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Hello all. Just wanted to pop in and say hi and offer a little advice regarding taking breaks from trading.
I've been gone from the forum and trading since the Japan earthquake. Had some family affected and just couldn't get my mind around trading. I lost a good portion of my account after only a week (the same account that I had been maintaining quite well, even profiting for 6+ months prior) so, I stopped until my mind was back in it.
Well, I'm finally back, going to top up my account on Monday and try and get going again. I've been siming for a couple weeks and I can't believe what has happened - I feel like I'm completely starting from scratch again. I put in about 6-8 months of studying, simming , etc before I started live and I really feel like I'm starting all over.
So, my advice is this: If anyone feels like they need a break from trading, for whatever reason, make sure you keep active in your sim account. I really feel like if I had done that, I would have been way ahead of the game. I really regret not doing this.
Hope everyone is having a good summer so far, wish me luck next week
Thanks for this post Tammy - can you elaborate a little bit on why you feel like you're starting all over? I'm not familiar with your prior trading but did you have a documented trading plan and you are now unable to recognize the setups in that plan as you had been able to prior to the break? Or are you trading primarily based on "feel" and so the break has caused you to lose your "feel" for the markets you trade? Or perhaps something else? I'm genuinely curious - feel free to share as much as you can as I'm considering a break myself to pursue some other, short term opportunities and so am interested to hear of your experience.
surly
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert
I feel like I'm just out of the loop, hard to describe. At one point I had been watching the markets almost everyday for over a year and to go 3-4 months without watching it, I just feel like I've lost the "feel" for trading and feel like I'm not up to date on what the market has been doing. That being said, I do my very very best to trade according to a strict set of rules and these rules do not allow trading based on feel. So, perhaps it would seem that you don't need a "feel" for the market if you are trading a certain set of rules but for me, the routine of practicing my rules everyday is what helps me stick to them. After not even looking at my trading rules for so long, I can honestly say I forgot what they were. That's not a good thing because in order to trade, I believe your rules need to be completely ingrained into your brain
I also should mention that it took me a couple days to get back into the swing of NT. I think if I had been simming for the past months, I would be much more proficient with NT7, as I still consider myself a beginner.
Somewhere it is written that to become a successful trader you need to put in 10,000 hrs (or something like that) which I would equate to a 4 year university degree, in terms of time. So, I think that when I stopped trading for those 3-4 months, I feel I have basically pushed back my "graduation" by that amount of time.
Like anything, practice makes perfect and I should have kept practicing.
I think it depends on what you need to learn. A lot of trading skills is best learned outside the market.
For example:
Learn Dicipline. - Make yourself go up at 0700 and run for 30 minutes 4 days a week.
Learn Patience. - Grow tomatoes.
Learn Mindfulness - Meditate.
Sure, a warmup day in sim after the break to get you going is good, but when you are out of the market, you can still work on your trading... as if your psychology doesn't work it doesn't matter if you have the best system on the planet.
