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I know my advice is probably not the usual or maybe it's not what you expect, but most of the words you've chosen to describe your situation communicate an intense suffering ("I desperately want to succeed", I can't bare to watch the screen, it kills me", it's pathetic and I hate myself for it). For this reason and because you said you have a history of depression/anxiety, I would strongly recommend you to find help from a trading psychologist.
When self-study doesn't work, you need to find external help.
If you can't watch the screen and you are agitated and nervous, there's clearly an issue there. You need to learn to accept losses and take responsibility for your decisions without punishing yourself so hard ("It's pathetic and I hate myself for it).
Show some compassion for yourself. It sounds like you are holding a lot of anger inside against yourself. That's never a good position to trade.
Also, I don't think it's a good idea to try to get your wife to do your job. Your trading your responsibility. If you can't handle it for yourself, maybe you should consider not doing it.
You said maybe you are "emotionally ill equipped to handle the markets", if that's the case, you need to first get healthy. It doesn't matter how good you are at reading the markets or how disciplined and logical you are in your daily life. You need to work on your psychological approach to trading if you want to build profits.
Thanks Maat,
Your correct I do have a lot of repressed anger inside. I guess since life stopped being easy, anger built up, the why me syndrome.
Your right if you can't handle the heat get out of the kitchen. I really do think of quitting just to ease the pain but I have come so far, I love the markets, I read them very well, and have nothing else I can do, seriously !!
You know every business has a team carrying out all the required duties to produce the end product. the CEO of a company doesn't drive a forklift around, but it is one of the tasks that need to be done so they hire an appropriate person for that task. He doesn't go selling the product either he hires sales people for that too.
I kind of think along those lines. It is what keeps me going knowing that I will find the right help along the way.
This week same shi#t, 3 trades. One stopped out by spread and hit target, unlucky (-13). swing trade hit target of 50 pips. I cut it at 31. Today 5 minute trade on AUS200 looking for 9 points, cut it at 3 and got to destination too.
It hasn't hurt me this week as in cut me up inside, that is a positive I guess. Thanks for your feedback, your thoughts and advice are very good.
Yes I hate losing is a problem. Regarding trades and stops well sometimes you can tell your wrong and your consequently stopped out, a lot of the times though you think it looks like it's going to stop you out but it doesn't. There lys that problem of interfering with a trade doing its thing. I use to try and cut early deliberately to take a small loss as you are trained to believe that, only to find they usually win if you just leave them alone.
To me Entry is a signal saying go, then the market dances around making you look like a fool for taking that entry before it gets to where you originally place the take profit. That for me is typically the previous, high or low of a swing which is easy to identify. If none are present go up a time frame.
I trade a small account ( $5K ) and risk is not much say up to about 3% per trade. But torching your winners just doesn't allow the profits to come in like they should.
I do exercise regularly have lost over 30lbs in past few months, hasn't translated to better trade habits though. Commit to taking 30 trades and monitor them, well unless you don't have a psych disorder, consisting of impulse and urge (not to mention too much screen time staring at charts in one sitting makes me feel sick), it is not so easy.
Thanks for your feedback and ideas. I do actually feel better getting all this crap off my chest so it's all helping.
Right, I think you might be experience a cognitive bias where two different aspects of your brain recognize conflicting information without the insight into how resolve the bias. In other words, some part of you must believe that you can change your orders to improve your results or you wouldn't continue to do it. Another part, after the fact, sees that it did "not work". You feel conflicted. Previously, I suggested the cognitive bias might arise from different optimal objectives regarding your risk/account size.
Very possibly here is what is happening to you: you have studied the market and watched it a lot over time. You see a movement. You are able to correctly infer that over a very short time scale that the market will move against you (in your favor of prediction) but you also know that for your strategy that those movements tend to mean revert in the direction of your eventual target. In fact, most market movements mean revert but some go on to move higher or lower. To be clear, it is very possibly the cognitive bias the result of a lack of conscious understanding that market movements in different time frames often have little to no bearing on the movements of higher or other time frames even if they are predictive within certain contexts.
