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Catching Big Waves - a trader's journal of surfing the the markets
Trading sim tonight. Just wishing there was something to do but not good at overnight. Short CL 92.30. Watch it be a 100 tick winner...
I am seeing that technical training is not my weakness. Feeling good about where I am in life is. I'm not sure how to combat that, I have tried so many things. So back tomy doctor I went, and he is determined to drug me into acceptance of my past losses.
I caled a long time friend today, a guy who lost 6x what I did, and is still being sued by banks. He seems to be coping better than I am. And that makes me feel like something is wrong with me.
Men are supposed to suck it up and move on. I have, to some degree, but there is not a day that goes by that I don't have some feeling of regret.
I had it all. Great life, perfect wife, good friends, dream house, legendary vacations, cash cow business. No requirement to work.
What I cherished, was freedom. I was free to be whatever I wanted to be, go where I wanted to go, work if I wanted to work. And when I did work, I could do incredible things. Creative things. Beautiful things.
The wife is what I kept. The rest, maybe some day again.
I am rebuilding, and compared to where I was a few years ago I am doing very well. But something inside me is still not right. I feel angry, cheated, having worked so hard for so long to start from nothing again. $100k a year feels like nothing. Shameful. It is sad to realize thta is the view I have of the world I live in now. I must seem arrogant, prideful, spoiled, no sense of being glad for what I have. And I know that and it only makes me feel worse about things. My past experiences and my comparison to them has made me something I cannot seem to fix.
I want to trade 20 contracts at a time, ride them for 500 ticks a trade, be king of the trading world. Not even for money, but to be back to something that feels like I never failed the first time around. That is sad, pathetic, not what I wish I was typing tonight. And yet by denying it I am lying to myself.
I went back on the medications becasue I took a hard hit a few weeks ago. After years of succesful trading and risk management, who knows why, I found myself in a trade that went against me, after I was up a few grand, and the next thing I knew I had averaged down way too heavy, and was losing. I wiped out all of my wins for the past year in about 5 minutes.
I still can't really say why. I know I was getting very frustrated with myself for being afraid to trade size, feeling bad about myself for other reasons, but where that moment came from I may never understand. I hate to post that here. I hate to admit that I made it years by following many rules and learned lessons, and out of nowhere, slipped into temporary insanity while in a trade. For a guy who is mostly thought of as a "good trader" on futures.io (formerly BMT), posting this here feels like public castration.
I am not wiped out or anything like that, did not lose money we need to live for several years, but how could i make it so long and then one day, not even a significant day that I can recall, whatever is deeo inside me got loose for a few minutes, and cost me. Financially and psychologicaly.
I am considering stopping posting. Spending some time to myself. It is not the rules of trading, or the chart analysis, the math of probabilities, or risk management, or position sizing, or method, or edges... It is me, feeling bad still, about how much my life has changed.
Whiner? yes. Better off than many? Obviously. My doctor said, "Gary, you are not the only one, I have patients who lost far more than you and have far less today". I said, "I know, but that does not make it better for me. I have to not feel better by comparison to them, I have to feel better by comparison to myself."
Trading did become my religion. A place to have faith and believe in better things to come. And I still hold that belief. I am not stopping trading, but I am taking a break.
I feel I have not only failed myself here, but many other who have read this thread and found some inspiration, some reason to believe.
But keep in mind what failed is not the system, nor the analysis, the rules... I have a bug in my inner system that is still angry, and caused my operating system to blue screen when I least expected it. A dreamer inside who longs for some magic bullet that will right all past wrongs. A child that is still somewhat immature about things.
I still can't believe what I did. To have traded so well for years, and slipped in five minutes, with no warning. It wasn't even a good trade. I had no reason. What makes it the worst, is I know how to trade correctly. Just one stupid moment and it all fell apart. Years of hard work and discipline...
I will learn from this, and I am sorry to have to admit it here. I felt so close, I was so close. Maybe the shock of this event will turn out to be something good. But today, it is humbling, embarrasing, deflating, depressing.
I'm sure I will lose some support by this post. But my promise was transparency, my goal to document an honest account of what happens.
I feel like I need to go to trader rehab.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
i've been glancing through your journal a lot...perhaps i am missing something but is there a way to semi-automate or fully automate your trading... a way to write down the structure you are looking at...then write out some rules to manage entries and/OR exits at least crudely enough to get a sense of edge...and then let the system take care of your psychology...
it may be easier to let system take of your psychology rather than having to personally address whatever issues and/or bahavior is impeding your progress...
i like the idea that you may try out topsteptrader...perhaps work your way up from small 30k account to 150k or more account...
