Quote from Big Money:
Pension Admin,
First I am going to tell it to you straight, as if I was talking to a friend in person in your position. Second, you probably wonât like it but I hope you at least consider this side of things. Many others have hinted at this, but I am going to come out and say it, as I would expect a friend of mine to do if I was in your position.
You arenât confident because you are just gambling. Period. You have no real plan and havenât learned much in 7 years of dabbling. Having random entries and no idea of your statistics reminds me of the saying, âthe definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.â Even if you stumbled upon a winning strategy, you wouldnât know it because you donât track your trades so you wouldnât even know you were on the right track. As Aegis says, you need to know your win and loss percentage, and just as importantly, you average win and average loss. Once you have a positive expectancy trade setup, your job is to let the math work for you and put it into action as many times as possible. The more trades you take or the larger your sample size, the closer to certainty your results become. Let the math side work for you and you will have the confidence to follow your system because you know it is plausible. Any one trade doesnât matter. What you care about is your positive expectancy tells you what will happen over the next 1000 trades or whatever, depending on you timeframe.
Pros know their setups backwards and forwards and will follow their trade setup rules, ALWAYS and with CONFIDENCE, because they know it is in their best interest to do so. As someone else says, good trading is boring because you have a contingency for just about every situation or event that could happen, and some that are improbable. Data feed, broker failure or internet failure occur? An inconvenience? Certainly. Not a big problem or time to panic because you already know what to do when those things happen, per your trading plan. Of course this assumes you actually have a detailed plan in the first place, which based on your posts you do not.
Face the facts. You donât have a system. You may think you do but you donât IMHO. If you continue to trade without a system and plan those who take this seriously will keep taking your money until you give up the ghost, which at this point is probably a good idea. Sorry.
Having said all that, you should be commended for at least trying to admit to yourself (which is why you posted in the first place probably) that you know you are just putting on a trade and hoping for the best, i.e. gambling. But if you are honest with yourself, you probably game to this conclusion a long time ago and are just now finally admitting it on some level to yourself. Most would continue to ignore the facts and go broke and then come to ET and say trading is impossible. There is no shame in moving on to other endeavors as trading is certainly not for everyone. It takes a truly confident person to say that however and just move on.
If you absolutely have to continue trading (not recommended), make sure you have a real method and plan in place that is thorough and complete before placing another live trade. That is were most get into trouble thinking they are not important. Trading is a lot of work and not as glamorous as it is portrayed. We sit in a semi-dark room with a bunch of screens changing colors and call it a career. Most canât handle it. But I wouldnât trade if for all the tea in China.
Someday I will learn to shorten my posts but there is a lot to say. No matter what you decide, best of luck in trading or whatever you decide to do. The truth, in my humble opinion, is rarely spoken these days. But it will set you free.
BM
