Quote from dchang0:
Set the "not the right strategy" and "not enough experience/wisdom" stuff aside for a moment.
Instead, look at your underlying psychology. You may be dealing with self-worth issues (no joke, and no offense intended). There are plenty of ways that we self-sabotage, and these are usually tied to unconscious/subconscious beliefs that we have about ourselves and whether we truly deserve (or even want) success or not.
I suggest that you read Jake Bernstein's "The Investor's Quotient" to get started on understanding what drives you to trade and what drives you to give all your earnings back to the market. It's only a start, but a good one at that.
I am sure that while you were undoing your hard-earned fortune, some part of you was bewildered at how it seemed like you were on autopilot, flying to your destruction. It probably seemed like you were floating outside yourself, helplessly watching yourself smash your account to bits with trade after uncontrollable trade. "Why did I just do that?" you'd wonder--knowing full well all the while that what you were doing was a mistake, and yet you did it anyway.
I'd know, because it happened to me. I couldn't handle the elation of winning (discussed in the book) that many gamblers find themselves addicted to. In me, my adrenaline-fueled false sense of invincibility led me to self-sabotage as if to teach myself a lesson that no one is impervious to loss/defeat (old Greek tragedies would call this "hubris.")
To those of you who might brush this aside as nonsense, I'd say that you should reserve judgment and examine yourselves more closely. Those of you who are consistently successful in trading over the course of many years have either worked out most of your psychological issues (or may never have had any problems installed during your childhoods), so you may not be in a position to empathize.
And to those of you who are not consistently successful yet that may scoff at this, I'd say that you are either ignorant or in denial of your inner saboteurs. They are there, because if they weren't you'd already be as successful as you want to be. That's what's beautiful about free markets and free nations--you become whatever you want to be. The question is, what do you really want to be, including not only your conscious desires but your unconscious programming (defense mechanisms, etc.)
Good luck to all in your pursuit of the main two types of success: happiness (congruence between all of your desires and your realization of those desires) and wealth.
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