You did well my friend for building up such an account,
sorry to hear that, what you have encountered on the turn.

yes telling the wife what you went through would help you lessen the load you are carrying, they will understand.

Seen written, you went through tilt, realizing it is already half the battle won and you did wrote a whole lot of emotion in it in explaining, i would suggest a process circuit breaker, my mentor did one for me in some of my journeys,
ie if in a 3 loss row, or if in a loss wait 30 mins rebalance.

Would suggest there is a thread from george about how he worked on himself within. I know the part george mentioned emotion code helped to tame the inner demons in me and help me be a better trader everyday on the way.

Hope this helps and never give up.

Not to be the Debbie Downer, BUT how are you sure that you have skills as a trader?
Because if you were majority long in this run up, well that doesn't take much skill as luck..But when the volatility came in that seems to have blown you up..So for me it would be to see if I can identify that I do have an age and if so right the rules out and follow them religiously and conservatively.

blew 

I knew what I was doing at the time was wrong. I need to just smash my monitor and computer next time I try revenge trading, it'd be much cheaper in the end.

I have struggled a lot with blowing up accounts in the past.

I have no confidence in my ability to stop revenge trading. So, I currently set these safeguards in place:


1. Work at building good trading habits on a daily basis. The more structure and rules I have for trading the less likely I am to veer off and try something risky.
2. Use a platform (or broker) that will shut down after losing a pre-set loss amount.
3. Withdraw profits systematically so that should I disable my platform from shutting down so that I continue to revenge trade and do blow the account, I will have kept some profits.

I'm considering taking your advice and adding a 4th safeguard: 4. Smash my monitor and computer next time I try revenge trading.
(But only when I'm trading large enough amounts that it will be cheaper in the end. That's not the case right now.)


Thank you for being transparent enough to share your story with us. I hope you'll update us someday and share with us how you succeeded in overcoming revenge trading and made back all your losses and much, much more!

Two "suggestions":

1. Back to sim for a while
2. Back to "don't care" position size for a while

Good luck!

@blew I'm sorry to hear.

Start small, increase size when your profits allow it. Decrease size when your balance gets below a predetermined level.

More important, be honest and tell your spouse. Make her aware of your 'mistake', so going forward you don't have to misinform her, and can share the truth, about how your day is going.

You'll be ok.
Good luck

Sent using the NexusFi mobile app

blew 

So I just need to get this off my chest. I just gave away all my gains on the year. I went from 7k -> 70k -> 10k. I blew most of it revenge trading and taking too big of position sizes. I got so comfortable scaling up as I was profiting consistently, and I threw it all away in like 10-15 trades. All the work I put in.. day and night studying all the styles of trading, figuring out what worked for me and what didn’t, and I blew it all within a few days by emotionally revenge trading and scaling up higher as the losses got deeper. How could I be so stupid?! I’m still in disbelief I blew an account. I was happy to be one of the ones who didn’t blow up an account because I remained disciplined enough to run up basically 1000% in 5 months. I can’t bring myself to tell my spouse. She would be really supportive I know it, but I can’t even face myself at the moment, let alone have to explain what happened. Disgusted with myself. Utterly disgusted. I can’t believe I let myself get so emotional and out of control. What in the fuck was going through this dense skull of mine?! My confidence is shaken but it’s not at the same time. I’m confident that I just made 1000% in 5 months, and I’m also confident I just blew that 1000% in 3 days. So what does that really say about me as a trader... that I’m probably not too good I’m thinking. The problem is trading is now apart of my identity it feels like. I love it but right now I hate it. Before a 4K swing up or down was no big deal, cause I’m some big shot or some shit I guess. But now 4K would axe me for good damn near. I want to give up but I don’t cause I love trading. What can I learn from this? Don’t revenge trade. But I knew that. I knew it while I was doing it and I know it now. So why didn’t I fucking stop?? I don’t know what to do from here.

I'm so sorry to hear that happened. I ran my IRA from $140K to $300K and then lost it all. I ran my wife's IRA from $25K to $100K and lost it all. Then to top it off, I borrowed $50K from our home equity line and lost that all too. Fortunately, we made really good money and it's not affecting us but I know I'd have an extra million or so bucks in my IRA but for that S Show.

