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Be careful who you listen to and what you read about your trading.
All this advice you are getting is probably from non-profitable traders, so be carefully.
So what is the problem? You started with $7K and now account balance is $10K. Your return on the year is 42.8% which is greater than SP500 index returns to date. The people giving you advice probably never even beat the SP500 index before any year.
You have edge so far.
Also, you are a discretionary trader so just keep on trading what you see and what you think works. Yes that include revenge trading. Trade exactly the same way you did to get to $70K, even if it include revenge trading, emotional trading, mad trading, sleeping trading, over position sizing. Just trade and have fun.
You over position sizing and took on more risk because you want to make alot of damn money in trading in a fast amount of time. Nothing wrong with that at all. I would hire you in heart beat if I had a trading firm. You be the person I hire first.
I would not change a thing if I was you and damn sure would not listen to anyone who never even made $70K in 5 months.
P.S. I am non-profitable day trader and probably should not be giving trading advice. So take my advice as such.
Without any details of Blew's trading methodology, even if he follows the 6 pages of helpful, meaningful advice he is still likely to make the same trading mistakes. The result may be slower and smaller controlled losses, but the account would still erode away following the risk management and psychology. After a detailed analysis of his style and pinpointing possible strategy failings he might try using OPM(other people's money) from one of the numerous funding sources such as TopStepTrader, E2T, or LooLoo. Just taking a wild guess at his entries I am guessing his entries were such that he became a trapped trader and was stopped out....signs of a beginner trader. Or he was trading in noise with insufficient trend momentum to take him into profits. Thus, the suggestion is to do some study on order flow and rate of change momentum to pick smarter entries and exits. For starters, the March 2021 issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities has an article on Rate of Change with Bands for most trading platforms. Basically it uses a normalized ROC with some smoothing and some bands that show price exhaustion. Use of the bands and the zero line of the ROCWB is the trick. For the trapped trader study he would need to learn to read footprint patterns and exhaustion patterns if he wants to nail the entries with confidence.
I'm sorry to hear this. I know it is painful and could feel threatening if you have some important goals tied to trading success.
I have only one suggestion:
Having started with the 7k;
- what would the runup have been been if you always bet 1% of your capital, per trade?
- what would the current drawdown have been if you maintained a 1% bet size during the drawdown?
Once upon a time, I took driving personally rather than simply as a means to get from Point A to Point B. Whether it was a tailgater, someone trying to muscle in at a merge, getting cut off without warning (with the person signaling after initiating the lane change to add an extra bit of justification to my outrage), runners of stop signs, red lights, and yields, plus a dozen other idiocies, something back then in my psychology demanded that, at the very least, I give them whatfor (gesturing, yelling, whether they could still see/hear me or not) and, at the worst, reciprocating identical behavior ("Aha!! How do you like them apples?!").
Now it's been decades since I've done that. It doesn't even rise to the level of my attention anymore other than noting where the asshat is in relationship to my vehicle, much like I do with pedestrians, intersections, dogs, and everything else that we pay attention to while driving.
Why? I finally grokked several insights--i.e. not simply an intellectual understanding (as many of you will have while reading this, a necessary first step), but more in a George Costanza ("The Opposite") kind of way: "It's not the end of the world." (And you're even up $3K.)
Others have given you lots of advice and the requisite empathy (for me, it was nearly a quarter million, 20 years ago). I'm certain a lot more advice will be pouring in, too. So instead, I'll offer you an exercise which you should feel free to modify as it suits your particular psychological predilection.
Figure out what sets you off in a more benign situation and solve that. Really solve it in one area of your life, and BINGO! It won't be an issue elsewhere because you'll have figured out the underlying causes along the journey in doing this kind of introspective work. For me it was going on tilt while driving so I'll frame my "solution" in those terms. You can draw your own parallels to the market, which I believe you'll find are many.
1. It's not personal. An idiot driver doesn't know me, doesn't care about me, and is not even thinking about me other than as the most immediate obstacle in her path.
2. I'm driving for a specific purpose (and I'm not a police officer). Whether I stick to my plan or not is entirely up to me. I'm always at choice, even when my default choice is habit.
3. I got absolutely clear on my values hierarchy. Is it more important to "educate" someone who doesn't deserve the time of day from me? Or to hug my wife and children again?
4. Getting into a confrontation with an unknown quantity will eventually be detrimental to my health, my wallet, or both. There's always someone bigger, stronger, faster, armed, or who didn't slip on a street pebble after we both had decided unyieldingly, well, we simply must come to blows! Endless confrontation may work for a while, but not forever.
