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You did a great job trading and building the account. I too have gotten complacent and will agree that its normal to blow up an account (and survive the aftermath). I believe it should hurt and cause a serious amount of introspection in order for you to learn from your mistakes. We all will have days that nothing seems to work- it takes a lot of character to not force the issue and chase profits/ try to force the market into submission.
Take a break, clear your head, learn what you did wrong and burn into your memory- much like A Clockwork Orange where the mere mention of crime triggers nausea and sickness- bad trading behavior will be ingrained into your awareness. Follow your instincts and regain your confidence gradually.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Quit your whining and get back on the horse. Nobody said it was going to be easy. The good thing is that while most people will blow $60k through an endless series of operator errors stretching over many months or years because of denial and an inability to learn and improve, you got it all over with in a few days. Think of all the time you have saved.
Going to spare you the sophistry because you know how you screwed up and you obviously have the skills to get back on track but I do have one suggestion.
If you pay your taxes quarterly, that is a good time to pull profits out of your account and do a reset of your trading account balance. You've just had a reset to $10K so when September rolls around, pay yourself for all your hard work and reset to $15k. Next quarter reset to $20K. This will allow you to increase size as you demonstrate competence and self-control while at the same time having a circuit breaker in place for the next time you lose your mind.
Without that withdrawal all profit is theoretical.
I used to trade the ES and NQ and had a similar experience, though I used various sim accounts like Topstep and Leeloo, so I was only out the monthly fee and a pile of resets.
I would initially do well and grow my account to a nice number and even got funded at one point. Then the trading environment would change and I would get on a losing run. Revenge trading kicks in and then before I know it I'm done.
After this happened a few times I had to ask myself the question - am I cut out for this? I knew I wanted to win, I read Al Brooks like it was holy scripture, watched YouTube videos until I went cross-eyed. But the sneaky old market would find a way to take it all back and humble me.
So, a few months ago I decided to give Bitcoin a chance and also researched various DeFi tokens. I quickly learned that the way to do it was to buy and Hodl (crypto slang for just Hold). Best investing move I've made so far. My recommendation is to stay away from leveraged trading as crypto can move erratically (thin order books) and people are always blowing themselves up. Also, stay away from the hype coins as many of them are total scams.
As you get deeper into crypto you can see that the world will inevitably go this way and people are already building out a new financial infrastructure that will replace the central banks and wall st banks for a lot of reasons that I won't go into here, though the Bitcoin Standard is the best book for a deep dive.
Most good traders have gone "through" the same or similar events before achieving the next level of trading. As Larry Williams calls it - Ku Chi. My humble old trader opinion is the same as Bob's with the addition of working on discipline. Discipline has never been a problem for me IRL but this was ultimately my core problem in the past and may be yours also. Just remember you are going "through" it and it is a long journey to becoming successful at trading.
No-one else's well meaning advice on this forum will help you to change your ways, whatever your actions were, that turned those profits into losses. Many of us have been there more than once. I found after doing it twice, was that I was basically wanting to be right, was being lazy about stops and didn't follow my rules.
After 22 years of trading and studying risk management and position sizing for days/weeks and longer, and approaching each trade with an R (risk) *number* in mind, instead of dollars, I just took this new approach on board and changed my ways. Van Tharp's work played a big part, although I didn't do any courses.
He also goes into some detail about the difference between a loss and a mistake. Vastly different, please take a little time to read up on that. Mistakes are really only made when you don't plan your trade. So mistakes are not acceptable, in his opinion, and if you keep making them, then you should stop trading and do something else less damaging in your life. Taking big losses is also very damaging to the psyche.
I do find that averaging down is a common theme among many traders ( the ones on a trading forum that I follow). When I make any comments about the level of risk averaging the indices, the guys are very gung ho, and really not interested in sensible 'words of advice, wisdom & pain'. So you may look to see what category you find yourself in.
Another observation is that you are giving yourself very negative self-talk & self coaching. You may want to do some reading of Brett Steinbarger for a more positive psychological approach on dealing with yourself and your losses. Constant criticism of yourself will never lead to any improvement. You will be lying in wait for yourself to make "the next stupid loss".
Regarding telling your wife, (yes, but not yet) ... well I would only do that when you have totally calmed yourself down and moved on from this experience. Reinforcing your beliefs of being a loser etc will not make her believe in you. She would want to know how you've taken on board some/all of the advice you've received from forum members, planned a course of action, had some success in your next (say) five to ten trades. Then you'll be able to celebrate your achievements, rather than confess all without a plan B. Don't wait too long.
Others have made some great comments. I think anyone who's "really going for it" and has been trading for a while can relate to your story. Using Rithmic feed with your broker you can set a fixed max daily loss so when you hit it your positions are closed automatically and you're locked out until the next day (and you have to email your broker to lift it). This is a smart long term strategy. The reality is that the emotional brain often does get the best of us in some moments. Personally, I use and need that forced daily loss safety net. I imagine lots of successful prop traders wouldn't still be trading if it wasn't for their risk managers. Find a way to efficiently process the trauma you've caused yourself so that it doesn't keep showing up and messing with your trading.
Thank you for sharing your experience. It takes courage!!! EVERYONE has blown it (at least once) and if they haven't or say they don't IMO they are lying.
Do tell your spouse.. being upfront with them will reinforce accountability. Not just to them but to you. You have to be accountable and ideally to someone else besides yourself. I have a trading partner but even that isn't 100% on the accountability scale, but it does help.
So first, great going on finding your niche and what works. As for the negative behavior.. well good news here to, you are human and not a machine. We are not wired for trading, the millions of years of hunting and self-preservation have hard wired certain behaviors. Search out the videos and books by Mark Douglas--spot on.
Some thoughts on how to regroup. Come up with a risk management calculation. Use it to determine your starting trading size and changes throughout the session (both scaling size up AND down). Find out your smallest size based on the risk calc and stick do it. And the hard part is to set the rule for NO revenge trading and just follow-it. No one will be able to do that but you. And you can do it.
Here is what I use for risk management and sizing.
Ok I do not know why I cannot edit the post from the 19th to add the post session analysis... Probably a PICNIC error (problem in chair not in computer).
Soooo. As you know from my initial post on the 19th. The vision and goal was:
"Make …
And to keep it "real" I am out of the game myself recently due to my blow up from the February journal challenge.
Hi Traders,
I will cut right to the chase with this trading journal. I will post updates to my journal and my retrospective of the day after the AM and PM sessions are over and I have completed my post day analysis. I will upload the updated trade log …
AND I have twice gone from small bank up to $48k and $38k and back down. So same challenge all of us human traders succumb to--- i.e. being human. I am a work in progress.
Good luck and protect protect protect to trade another day.
2019 I had a similar roller-coaster ride. 65k to 95k, back down to 35k.
Got this back to 65k last year, and now routinely wire out profits and keep the trading account about the same size.
What size account that is will vary on what you want to trade, comfortable loss size, etc.
I now do this daily or weekly. Helps keep it more real when have some gains, reward yourself, go out to dinner, etc.
Losses you want to work back to that level so you can get paid again.
Started doing this November 2020 and has been night and day. I don't want a huge trading account, want a huge bank account.