Somehow, from your posts, I feel you are into healthy eating and lifestyle . Artificially balancing your brain chemicals , unless you are extremely despondent or psychotic..in my opinion..is not the answer. You are human...you blew a trade badly. We've all been there. Is that really a reason to go on meds?
Maybe you should be dosing natural neurotransmiter enhancing nutrients first..such as Acetyl-L- Carnitine, L-tyrosine and things of that nature. Have you tried taking GABA while trading. It has the unique ability to relax one and increase focus simultaneously.
I believe that the drugs are only a temporary fix.. If you really need them, ok. But if it was because of a bad trade, I'm not so sure.
I am into being healthy. Grew up in a naturalistic approach home, so feel like it is my job to cure myself without doctors as a typical approach. At least an initial approach. That said, I had my throat swell nearl shut in Houston once and went straight to the ER. So there is not a hard line for me, as long as I feel the benefit is better than the consequences.
I have been working out, staying hydrated, taking supplements, doing cleanses, natural relaxants, etc. But there is something still deeply rooted regarding some losses I experienced, and I have been working on that on my own for awhile and not knowing what else to do, so I asked for advice and took it.
I don't expect this is a lifetime remedy, but I am also stressed overall lately, and have been noting I am getting exhausted. And I am not someone who can relax well when there is something to do. What I am taking seems to calm me overall, and I finally decided that was what I need right now.
Sitting outside tonight with my laptop. My wife and I are having drinks, talking about the future. My heavy average into a losing trade recently really threw me off guard. I thought I was better than that, I thought that was something I was wise enough to never do again. And still, I cannot determine why I did it.
It seriously shook my confidence, not in trading in general, in in me as a trader. Are my reasons for trading so far out of alignment that I cannot posses the psychology required? My loss started as a simple drawdown of already being up on the day. Normal situation. No outside stress, no bad day, no arguments, just out of nowhere started adding into a position. Like I lost touch with myself for those few moments.
I traded normal again last week, mostly winning days, mostly winning trades. But something was definately gone from me. I felt completely emotionless about everything. Like in one day I went from feeling good to feeling like a complete loser. Why build an account for so long only to give it back in a day? Why spend so much focus on discipline and control and risk management, only to follow it 99% of the time. That 1% can be a deal killer.
Maybe my dream of what being a trader is, and the reality of it, are too far apart. Maybe my motivation is not corrrect.
I have always wished I had a live mentor, someone who actually traded for a living, to watch for awhile, see what it looked like, how they handled things when they were up or down. It is so strange being so alone at something like this.
I went back to some books over the past few days, searching for sections where traders made a bad move and how they felt, or how they recovered. And while I found plenty of examples, I could not stop thinking, why am I reading this again? After so long on the right course, what happened?
I'm not sure where this will lead, but I feel lost tonight. I put so much into everything, I learned so much, I was my own "best student" for so long... was it the house I live in? Does that really get to me so much to see a daily comparison of the man I was and the man I am today? Am I really that angry about it all? That is the best I can find, but typing it seems so childish.
Losing so much money from real estate has damaged me, that I am certain of. More so tonight than for a long time.
I am sorry for this post. Sorry for showing that I became so weak, if only for a day. It was enough to shake me at my core. Enough to cause me to question a lot of things.
"The path to the garden goes through fire of life. Of the few that have the courage (or the foolishnesses) to walk through it, still fewer make it. The spirit of man is made by such foolish people" - Unknown
Do you have a joyful hobby, a truly joyful one - like playing with kids, maybe something you loved as a kid - something unconditional. Do that - maybe all you need is a release. Maybe you just need a physical out - a game. Something simple.
I play squash, it takes me back to when I was a kid, with no care for time, or space, with no judgement or measurement, a true release, find your joy. it will renew your spirit - age, experience and endless battles make us all jaded and deflated. We all have it - some get lucky and find a way to cope with it. Others put themselves in a pressure cooker and beat themselves up.
Can you see yourself doing anything other than trading 1 year, 5 years, 10 years from now -- and being happy? What defines happiness for you? Is it trading?
I don't have an answer right now Mike. The fact that I was able to lose conrol of my own trading recently has caused a major disturbance in me. I thought I trusted myself. I thought I knew myself.
