personal and trading bio), what (instruments, broker, tools, strategies), why and how. I believe that in order for people to fully understand why someone does what they do in trading (and in general for that matter), some personal understanding of the trader behind the journal will help. I anticipate this will be the longest entry of this journal as I am establishing its foundation, all other entries should be a shorter and an easier read going forward unless I start on a motivational tangent.
Who
Personal Bio
I am a 39 year old husband, father, trader, and firefighter (those are in priority order) who lives in a Austin, Texas suburb. My wife is an ICU nurse and we have a 20yo son in the coast guard and a 13yo daughter going on 20 :/ I have been a firefighter for 13 years and have been trading for 3 years. I recently promoted last year (a bit more on that later) and moved into a house that I would consider the middle class American dream home. I was born in Austin, Tx and moved to Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex from the age of 5 to 31, until I was able to move back to Austin, which I had a strong desire to move back to. You may ask why I bring up some of these things (promotion and home) but I will tie it all together as I go.
I will go a bit into my personal past for purposes of establishing where some of my drive comes from. A disclaimer before I go forward, I do not claim to be a 100% mentally stable and healthy person from my past. I understand that some of the views I have come from experiences I have not yet psychologically dealt with. I don't really want feedback on my past but again I do believe it will help those reading understand why I see the world and trading for that matter, the way I do.
My family structure as a child was I had perfect examples of what not to do in life. My mother has spent most her adult life in prison (due to drugs and illegal activity to support that addiction) and my father married 3 times and had 3 children. My mother had another child when I was about 10 so I have 3 other brothers, all of which I love and care for very much. I never knew my mother much and my father I love but do not admire. I appreciate what he did do for us but know that he was rather selfish in his life decisions overall. There was a lot of mental and physical abuse (mostly mental) but it wasn't near as bad as what other people have experienced in their lives. I bring this up to help shape my framework for the drive I now have as an adult. My education is high school and some college. I played sports growing up but nothing that I exceptionally excelled at. I would say my favorite sport at the time was hockey and I did become quite good for a couple of years. I learned that I particularly don't like losing and take it quite personal when I do.
Work History
I worked retail from 18-27 and excelled/promoted over the years. I enjoyed it earlier on but as the years went on I realized it was not the type of work that I felt created stability for a family or was fulfilling. I went back to college to complete the Fire Academy around the age of 25. After which I got hired on within 1 year of completing the Academy and have been a firefighter from 27 to current. Until the last 2-3 years I have always had 2 or more jobs. I worked for a alcohol distributing company for 8 years from (27-35) when I wasn't on shift at the fire department. I chose not to promote for a number of years but recently decided to take the time and effort to do so. I will come back to this as well when I summarize this entry.
Trading History
About 3ish years ago the alcohol distributor I had worked for laid off about 10-15 people, myself being one of them. At this time I decided to find a mentor in the trading world and started with foreign exchange. Before doing so I did make a key decision that has contributed greatly …