Half way through life and not close to being consistent

Mo06 said:
No, I will often carry positions for several days, weeks even.

I attribute my high win rate to a couple of factors:

1 I trade a very small list of shares (about 6 regular tickers actually). Most of these I have traded hundreds of times. So I sort of get to know them, how they move.

2 I use very wide stops, but I will close a trade if the picture changes, rather than wait until I get stopped out. I can always have another go later in the move. I have in the past tried trading index futures with tight stops, but IMO that is a mug's game, just get chopped to bits over the long run.

3 I have a rule - no trade entries for the first 30 min after the market opens. I think this saves me from poor/hasty entries. Instead I watch and plan my entries based on what I am seeing.

On the last one, I really think every trader can benefit from analysing what works and what does not. It will be different for every trader, but for me, those early entries led to some terrible days. So I binned 'em. Sometimes I see a really nice trade before the 30 mins, and I'm really tempted, but for well over a year now, I have resisted the urge. Which I think is the right thing to do.
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I am with you on the wide stops ;). As far as the first 30 mins go, with options the first and last 30 mins are very liquid, so it's hard not to trade those. During the day right now a lot of markets are almost dead.
 
gamblingman said:
Trust me the last 18 month I'm asking myself the same question. Didn't cross my mind the years before though.
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With all due respect, it does not seem like you know what you're doing at all. If you continue like this, you will end up broke, depressed and burned out from all the emotional and physical stress you're enduring.

How big is your trading account? Why not at least take a break and work out a new plan?

You're 40 years old and things didn't work out as you planned. Guess what. You're not the first one who's experienced that and certainly not in the world of trading.

I quit my pursuit to become a full-time day trader and it was one of the hardest things I ever did. All those hours and money spent on NOTHING?

I'm pretty sure I did the right thing though. It does not mean I'm a quitter or that I won't return to trading (I will), it just means I did what was smart to do at that point.

At 40, you're still relatively young, but be careful to not waste away what's left of your life on pursuing a dead end.

Think it over...
 
Laissez Faire said:
With all due respect, it does not seem like you know what you're doing at all. If you continue like this, you will end up broke, depressed and burned out from all the emotional and physical stress you're enduring.

How big is your trading account? Why not at least take a break and work out a new plan?

You're 40 years old and things didn't work out as you planned. Guess what. You're not the first one who's experienced that and certainly not in the world of trading.

I quit my pursuit to become a full-time day trader and it was one of the hardest things I ever did. All those hours and money spent on NOTHING?

I'm pretty sure I did the right thing though. It does not mean I'm a quitter or that I won't return to trading (I will), it just means I did what was smart to do at that point.

At 40, you're still relatively young, but be careful to not waste away what's left of your life on pursuing a dead end.

Think it over...
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Definitely appreciate your input.
I usually trade around 500k, right now since I don't have a lot of size on (since things are not working) there's about 450k in the accounts. As far as the break goes, I think it's always hard to go through serious draw downs, however if you quit at a serious draw down level and switch to another plan (like go long right now since that's working great), you'll never be able to have decent results. Unless you were talking about working out a new plan for life in general ;).
 
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gamblingman said:
Definitely appreciate your input.
I usually trade around 500k, right now since I don't have a lot of size on (since things are not working) there's about 450k in the accounts. As far as the break goes, I think it's always hard to go through serious draw downs, however if you quit at a serious draw down level and switch to another plan (like go long right now since that's working great), you'll never be able to have decent results. Unless you were talking about working out a new plan for life in general ;).
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Oh, that's not bad at all. You can do a lot with 450-500K. Just make sure you don't waste it.

Did you earn that from trading? If so, maybe I should STFU and get the f**k out of this thread. :)

I was thinking about both trading and life in general.
 
Laissez Faire said:
Oh, that's not bad at all. You can do a lot with 450-500K. Just make sure you don't waste it.

Did you earn that from trading? If so, maybe I should STFU and get the f**k out of this thread. :)

I was thinking about both trading and life in general.
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Don't shut up, I appreciate everyone's point of view. It's good to see many perspectives, it helps avoiding tunnel vision ;) Yes this is all from trading, however it used to be significantly higher 18 month ago, so I'm definitely in a slump.
 
gamblingman said:
Don't shut up, I appreciate everyone's point of view. It's good to see many perspectives, it helps avoiding tunnel vision ;) Yes this is all from trading, however it used to be significantly higher 18 month ago, so I'm definitely in a slump.
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Well, in my experience, the only way to end a losing streak is to quit completely for a while. It may not be a long while, but at least enough to re-set the system and get the losing streak out of the system so that you can start trading a 'new account', not the 'old one' with all it's history. Also reduce size substantially and earn the right to start taking more risk again.

It's not always easy to do since your focus is no longer on trading, but on making back what you lost. And on reduced size, that's going to take 'forever'. Then the trader continues trading a lot of size and losing even more.

At least that's what happened to me more than once. :)
 
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