A more fluid trader might take positions off and add them back on based on the real-time conditions. This requires a certain amount of aggressiveness. It also requires the ability to project in the costs of your orders in relation to the expected movement. If trading costs are low, the costs are low to trade but if costs are high then you will need to overcome the costs of taking off and placing back on the trade as the conditions change.
You do not need to necessarily become the fluid trader who manages risk actively. Although, I think it is worthwhile. However, you need to resolve the conflict rationally in your mind. You can do this by simply saying: I know most movements against my position mean revert. However, some will go on to run against me until they hit my stop loss. As such, I am making a conscious decision to maximize my profits at the expense of having potentially larger losses and/or having a winner go negative.
But, let me also mention, you would always anticipate for the resolution to be in your original favor. As such, it is not always going to be meaningful to compare your results to the "perfect". If you use a huge stop loss, that rarely gets hit, you will win most of your trades but you will also incur some small but not insignificant probability of losing your entire account. As such, it might be that it would help you to see your management as a form of risk management versus prediction per say. However, it is true that if you want to capture big wins then you can't get them unless you allow yourself to capture them. A compromise solution is often to reduce your risk or the lock in some profits. For example, if your win exceeds some reasonable percentage of your account, it can make sense to reduce your risk even if you anticipate for the move to resolve in your favor. This is another example of conflicting optimal objectives. From a risk perspective, you don't want to risk more then say X% of your account but if you have a big winner then you may exceed that amount. The point is that in uncertain environments: it is often prudent to manage risk for a range of possibilities then to take the perfectly rational/optimal choice.
I think you've worked me out tpredictor, I have always acknowledged that i'm at conflict with myself when I trade. It happens at a subconscious level, and even though I know I'm doing it and that I shouldn't be, it just becomes an automatic reflex that I justify within seconds of looking at the chart upon re opening my platform.
When I see the trade finally make its target I'm really, really remorseful and feel guilty for not letting the objective play out. I have written plans on what to do and just can't stop myself.
I read an article not long ago about will power and self control and it highlighted some facts that you wouldn't consider when thinking about the topic. Notably it mentioned that will power and self control are a resource that deplete with the more times you use them. Also the more decisions somebody has to make in a day the quicker that will power and self control deplete. As I was reading the article it tied in with trading a hell of a lot as all you are doing when trading is continuously looking for opportunities and making decisions.
I like your line below:
I know most movements against my position mean revert. However, some will go on to run against me until they hit my stop loss. As such, I am making a conscious decision to maximize my profits at the expense of having potentially larger losses and/or having a winner go negative.
I have attached a chart of my trade from yesterday and show what happened. I get in on signal, I set stop and target usually 1:1 or greater if it is there, in this trade the target was a resistance line on the M15 chart, so swing high is not visible but I have a good knack of knowing when I enter where it is heading in the short term as you mention.
I walk away come back in 75 minutes as i did a work out, see that price went up, came back down and was about to double top and I just close it down instinctively without even thinking about my objective or evaluating that price is still holding trend so to speak by the positioning of the moving averages. At that moment I say to myself you idiot !! Then you can see about 100 minutes later the objective is reached. Mind you that was the top of the day and a mass capitulation followed but my job was or should have been done by then.
I do this all the time on any time frame....
You speak of being fluid, the way I trade I didn't have another setup after entry in which I would have taken a new signal. Sure price broke back above the moving averages two more times but the risk reward was not good and I would not take a trade heading towards a double or triple top like that.
I guess as you can see this is why I can't ever watch my charts, I know they usually play out Like I want but the way they get there is never easy and takes an awful long time. On some of my M15 trades they take 6-10 hours for relatively small moves as volatility in Asia or early Europe has not been so great over last few months.
Thanks for your input tpredictor very concise also thanks Tradersync I'll have to check out the software you mention too. Double thanks for everybody's input...
