Quiting day trading means very little in the totality of your life.There was no guarantee that you would succeed in this business. The odds can be stacked in your favor, and just as in other businesses, stacking the odds in your favor in this business means finding your edge, and believing in it. But it was a venture capital activity, and you gave it your best shot.

Many traders come to the 4 or 5 year mark and realize that they are not as far along in their progress as they thought they would be. They face some hard facts about their performance to date, and all the money and time, not to mention efforts both emotionally and psychologically, that have been done in their desire to make their trading a viable source of sustainable income.

Many traders wanted to quit their day job, and trade for a living. In the beginning it started with the dream of big profits, and along the way changed to the struggle to just make few $100 a day, day after day.

When you quit you finally accept that you were never able to learn to trade like anyone else after all. You accept that you were never able to find a method or system that you believed in enough to trade consistently enough, let alone well. You accept that you left each method you learned when the draw down came, and most likely never returned to it. You considered it inferior because you had a month or two losses. You accept the fact that no mentor was able to help you fix your trading. You never discovered the magic indicator or system. All those secret methods you bought into were also sold to about 1000 other traders, and you spent the better part of a year fighting everyone trading that system for fills in the queue. You also accept that you are now unwilling to give it any more time or effort. You are now unwilling to spend another dime buying indicators, or trade room subscriptions, or other traders methods or systems. You also accept that the only way to proceed would be to strip down your charts, and start all over with the simplest most direct approach of trading price at location. It feels like you are still at the beginning or will have to return to the beginning again. If you are unwilling to accept these things, then you should quit. If you believe your inability to trade well was anyone else fault except your own, then you should definitely quit and try something else.

Well, I have some great news. You are right! You are right about everything. Quit, or don't quit does not matter. What does matter is taking all your experience - 5 years is a lot of experience - and just put the blinders on. Trade what you believe to be your understanding of all those things you now know to do. With this in mind, you may want to not do all those things you have already done. There will still be no guarantee of any future, and all the past is done with. This means your next step is probably going to seem very weird.

If there was one tool that would be the end all be all of all your efforts and the only helpful guide for you now, it would be the magic in your holy bible, often called your trading journal. If you have been keeping one, then all your answers are in there. If you have not been keeping one, then you have a very simple choice. Quit or start keeping one now if you intend to continue. It is kind of tough to repeat the same mistakes over again if you have been reading about them for the last 5 years. It is also tough to repeat great trading performance if you are unable to read about it over and over again.

Hi Jag,

The terms you use is a bit different so need some time to get used to.

I hope you expand on the abbreviation of terms.

Love to see more chart on different market condition such as trending, sideways, false breakout/breakout.

Thanks.