Feeling a Little Down

[Gotcha]

This is really frustrating. Just got out of a painful trade. I thought I was starting to make sense of this and then, bam, there goes $15,000 right before Christmas. I haven't made a penny this year and I've been much more disciplined. Really wish I didn't have to keep paying market tuition. How does one handle this kind of disappointment?

I call bullshit on you and on this entire thread.

Your explanation above of what you can't remember is no different than a politician or banker being put on the witness stand with the "I can't remember" line as their only defense. Nobody goes through trading like you do without saving any charts over the years to refer back to. Its interesting how you remember some things so clearly, and yet don't remember what lines you drew on your chart.

The reason why you say none of the above makes sense is because its all one big made up lie. So go get a life troll.

 

[oopsies]

I call bullshit on you and on this entire thread.

Your explanation above of what you can't remember is no different than a politician or banker being put on the witness stand with the "I can't remember" line as their only defense. Nobody goes through trading like you do without saving any charts over the years to refer back to. Its interesting how you remember some things so clearly, and yet don't remember what lines you drew on your chart.

The reason why you say none of the above makes sense is because its all one big made up lie. So go get a life troll.

Wow... I did not expect this response. No wonder most people lurk and don't participate.

 

[Gotcha]

Wow... I did not expect this response. No wonder most people lurk and don't participate.

Yup.. its obvious, you know your way around here already from lurking and your multiple aliases I'm sure.

 

[oopsies]

Yup.. its obvious, you know your way around here already from lurking and your multiple aliases I'm sure.

No, there are no other aliases. But you do remind me of the folks from places like StackOverflow. If you don't want to help, you can stay away. Don't have to put down everyone you meet like this.

 

[Sprout]

I thought I did have a method that made money. It worked last year... then I started reading. I can't even figure out if I should regret reading. Somewhere along the way, my trading changed. And I can't figure out where, when, and how. I can't figure out what I was doing differently last year even with all my notes.

It's a natural thing to go through in-coherence on your way to greater coherence as your unconscious processes new material. You did, after all made the attempt to get to another level in your trading. That's a lot of new information to process, even harder when you attempt to trade and add a whole other layer of emotional stress atop of it.

If you consider how programmers work, they rarely make more than one change at a time before verifying and looking for unintended consequences.

Taking time away from the markets to engage in de-patterning will support you more than you think.

There's one sign that is pretty consistent when learning and building new inference. When you wake in the morning, new questions would be served up by your unconscious. If that's not happening then your prolly just reading to get through the material as opposed to 'working' with the material and connecting it to what you already know and testing that which you do not know.

 

[murray t turtle]

This is really frustrating. Just got out of a painful trade. I thought I was starting to make sense of this and then, bam, there goes $15,000 right before Christmas. I haven't made a penny this year and I've been much more disciplined. Really wish I didn't have to keep paying market tuition. How does one handle this kind of disappointment?

%%
I hate losses also, but something that helped me-no such thing as a business that has no expenses. I tend to go smaller after a loss Hope this helps; it helped me

 

[speedo]

It sounds like you lack a tested and definitive trade plan. To trade for a living, you need to know that you have a methodology which produces a profit and that methodology has to have defined signals and trade management rules. You can't improvise as you are going along. You say you blew up equity be averaging down on NIKE. That has nothing do do with methodology, that's behavior and you will do that until you don't. And you won't be successful until you don't. As far as methodologies not working anymore, markets can only go up down or range sideways during which they are going up or down on some other time frames.

I've been doing pretty much the same thing for 15 years with occasional adjustments as to time frame or exit strategy. If you understand the nature of price discovery and behavior, you can develop a strategy that works...IF you do.

 

[oopsies]

If you consider how programmers work, they rarely make more than one change at a time before verifying and looking for unintended consequences.

I had not thought of it like this before. It makes perfect sense though I don't know why it never occurred to me. I made tons of changes to everything this year but never spent any solid amount of time to let it "run" or "test out". I guess that is what happened from last year to this year. I changed so many parts of it too fast, too often that I couldn't even keep track of what I changed and what worked or didn't work.

Taking time away from the markets to engage in de-patterning will support you more than you think.

This scares me, actually. But being in it hasn't been helping either. Maybe a short break since it is end of the year and holiday season.

There's one sign that is pretty consistent when learning and building new inference. When you wake in the morning, new questions would be served up by your unconscious. If that's not happening then your prolly just reading to get through the material as opposed to 'working' with the material and connecting it to what you already know and testing that which you do not know.

Yes, this is definitely what I've experienced. I read something then I have new questions or I question what I read and needed to verify something else. Every day was a new learning opportunity! But at the same time, it is what brought me to this point.

Ok, I am thinking to stick with the current way (not described in previous posts), reduce my position size, reduce the "diversity", and just focus on testing it for a few more months. Based on the results, I will slowly change one thing at a time, test the changes first before adding another change. Maybe that will work...

 

[oopsies]

%%
I hate losses also, but something that helped me-no such thing as a business that has no expenses. I tend to go smaller after a loss Hope this helps; it helped me

Thanks, I am going to do that tomorrow. Just make everything smaller. I don't want to take big hits like this... way too painful.

It sounds like you lack a tested and definitive trade plan. To trade for a living, you need to know that you have a methodology which produces a profit and that methodology has to have defined signals and trade management rules. You can't improvise as you are going along. You say you blew up equity be averaging down on NIKE. That has nothing do do with methodology, that's behavior and you will do that until you don't. And you won't be successful until you don't. As far as methodologies not working anymore, markets can only go up down or range sideways during which they are going up or down on some other time frames.

I've been doing pretty much the same thing for 15 years with occasional adjustments as to time frame or exit strategy. If you understand the nature of price discovery and behavior, you can develop a strategy that works...IF you do.

Yes, I was definitely doing a more "improvising" way - changing as I read. Lesson learned - don't change that much and have a better plan.

 

[tommcginnis]

Paper trade.
Write down your trading protocol as if you were going to program it.
Program it.