How do you get over massive losses?

Pretend for fun that the mrkt hit resistance on fri at 1396 and after 5 up days the logical thing would be to pull back to 1363,the big houses can move that up and down between those numbers to make that 33 point move into 133,if you could,wouldn't you? So the trick is to figure out which dance step they are using today, or figure out a few of their tricks,well that is day trading and very few people are good at that.
You might give up day trading til you have a better handle on it and short the 1396 area on fri ,put in a stop above and a bid around 1370, in the meantime you would be making money while studying or at worst taking small losses, you would also learn patience,look up technical analysis and market profile . Try doing market profile by hand on graph paper using half point squares and you will see how the market moves, you will actually be a part of it manually charting, you will learn quicker by osmossis than u think is possible.
 
Before I started making money I had burned through my entire 401k!!! I was wasting a horrendous amount of energy in the wrong things, autotrading mainly, then I just started trading for real like going to a job and redefining the trading plan every single day until it worked well for me...

Most trader psychology problems come from not getting a plan that gets them this side of random. Few of the gurus with "rooms" are this side of random. If you are feeling bad about trading it's not about you, it's about your technical ability to trade, I will guarantee that. If it takes you decades to work out a plan that is far this side of random then it takes that long...
 
Agree with traderNik. 100 lot swing trades of a few carefully selected markets of stocks around 30 bucks. Your exposure will never be too great and you can build your confidence back slowly. Many businessmen lose money and go on to the next opportunity and most gamblers lose everything. Money is not everything. If you approach the job as a business you'll win in the end. Good luck.
 
focus on one setup in several markets. master every element of the setup. study your past 20 trades of this setup. keep detailed stats of every parameter and keep a running graph of statistical measures of the setup. know the exact entry and exit signals which maximize your profit for this setup. disregard everything else and just become one with the setup.

do it religiously.
 
Quote from interdigital:

I have lost half of my life savings thru day trading. Now that I've realized it isn't coming back, it stings so bad, and probably will for a very long time.

How do people like me deal with the pain?

And what should I do with my remaining money? With a money market, it might take the rest of my life to get back what I lost. Mutual funds? Buy and hold solid individual stocks like GOOG (should have done that a couple days ago) or AAPL? I don't know what to do.
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It must hurt a lot to lose Half of what you saved your entire life. especially becuz you have a family and people dependant on you. How would you feel if you lost the other half of the money. If you already lost half there is a great possibility you could lose the other half. ONly about 5%of people in trading are sucessful. What makes you think you will be that 5%. Do you have a plan that is better than 95% of the people trading. If not you will lose rest of the money you have. I suggest you look for a job becuz what you have saved up is not much. If it was easy and everyone could make money in the market there would be no one working. everyone would be trading
 
Quote from Fractal:

This is not an insult in any way.

I can tell by the self-berating tone of your comments that you subconsciously wanted to lose that money.

It seems to me that it's not your trading that's the problem, but something in your life has led you to this place.
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It has been said that "trading" exposes all the lesser desirable traits that we deny exist in ourselves. This comment is an excellent psycho-analysis statement.

A few other excellent statements were to ignore ET and get on with your life. Those two steps might save you, but just about guarantee that you end up repeating this experience again in the future, should most or all things remain constant.

Asking for advise is hard to get without some contractural relationship between you and the provider, teacher, authority or otherwise. Take a scan of the various sub-forums and scan through some of the reviews on teaching classes and see what some of those students had to say. Should something seem new and in the direction you were going in, such as equity trading or option trading, then look into the cost of attending and see the program course outline and whether it will answer more questions than you have presently.

If blew out on non-equity trading vehicles (understand that phrase?, no insult intended) then perhaps you were not suitable for those vehicles (such as forex trading, commodity trading, commodity option trading, inclusive of Emini futures trading or some other derivative securities where you do not get to own the underlying asset) and should consider a managed trading account through a traditional brokerage firm. It requires self honesty.

One thing is certain is to document the most painful parts of your experience and limit that to less than four, six or eight points and avoid those areas. If you're honest, when you interview a futures managed account brokerage, then those talking points will have to be addressed.

Hope you can get it together.....
 
Quote from amanda33:

Another useful tip could be to find a blog where a good trader is posting their trades and do what they do. Copy them without fail and share their profits/losses.
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Remember the u tube video of the guy who blew up his account
few months back while we watched? Not always a good idea.
 
short aapl here, it's going to 148,ibm 123down to 117,xle 83 down to 78, vix usually starts to rise in late apr, early may so look for shorts, if you can't sell stock buy puts
 
let your money rest a while.

watch one market, just one market at least three months and do not touch it. try to gain sense about the market you selected, until you feel you are in sysc with it, then start to trade it with your sense.

I normally just focus on those panic sell and hype rally market, i.e., day's top losers and top gainers, like today I shorted VMW in the pre-market, bought ABK around 3:30PM, bought JRJC in the opening, just lucky enough to make a couple of thousands. those markets are very hot, always produce great profit but also great risks.
 
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