That was over 25 years ago but a lesson I constantly remember to try and keep myself in check. Over the years, trading turned into an addiction for me that caused loss of sleep and an obsession with checking trades at all hours of the day and night. I HATED it and decided something had to change.

Over the last few years, I've evolved to risk-defined options trading and selling premium. Low stress, lower risk, the market is NOT open 24 hours a day and I'm not staring at screens all day and all night. Futures trading just didn't fit with what I wanted my life to be. I have no advice other than futures and high-risk trading does not fit everyone's personality. Lots of smarter folks than me will chime in here to help you. Best wishes!

Firstly look at the whole journey as a process they’ll be plenty of up and downs along the way.

Assuming your strategy is profitable and that’s backed up with stats over 100+ trades that shows your strategy has an edge then you already know the issue is fundamentally risk management & discipline.

It’s easy to have a risk management process in place and say oh I’ll only risk x amount per trade or this is my daily loss limit etc the hardest part in trading IMO is the discipline to stick to it.

That side of the game is pure in your own head, it’s you vs the guy in the mirror. You already know and said you shouldn’t have revenge traded but you did anyway. Why?? Again you know why lol … after the fact.

In trading everyone says trade without emotion but that’s impossible!! You went from 10k to 70k no doubt it was overconfidence, sizing up etc etc all that has an effect on how you perceive risk, a trade that seems so risky to you now at 10k balance and after the blow up, I bet you wouldn’t have hesitated to take before.

The skill is in learning to recognize your own mind, where you’ll fight against yourself and where you are on the scale of scared to trade vs overconfidence before you enter each trade.

Id highly recommend as the poster above said Van Tharpe and definitely have a read of Market Mind games by Denise Shull.

As for getting back the temptation will be to size up. Maybe the opposite is better, take a little break to get a clearer perspective, size down get a few winning trades under your belt to get your confidence back up then trade as you were before. This time being more mindful of the risk and discipline.

"The Mental Game of Trading" by Jared Tendler is a practical guide to improve your mental game.

Becoming a professional trader will require a lot of work on yourself. Smaller size or setting limits at your brokers, things like that, will not make you a better trader. These are just crutches.

You need to correct the deep-seated, fundamental flaws in your mental game.

Sent using the NexusFi mobile app

I am also sorry for your loss , most of us have had those losses to some degree or another . I blew 2 accounts years ago mostly because I had no idea what I was doing and up against . My wife and I both had good jobs so I never traded with money I couldn't afford to lose . I went back to sim trading to figure things out and did just that . I can't tell you how many times I wanted to quit but like you I loved trading . My biggest improvement came when I decided never to risk more than 1 per cent of my account on any one trade and (ALWAYS) using stop losses . My wife has always been supportive through the ups and downs so that helped me to keep going . You will keep going over what and how it happened and figure how to proceed onward . It was a tough lesson but you will learn from it and come out better on the other side . Thanks for sharing this as it helps all of us to keep things in perspective .

Every system that relies on the mental capacity of a single human being will fail at some point. You must accept this as a truth.

So yes you can work on your discipline to improve it but still, eventually, the system will fail. Improving your discipline can decrease the failure rate from once per month, to once every 6 months, to once every year, to once every 2 years and so on. But eventually, there will be a failure. So you need to accept it and also prepare for it happening and thus minimize the effect.

The way to minimize the effect of the inevitable failure of the system is to withdraw money from the account. Thus, when the system fails, you have already taken out a lot of the profit and don't end up giving it all back.

For example, I take out 50% of my profit every month and move it to another investing account that normal investors use, i.e., etfs mutual funds etc. Even if i have a losing month, I don't try to make that money back before I start withdrawing again. If I lose the money it's gone. If I have a winning month, I take out 50%. By doing something like this, you can still scale up but when you have your mental failure (if it doesn't happen to often), you will not only minimize your loss but you will see that you have a substantial amount of your profits socked away.