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Catching Big Waves - a trader's journal of surfing the the markets
For me, it was that I renovated the home and had the ceilings out. Running in the ceiling allows you to hide the wires, and yet run them as far as I want. Mine all come back to a single place in the Family Room, but I can use a speaker selector switch to select the Kitchen, Dining, BR, Outside, etc., or all at once. Imagine that with floor speakers, and wires 100' across the floors.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
This is great. I need speakers installed somewhere in my bathroom. Hate when I have to step away during a webinar, and wife is not crazy about my cranking the computer speakers to boom through the whole place and/or leaving the bathroom door open, LOL.
It is 6:16pm Sunday, the market is open, and I have no desire to open my charts and develop support and resistance areas. The loss I experienced from overleverage was different that a normal loss. Losing trades are expected, and there is nothing to blame. Losing control is self-inflicted, and I have only myself to blame for it. And that I have found myself doing at least once per day, sometimes more, ever since.
It would be different maybe, if I did not know better, or claim to, or believe I did, or should. Many times losses have been inspirational, caused me to seek a solution. But this time I seem to question everything.
I sense in myself the dream of finding a "perfect" setup, and going in with enough leverage to have a big win, quickly offset the damage I feel. And I KNOW, absolutely, that doing that is the worst thing I could ever come up with. And meanwhile, it is practically agonizing to envision building back a small win at a time.
So, I spend my time doing as much as I can to not focus on trading right now. I do look forward to the market being open and in full swing, that experience calms me as weird as that sounds. of course, I remain flat throughout most of it.
Besides the self-work I have been throwing myself into, I have also been seeking the thoughts of others who experienced significant losses.
I found the following experience described by Brett Steenbarger;
"A while back I wrote about the worst loss that I ever suffered in financial markets and how I handled that very difficult setback. Recently I've heard from several traders who have experienced something similar: having built up their accounts over time, they lost much of their profits in a short period of time.
In the wake of my large loss, there were three steps I took that were very helpful:
1) I stopped trading. I took the time to process what had happened, figure out what I had done wrong, and make radical changes in my approach to markets. When I returned to the markets, it was as a very different trader;
2) I refocused. I used the time away from trading to work on other aspects of my life and career. In doing that, I remained opportunity-focused and not regret-focused. I also stayed focused on what I could control, not on what I couldn't;
3) I used the incident as motivation. The loss was so painful that I made sure that I would never go through such an episode again. I created a new balance between trading and the rest of my life so that I would never be dependent upon trading results for my happiness and fulfillment.
All three of these steps would not have been effective if I had not first taken a different step: I took ownership for the loss. I realized that I was wrong, that I had taken too much risk, and that I was employing trading methods that did not work. I didn't blame outside "manipulators" of markets or bad luck; I accepted that I had completely and utterly made a hash of things.
Initially that was depressing, and initially I did not handle my depressed feelings well. But that was better than brushing the episode aside and continuing to lose money in a state of denial. Depressed feelings are a normal response to loss: the loss of money, the loss of dreams. Sometimes you have to go through that loss before you can come out the other side as a different person, one who has learned from the experience."
Another I found from Paul Tudor Jones, in the book Market Wizards;
"First of all, never play macho man with the market. Second, never overtrade. My major problem was not the number of points I lost on the trade, but that I was trading far too many contracts relative to the equity in the accounts that I handled. My accounts lost something like 60 to 70 percent of their equity on that single trade...
...I was totally demoralized. I said, "I am not cut out for this business; I don't think I can hack it much longer" I was so depressed I nearly quit...
...It was at that point I said, "Mr. Stupid, why risk everything on one trade? Why not make your life a pursuit of happiness rather than pain?"...
...It was a cathartic experience for me, in the sense that I went to the edge, questioned my very ability as a trader, and decided that I was not going to quit. I was determined to come back and fight. I decided I was going to become very disciplined and businesslike about my trading."
I see the two as very different responses. While Steenbarger took the path of redirecting his energies in other directions, Jones made the decision to come back and fight, albeit with a new respect. I find myself somewhere between those two, I believe still in enough of a state of shock that there is no decision to be made right now.
On one side, I made several moves in my business to position myself for some potential growth, where I was previously looking at winding down. Just today, I had a 2-hour lunch meeting where we discussed taking on a whole new direction of work. On the other side, after that meeting I came back home and listened to the entire webinar with Ray Burchett, that I just heard in it's entirety yesterday. And may listen to again sometime this week.
Ego, it can have the feeling of such a negative word, analagous to so many terms that are decidedly more derogatory... but really, ego is something that is nearly always present in some shape or form. It is an image we have of ourselves.
I found myself playing guitar a lot this week, trying to recall classical pieces from 20 years ago and struggling to put together enough content to just sound like I know what I am doing. After a few days, I got to where I could close my eyes and continue to play, just listening to the clarity, or lack of, in the precision of my timing, hand placement, inflection. At one point lying my head back all the way on the couch, eyes closed, face pointed towards the ceiling. And played some classical piece over and over, until I was no longer trying, just listening. And in that moment, the precision came, no wrong notes, no missed positions, just pure sound with emotion. For those few moments, several minutes even, the ego had been left out. I did not do it intentionally, but because of the topics of my week I was definitely aware of it after the fact.
How that can be brought into a trade, I am not sure. There is no melody to provide the emotional inflection to. Closing my eyes does not seem like a good approach. But somehow allowing the instinctual side to take over, and focus on nothing but the music itself...
Mine is not either. I have to love her for sitting on the couch in the middle of that webinar, knowing how much it meant to me while I know it is the absolute last thing on earth she would want to listen to.
I had a friend trade in simulation at my desk on Friday, and in sim he broke a sweat. I was done for the day, passed on two "great" setups, but there was no way I was giving back what I had that late on a Friday.
And as I sat there watching, I narrated to my friend what was most likely to happen. Completely detached, I could not seem to make a wrong call. Of course, I do make them, but it seems my understanding is so much more clear when I am not involved. As soon as I am in, the clarity often is reduced to uncertainty.
The perception of risk must trigger the release of some chemical(s) in the brain/body.
And, I just put this thing down... these posts describing what I feel to be an incredible failure, a complete lack of control, a near denial of my trading experience... they hurt after I submit them. It is not something I want other people to know really. It is not something I am comfortable talking about, or reliving even.
And yet I almost know, I have to do it. Whatever direction I take from here, accepting responsibility, admitting my weakness, forcing myself to take a step back, not allowing myself to pretend last week makes up for anything, at least I am confronting it as reality. Painful, sad, depressing.
Do I feel better that Paul Tudor Jones and Brett Steenbarger were also in pain, depressed? Do I somehow feel that puts us in a club? lol!! I laugh, and glad that I can. But not a club I wanted to join.
While I question my discipline at this point, I do not question my chart reading anywhere near as much. In fact, I have such experience in seeing the charts play out that I have more confidence it chart patterns than I do in myself. Strange place to be, but then I have always complained about my ability to follow my own advice for longer moves. If my recent loss could trigger anything, it would be to rely more on higher timeframes.
The LSP showed strength on Friday, and the prior double bottom is a significant place on many timeframes. A break below, or a proven hold, would both be potential signals.