I've am in a similar situation as yours, probably not as "extreme" but still I can relate to. I trade equities, but same principles apply here. I find myself usually closing trades way before targets are hit (aka getting scraps), and minutes or hours later regretting it. And just like yours, its been a cycle for months now.
In my opinion it all comes down to lack of discipline. I do keep a journal and have observed how targets are usually reached..without me of course lol.
All im trying to say is that you are not the only one here, and some of us are still struggling with our own demons. I did download that sheet ("self awareness program") from the jigsaw article linked by one of the members in this post.
I am not a psychologist or anything near, just a trader. But I have seen from myself and others that the two things that seem to create stress like that are either (1)trading too much money beyond your comfort level or (2) you subconsciously have your identity/self worth tied to your trades. These are two main reasons why people fear losing to such extremes.
If you use a stop loss and are trading within a comfort level then I would look to self worth area to work on.
Emotionally tying your trades to your self worth is a common error that a lot of traders make. You can not trade successfully if you mentally have these two things tied together in your head.
This works subconsciously in your mind as follows: If your trade succeeds you are a good person and successful, if your trade fails you are bad person and unsuccessful. Your brain truly believes this and can't deal with the fact that you might be bad and unsuccessful. The fear of the bad and unsuccessful makes you do things you shouldn't do when you trading, such as moving stops, and acting impulsively.
While this is what might be going on in your head it is actually not based in truth or reality at all. Realizing this is critical to your success. It is important to realize the markets are unpredictable and have nothing to do with you or your value as a person. Untangling your identity from your trading takes a little bit of work and practice but it can definitely be accomplished and will pay off tremendously in your trading.
The Disciplined Trader by Mark Douglas is one of the best books I have read on the topic.
While I have yet to read The Disciplined Trader I have always been a huge fan of Trading in the Zone which deals with trading psychology as well.
In my view, psychology is the last and, probably, toughest hurdle to overcome in the quest for consistency, although not everyone appreciates that. I see many on FIO who spend a considerable effort doing activities intended to aid their psychological make-up and yet they do not have an edge to begin with. Not too long ago I read on some thread that all the psychology in the world won't help if you don't have a positive expectancy. I second that.
Back to your quote, I just wanted to express how much I like it, as it can be true for quite a few people. "I must be a screw-up if today I lost money (or made a few mistakes)" is probably a feeling common to many. Even if, at a rational level, one knows that this is not the case at all, our subconscious feels the pain nevertheless.
I found the process of emotionally detaching myself from my trading results lengthy, but invaluable. You start feeling at peace with yourself, no matter the results, as you know that, in the long run, a few losing days won't matter, as long as you keep playing the probabilities game, as Mark Douglas points out.
One thing that came to me when I read the "I am not a psychologist" quote: we do not have to be psychologists, nor do we need to psychoanalyze ourselves (a good thing, since we can't ) -- we just have to do the right thing at the right time.
While I would love to get all my problems straightened out, and it might even make me a better trader, what I really need to do is just grasp myself firmly and click the mouse when it is time to do so -- and keep my hand away from the mouse when I should do that. In other words, action at the right time is what is important. It is both OK and inevitable that I will have thoughts, emotions, doubts, impulses, and whatever going through my head, but I just have to do the right thing at the right time, and let the mental circus play on.
This also quiets the circus down quite a bit.
Non-resistance to troubling feelings is one of the classic ways of dealing with them, and does not involve succumbing to them: just acceptance that they are there, and then the right action at the right time, no matter what you feel. It permits a degree of detachment from the feelings and from the outcome, and your fears about the outcome.
I am not writing this out of indifference to the issues that anyone feels, nor without plenty of experience with my own. But the focus on the right action, when it is time, can take a person away from the internal turmoil and lessen its grip on you.
I hope this is of some help to you. It has helped me a lot.
) -- we just have to do the right thing at the right time.