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i would like to start this thread for several reasons:
1) I want to improve in trading, becoming a trading for a living. When reading through bloomberg, from time to time they report about CIS a japanese trader. Every time i read about him i think "he is living my live".
2) I have a huge amount of experience in trading i would like to share and get things right on my side because atm i still work in a nine to five in a trading related environment though. i like the job very much, but trading for a living does have this glory, shiny and unbreakable image.
3) As i improved my trading in the past 12 months, i would like to share what i do, and maybe get some help on improving. I noticed that my mind is the key hurdle for me to improve.
Notice/disclaimer: When i write about pip or tick i mean the same, a standard fraction of an underlying or small point value. i trade FX, FDAX, bunds, China50, WTI. So its futures and FX-spot mainly, sometimes CFD´s and others. I do have an extensive excel sheet to monitor and analyse my trades. Also please go easy on me in terms of language, i am not native english, thank you. My postings will not necessariely have questions, some times a do have to stop wirting and go on later. I will do my best to avoid fracmentation.
So to start, i want to share, what i have done in the past aprox. 500 trades. I managed to four-fold my account within 2 months (thanks to high leverage). Parallel to my account, my confidence in my trading grows. Having said that, i found it a good idea to scale into a losing position, which i rearly do. Result was broken account, losing all profits plus 50% on account.
After 2 weeks of trading break. i restarted and brought the account up and made a new high, 10% higher then before, again in 2-3 months. Seen from the account low, that was nearly a nine fold performance. Having done that again, i did exactly the same fault: adding to a losing position with beeing so confident on my position, that it again ripped my profits+ part of the account.
Now i am again gorwing my account.....
A side from those few devastating positions, i manage to gain/lose 0-3% on account per trade with good streaks of 20-30 wins.
Beeing back on track, did you expirience something like a lack of confidence or mistrust in your confidence? I hope the wording is clear. Since i use to run into shuch devastating single losing trades or some losing streaks, i figured out, that prior to the trade i am as confident as "usual" in a trade or 110% confident in a setup, so that i put some more eggs into the fight (more then usual starting volume). if i then get cought on the losing side, i doubt my confidence, either i do close, taking a chunk of loss or adding in the hopes of a reversal.
Suprisingly its always the wrong action. when i take the loss, it would have become a reversal. If i keep adding its crunching my account.
Hi MathiFX, thanks for sharing your experience. I have certainly experienced - and to a lesser extent I still do - what you have gone through, i.e. the ability of gradually building an account only to see a bad execution or lapse of judgement in one or two trades which then wipe days or weeks of careful accumulation.
I think it's part of the nature of trading unfortunately and one aspect that improves with experience.
One thing I found is that sometimes it is difficult to translate into words the experience gained over a number of trades. There's plenty of books that say 'always do this' or 'never do that' and, at face value, they make sense. But implementing consistently most of the advice from other people has not been practical for me.
That's why I believe in having the experience first hand, going with what resonates with me, drawing my own conclusions and doing more of what works and less of what doesn't work.
In other words what works during my trading journey may not necessarily work for another person. Does that make sense?
following/adopting strategies from books, or professional traders never worked for me at all and believe me, i tried a hell of a lot of strategies.
I took a biger break from trading (2 months) because i could manage to keep my balance only, but not gaining anything.
Last week i restarted and so far i am doing well, i am building up my balance a bit, but when looking at the current swings, my relative profits are quite small. However, i am happy wit hit, because i only seek to grow my balance.
Also i added options to my trading portfolio.
From what i have learned (again) back in november when i just managed to maintain my balance, was to cut losses and re-analyse my trades.
P.s. Sorry for beening so rare in this valuable forum, but my time is so limited atm....