5. While we're talking Law of Averages, the fact is I don't have to do "a goddamn thing" (thank you, Samuel L. Jackson). The person who runs red lights and stop signs is likely doing it for an emergency only (and won't repeat it, so let's all move on because life happens); or, it's habitual and I'm merely the latest in a long string of encounters she's had. One of these days, out of the dozens of times she's been rewarded for being a dipshit, there will be a Mack truck converging on her and it will have the right of way. It's this one that brings a smile to my face, rather than provoking my rage; it's vital to ground the new behavior in its own emotional rewards (as perverse as that might sound in this instance). Hey, human here!
6. Finally, there will always be idiots on the road. That's human nature. But I don't have to be one, too, so I choose this, not that.
Particularly if you don't want to spend the money reading books or seeing a psychiatrist--and there are appropriate times for both--my advice is you identify similar behavior in your life that is habitual, more or less benign, yet which triggers the same sense of personal injustice you felt when the subsequent primary rage (at the injustice of your losses) was converted into a secondary emotional manifestation as a need for "revenge."
It's a simple task, but not necessarily easy. Really addressing the obstacles you find along the way--rather than just saying to yourself all the time, "Yeah, I get that," will have an incredibly positive life-changing benefit in everything you do including, of course, trading. Or, to quote the poet William Blake, "to see the world in a grain of sand." It's all there right in front of us and in everything we do.
I'd say, "Good luck!" but as successful traders we know luck works for us and against us, without knowing who we are, or caring, without any consideration of past events. But we're also human so, with a knowing wink and nod, I do indeed wish you good luck!
I have the same problem. Hate it. I did the same a week ago. Now I stopped trading and will stay away for another week or two until I solve the cause. I did read a considerable amount of trading books and psychology books, but by largest they cover only a few things, for some may be enough, for others isn’t. No strategy or course or classic support from anyone would solve that. You need to solve and eliminate the source. You can do that with a really good psychologist, but are few of those, or with a good hypnotherapist, and there are also a few more options, but I’m not sure I can mention them here. And you need to do it; otherwise, it will bite you not only in trading but also in your daily life. Trading is a bitch because it uncovers a lot of your issues that usually are hidden. A quick fix is to trade with someone else; there are statistics that show that there is significantly higher profitability of trading in groups. Don’t kill your strategy; kill your issues.
I know the feeling. I went from 25K to about 10K this year. I am super pissed at myself but I can kind of understand why it happened. I think I was mostly being lazy and just deferring my plans to automate things (I think PDT rules are a bit to blame as well). I am purely a discretionary trader at the moment and I think I could do all right that way, except I have realized I am just too impulsive. For example, I have a habit of opening a position and then getting nervous if it looks like it might move against me just a little bit, so I close it out for a very small loss, only to see it turn and surge in my previously forecasted direction. Then I get angry and think "ok, I make that back easy" and sometimes I do, but sometimes I make it much worse. I also close my winners out too early and don't capture nearly enough to make up for previous losses. Revenge trading is a real problem for me as well. I know when I am doing it, but it can be hard to resist sometimes.
I would say it is time to take a break and get your head right first. I am continuing my plan to automate my strategies and I think that will help remove some of the emotion. I am also going to be focusing on micro contracts for now until things improve. I used to love buying call options on Amazon, but now I can't afford to do it from a risk perspective. I envy you for being able to take 7K to 70K. That is phenomenal. I think if you can get risk management under control you will go far again.
Take this from someone who knows the game first hand.(trading for 20 years)
Position sizing is the key to success max size 1to 2% max on each trade I repeat max 1% risk, evaluate the P/L and repeat wining trades. If the market dont give you your trading signal then stay out.
I know first hand someone with $6,000,000 account and he will never I repeat never bet more, then 1% on each trade. I know he grows the account by making 2% every week which is his goal and by following this you will take your profits all the way to the bank......
Mike to your success....
Been there, a few times! Got all the badges and awards, but i'm better for it now. everybody is different, for me Sharkindicators works and fills the itch for that occasional "hey what about this!??"
find what works for you, this site is amazzzzzing!!!!!!!! and I have never ever found a better place.
keep trying and never give up, this is the best way to make money, longterm.......
You need to look at this more long term. You started the year with $7k and now four months later have $10k. That's a 42% gain and if you annualized that it's a huge annual profit rate. It's great that you were up from $7k to $70k in such a short time but I think that rate of gain is unsustainable by almost anyone's standards. I also think you need to study risk management. Are you setting stop loss points with each trade? Pro traders will determine a max percent of loss on a trade before they even enter the trade. They stick to these stops. It sounds like you are taking a pretty wild, shoot from the hip approach to trading. Pro traders have well thought out strategies in place and they stick to them.
