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I agree. In fact that exact scenario happened to me last Monday. I will be attempting to stick to a max loss rule of $300. Everything was stretched on Monday due to the extreme volatility. I was using bigger targets and bigger stops so it followed that I would have a bigger max loss limit. But my mistake was going from -$200 to -$1000 in one trade, essentially. Alas, my psychology continues to be my Achilles heel.
I'm working on trying to take all setups that meet my criteria. But if I make more than $100 early in the day, I prefer to switch to the simulator and practice with my demo account.
Thanks for your comments. I'm still very new to this so it helps to get some input from others.
I had two losses today. My first loss was due to a bad read of the PA coupled with poor execution. I saw a 2nd entry long setup but I was late to get my buy order in where it needed to be. I missed the entry, which would have been good for a 6-tick scalp (nothing more). After the little spike up I placed a limit buy order back where I wished I had gone long before. It was filled and prices dropped straight down.
I should have noticed that prices were trending down from the top of the range and that little pop up and back down had been the confirmation of the down trend line. The correct trade would have been a failed 2nd entry long, although this would have been a bit aggressive because there was some solid support about 5 or 6 ticks below.
I managed to make some winning trades after that 1st loss but they weren't all full-sized wins. I made one blind buy just below the previously mentioned support at 1969.50. It was not a smart trade at all but I managed to get out of it with 4 ticks of profit anyway. At that point I was up $41.38 on the day.
My 2nd loss of the day was a legit 2nd entry long but I didn't realize the up-channel I was trading was about to fail. I neglected to draw a line across the 3 recent highs and realize that prices were making lower highs. A new down-channel was setting up. I can tell that a lot of traders got trapped there just like I did because prices shot down very steeply.
That was a full 12-tick loss and I was back in the red to the tune of -$112.14. I was able to take two more trades after that and finish the day with a micro profit. I wanted to trade after 12:00 but I was busy with work (I work from home, starting at 12:00 now). I tried to take a couple longs but I just wasn't able to focus enough to put my orders in on time. Plus I was leery to trade that late in the day when I don't have enough time to make up for a mistake.
Looks like I am back to the simulator for a while. I'm going to try to do some psych work at the same time. Big down day today, comments in the charts.
9/1/2015 -$694.18, 4 wins, 5 losses
I still have a little more than $200 in my account but it's not enough to trade with. I'm going to see if my broker will allow me to put the account on hold so I don't have to pay the $15/mo fee.
The last time I blew out my account and went back to sim only, I had a goal of making $3000 trading only single contracts. This time my goal will be $50,000 trading 10 contracts. I want to get more experience with managing runners.
I managed to get several sim trades today after I was finished with the live trading.
I give you credit for posting all of your trades live and not sugar coating anything. It's easier said than done to focus on the psychology of things. You have MC it appears, not sure if it's .net or non-.net version. You should seriously consider automating your trading and taking time to focus on the underlying algorithm (the conditionals used to enter and exit trades). Automation will essentially eliminate the emotional aspect (to an extent) and bring discipline to your trading. Replay mode also I don't think is a true measure of performance. Because of (a) no real money on the line and (b) you don't know how you are filling in terms of the bid and ask, so you are likely not truly measuring your fills thus overstating performance.
I regret that I've been away from my journal for several days now. I have been trading my demo account last week and today. I've been over-trading and lost money every day with the exception of a small profit on Friday.
I don't like that I've been over-trading and doubling down, even tripling down with my sim trading. I did a lot of that earlier this morning and I was feeling really bad about my trading. I felt really hopeless.
I went on my morning run with my girlfriend and we talked about it. I explained that I've been trading much differently in my demo account than I would with a real account. I've been taking positions without a clear by-the-rules entry setup, doubling and tripling down, counter-trend trading, etc. I decided to reset my demo account and try to trade exactly as I would with a real account. I will only trade one contract at a time. And for the rest of this week I will only enter positions based on a valid 2nd entry with the current trend. No buying or selling blind, no measured moves, not even failed 2nd entries. All week long I will focus on that one rule - only enter after a two-legged pullback to the trend line and/or EMA.
My goal is to make $5000 in my demo account, trading only a single contract. Last time it was $3000. This time it's $5000. Once I reach that goal I will allow myself to deposit some more cash into my real account and try again.
I'm not sure if you have tried this but I may have a useful tip for you. You can implement this right away to keep you disciplined. If you are talking about your progress with your girlfriend, starting tomorrow or whenever you start trading after resetting your demo account, record your performance (P&L, # of trades, P&L per trade) and send it to your girlfriend. The more people you are willing to share your results with, the more effective this strategy will be. The people you share these results with must know you! It cannot be forums because forums allow you to hide under the veil of anonymity. This helped me stay disciplined and made it easier for me to accept the losers.
To take this one step further, you can assign a penalty fee ($50 or any amount that will make you cringe) every time you 'tilt' (if you are not aware of this term, I encourage you to look it up. This was the hardest obstacle I had to overcome), remove/widen your stop, etc.
Also, one more note of caution: if you start off with a good week in your demo account, be especially aware of your tendency to tilt. The more you personalize success, the higher the tendency to tilt. This is not a rule of thumb, it is simply my perspective and experience
I appreciate your suggestion and agree with the concept. Yes, I'm familiar with going on 'tilt' at the poker table, or the golf course
I'm thinking I can implement kind of a "swear jar", where every time I go on 'tilt' I put $50 in the jar. That will put a little sting on it whenever I break the rules, where normally there are no repercussions. So while I'm trading my demo account, I'll be getting valuable practice and also saving up some money for the next time I want to make a deposit.
Beginning tomorrow I will implement the $50 "swear jar" where I put $50 in the jar if I break the rules.
You can see in my 3rd trade today that the 2nd entry short turned into a failed 2nd entry short. Yet since I told myself I would not take any trades other than 2nd entries, I could not go long there even though I wanted to.
What I'm going to do from here is trade to the best of my ability, taking legitimate entry setups including failed 2nd entries, breakout-pullbacks, etc. At the same time I am going to focus on strictly obeying 3 rules:
One positive thing I can say about my trading today is that I followed my rules. I didn't trade more than 1 contract at a time. I didn't buy or sell blindly. And I never moved my stop further from my entry point. I was using a 5-tick target and 10-tick stop.
On the other hand I spent almost the entire day in bottom picking mode. I bought nearly every up-tick from the most recent low bar and got burned so many times it was ridiculous. The handful of short positions I took were when the market was correcting back up, so I lost most of those too.
Today was incredibly ugly and my $5000 sim trading goal is a very long ways off now.
9/9/2015 -$1623.20, 15 wins, 20 losses
Instead of showing my actual trades, I went through the chart and marked all of the correct entries, which should hopefully match up with Mack's chart tonight.
