I cant make trading work for me

I think one should learn the basic on how to invest first, then maybe, if succesfull, step into trading and its multidimensions.
I wouldn't advice any beginner to look at anything less than a daily chart, and start by working no more than 1hr, 2hr per day.
Most of the times newbies try to run and jump before they can even stand up, forget walking.
Exactly, one should have the sufficient knowledge of trading before investing their money. Beginners become impatient and in the end are left with loss. I usually prefer and advise everyone to practice on demo accounts first.
 
Every forex trader goes through this phase where he thinks that it’s enough for me as it’s not working. I think that’s the transition phase. You must understand that once you take a step back

and quit trading, you will lose the confidence to start trading again. I will suggest you give yourself time to work upon the things that brought your moral down.
 
So... I've been trading since September 2020 with an account in which I progressively deposited 24000 USD. In the first 2 months of trading I was doing relatively well, I managed to earn a total of 1600 dollars. Then, as I got more knowledge and got into a quantitative analysis called The Strat, I stopped making any profits, quite the contrary. There are numerous other people who are doing well, but I suck so hard at it. Now only that, but I am also very scared of entering swing positions, or holding over night. It has now been over a month that I haven't got a single winning day. And this is devastating.
It is not that I lose a ton of money, it is that I am really failing on a daily basis and my self confidence is currently at the worst level of my entire life.

Some insight/help ?
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Sounds like you have a good mind/not that you are God=big \big mistake.
It takes a good mind to be afraid of losing money when one doesnt know what he is doing.Its good not to have confidence/arrogance when you dont know what an uptrend is/or bear trend[20% move down\
Its called deception when you pretend you are God or pretend its all about your self confidence.

Dont know if you made the mistake of leveraging ignorance like i did, when we were starting;
but i did so terrible my first year /i proved 100% that markets are not random. I did far/far worse than random.................................................................................Average fund manager cant beat long term SPY average of 10% @ year.[Edit the reason i mentioned deception; its not helpful to pretend its about self confidence when starting in SEPT/good question]
 
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Good evening and thank you for all your replies. So an update.

It seems I am facing a reaaally huge mental discomfort when trading/swinging at the moment. The thought that I do not have any short of income from any source is what probably makes me feel so stressed. I tried to swing $RUN on Monday for the uptrend that followed, but I got totally depressed when the stock tanked $2 under my entry. As a result, with the first chance, I bailed out with a minor gain of 30 cents p/s, only to see my abandoned swing trade working its way up to $7 p/s, should I have kept my position...
Yesterday I tried one more time to swing a $1.10 (100 shares) penny stock and couldnt even hold it for 2 hours.
So I continued by paper trading only, and with my PTA I was at a 90%+ win rate from Tuesday through Friday, which is so weird and suspicious, because I do not know (and it might sound funny) if my trades, however small they might be, have a different impact on the market when performed live.
My plan is to continue papertrading, while at the same time improve my knowledge, try to find a job to at least have some sort of income which will potentially reduce the performance strain I put on myself...
 
My plan is to continue papertrading, while at the same time improve my knowledge, try to find a job to at least have some sort of income which will potentially reduce the performance strain I put on myself...
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
Sounds like a good plan.

Good luck.
 
“They say you never grow poor taking profits. No, you don’t. But neither do you grow rich taking a four-point profit in a bull market. Where I should have made twenty thousand dollars I made two thousand. That was what conservatism did for me.”
— Jesse Lauriston Livermore
Great quote. Also not appropo for day traders. And one reason day trading is extremely hard to scale. Livermore said this after realizing that day trading was small potatoes.
 
Great quote. Also not appropo for day traders. And one reason day trading is extremely hard to scale. Livermore said this after realizing that day trading was small potatoes.
Day trading sucks imo. Too taxing on the emotions. Too hard to make decent money. Basically what I am saying is...I suck at day trading lol.
 
I don’t really get the day trading grind. I can enumerate the reasons, and it’s long- but it starts and stops with- daily/weekly sticks are just so much easier. Way less noise. I know profitable breakout traders (I don’t love this type either, but I get it- upside is limiting, and too much work, imo) who have gotten there in weeks. Read a book. Or follow Scott Reddler on Twitter. He’s free and he works. Way too much trading for me, but his methods and trading are top notch. And live.

Longer term positions allow me to scale and just sit. Livermore actually wrote his own 7ish chapter book on how he traded and scaled positions. Much of it is still valid today- though I use different signals then he did. And margin worked differently back then. How he went 50x leverage on equities without going negative on a positional hold? margin calls had to have worked differently back then. Everyone is wrong by 2%, even if only once in a while. He laddered in (3 traunches) in a suboptimal way too.

he also got bored and would place trades around his positions. Nearest I could figure, it juiced his returns.
 
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Good evening and thank you for all your replies. So an update.
Yesterday I tried one more time to swing a $1.10 (100 shares) penny stock and couldnt even hold it for 2 hours.
So I continued by paper trading only, and with my PTA I was at a 90%+ win rate from Tuesday through Friday, which is so weird and suspicious, because I do not know (and it might sound funny) if my trades, however small they might be, have a different impact on the market when performed live.
My plan is to continue papertrading, while at the same time improve my knowledge, try to find a job to at least have some sort of income which will potentially reduce the performance strain I put on myself...
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You may not believe this;
but i + many profitable traders most likely could not/would not even hold a penny stock for59 minutes.
I dont even do ETFs under $5 very often/of course not many inverse ETFs for under $5.
ONE trader does not even do stocks under $10; too risky for her bear trends. ETFs differ............................................................................................
 
I don’t really get the day trading grind. I can enumerate the reasons, and it’s long- but it starts and stops with- daily/weekly sticks are just so much easier. Way less noise. I know profitable breakout traders (I don’t love this type either, but I get it- upside is limiting, and too much work, imo) who have gotten there in weeks. Read a book. Or follow Scott Reddler on Twitter. He’s free and he works. Way too much trading for me, but his methods and trading are top notch. And live.

Longer term positions allow me to scale and just sit. Livermore actually wrote his own 7ish chapter book on how he traded and scaled positions. Much of it is still valid today- though I use different signals then he did. And margin worked differently back then. How he went 50x leverage on equities without going negative on a positional hold? margin calls had to have worked differently back then. Everyone is wrong by 2%, even if only once in a while. He laddered in (3 traunches) in a suboptimal way too.

he also got bored and would place trades around his positions. Nearest I could figure, it juiced his returns.
I have read his book twice (how to trade in stocks) but prefer ROASO which I am currently on my 12th listen. I worship Livermore as one of the 3 deities of trading...followed by Soros and PTJ.
 
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