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Just wondering does day trader. make money every single day? how many losing days you guys have in a month. how long was your longest losing strike?
I could be profitable for 4 days straight days, but if I have 1 losing day in a week. i felt really bad as a trader. I tend to stop trading when I am ahead, when I am in red, i traded a lot more because I felt like I need to have a green day.
How many losing days you guys have in a month, does a losing still bother you?
A losing day is similar to a losing trade, It doesn't feel good. Losing day after day is what really decapitates the ego, especially after you've found a system and have done all the legwork to get it live.
From a mathematical standpoint you can calculate the odds of having a losing day if you have a finite amount of losing trades before you stop for the day and your average accuracy percentage. Most profitable traders have a losing day somewhat frequently. If they trade everyday, they'll probably have at least one losing day a week.
Don't think it won't ever happen to you. Be prepared for it to happen and how to limit it. These types of days will determine the outcome of your career. If you find yourself continually shorting an uptrend, or going long in chop, you'll need to ask yourself if you're trading to make money, or throwing money at the market for the sake of trading.
R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
Thanks for sharing, after I got stopped out, I tend to get more aggressive and ended up getting chop. You mind sharing how many losing day you have in a month?
When you get stopped out because the trade was wrong and not just an execution error, then you should do the opposite and get less aggressive. I'd probably say about half the days I trade are losing days, but they're small and usually made up for by winning days. If I'm not feeling the market structure I'll often times even take a small loss of commission or one negative trade and do something else. I've learned not to reserve to take a set number of trades for each day because the market may not reciprocate my eagerness to cooperate.
R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
You have to get over that. Losing a day is part of the game. Heck for some traders losing weeks or months can be part of the game. The key is to ensure you have a positive expectancy.
The key is to ensure that over time you will be profitable. The timeframe doesn't matter. Whether it is individual trades all the way up to a complete career (20+ yrs).
Being afraid to take a losing day can cause you to compound the loss by trying to dig yourself out. Key for me is to have a daily stop loss. At that point the day is over move on. In the beginning it was tough but over time that has really worked out for the best.
You have two kinds of capital when it comes to trading. Cash and Mental. Cash can be replenished. Mental, not so much. Take too many big hits, blow out the account too many times, etc etc and you can drain that mental capital and may never be able to recover and successfully trade.
The best trading systems have plans for wins and plans for loses. Key is to have a tested system and to stick to those plans.
Also remember there is always tomorrow. The market will always be there. Unless you destroy the account today.
This makes me wonder whether you're losing more, on average, on your losing days, than you're winning on your winning days? If not, I'd be happy with that, I think.
I know that you're by no means alone, there, though I admit I never quite understand this perspective.
It always seems to me that once one has one's edge, one should simply be trying to apply it to the market as frequently as possible, within one's trading hours?
It all depends on one's trade-frequency, win-rate and expectancy, doesn't it?
I don't trade every day, but take an average of 7-8 trades per day on the days I do trade, and the majority of my trades make very small profits, with occasional bigger wins of partial trades after locking in small profits, and very occasional losses, so I have few losing days, now. I sometimes wonder whether I'd do better, overall, with more losing days, actually, but it's hard to quantify.
Losing still bothers me, because I'm very risk-averse.
Thanks for the comment. Yes, on my losing day, i lose a lot more than my average winning day. I had times where I have no losing day in weeks, but when I am wrong one day, I push alot harder and overtrade which is what kills me. sometimes this kind of mentality carry to the next day. very frustrating. Sometimes I think my winning days is because I stop trading while I am ahead, I average 2-4 points a day in ES. my stop is at most 2 points for each trade. is my profit in my winning days too low?
I hear you. I'm wondering (and I suspect that you're wondering?) whether you're really trading a system/method that actually has a proven edge?
The point being that if you're not, but it's just a system/method which fluctuates frequently between winning and losing, it's hardly going to be a recipe for success to try to make it profitable by trying to stop, each day, at some point when it happens to be ahead. That will work, perhaps, briefly, to some extent, on the days when it goes positive at some point, but in the long run that's going to "find you out".
Everything starts from having a system/method that has a proven edge in the first place.
It's difficult to say more, without analysing detailed results - and a statistically significant number of them.