Mindset of a losing trader

wrbtrader said:
This is much more than the mindset of a losing trader...
  • This is a trader that should not be trading or should only be trading in person (none of that online crap) with someone that has a successful mindset.
Yet, there's still hope if the trade has hard statistics about their trade performance versus the hard statistics about the backtest results of their trade strategy especially involving situations as you've described.

Further, if this is a consistent problem with the trader, its a trader that should get professional help from a trader psychologist / psycho therapist prior to their next trade.

The starting point is your statistical analysis of your trade performance versus the statistical analysis of your backtest results. This will help you know your edge and understand it so that you can know where the problem areas are in your real money trading because you already know one thing...

The problem is you but you will not know how to attack that problem without your statistical analysis.

Stop trading until you do the above.

wrbtrader
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I don't know anyone in real life who daytrade for living who could guide me and monitor my action , therefore I am seeking for trading psychology material, I heard mark Douglas work had help some people. But I Should make my system mechanical first I guess. I am trading very discretionary for now.
 
deaddog said:
Do you have a written trading plan?
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do you mean the plan for the day? yes，I tend to make money and only make few trades a day when things line up , but when I had consecutive loser, I made 10x more trades. sometimes I grind my self back to green if not I am deep in the hold. I Really want to change that now.
 
You need quantitative statistical analysis of your real trade performance and you need quantitative statistical analysis of your backtest results...then you compare the numbers against each other.

Without that information, anything else you do will be like entering a street fight with your arms tied behind your back.

In fact, stay away from trading if you don't have any statistical analysis because usually people trading without any statistics...they're also trading without any objective trading plan.

Don't forget...learn about risk management and make sure you're properly capitalized.

wrbtrader
 
Ninja Mobile Trader VPS said:
A lot of good comments here in this thread. I'd like to add that having enough capital and trading small size relative to that bank roll is also very important.

@TripleJs in your original example, you should never have the possibility of blowing up an account from an intraday trade. If you do, that means your trade size is too large relative to your bank roll.

For example, Micro E-mini (MES) is $1.25 per tick. According to https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/ES*0/technical-analysis the average daily true range of ES is 50 points. Let's say you bought at the top, and sold at the bottom, your maximum loss is only $250 per day.

For bank roll management, let's say no more than 1% of total bank roll at risk per day.
$250 / .01 = $25,000

This means to trade 1 MES contract, you would need $25,000 in your trading account. Of course this is very conservative, and can probably do with less. But if you did have 25k and were only trading 1 MES contract, you wouldn't have many of the problems in your original post. Your stops could be much wider, and also larger profit targets. Your entire strategy could be changed.
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I think I focus too much on home run trade with small account so that I can build capital, when I looked back actually most of my trade had more than 3-4 points with es, and yesterday I Got a 15points unrealized profit and it turn into a 3 points loser, because I want to give it time for the trade to work and don't want to miss home run trade.
 
wrbtrader said:
You need quantitative statistical analysis of your real trade performance and you need quantitative statistical analysis of your backtest results...then you compare the numbers against each other.

Without that information, anything else you do will be like entering a street fight with your arms tied behind your back.

In fact, stay away from trading if you don't have any statistical analysis because usually people trading without any statistics...they're also trading without any objective trading plan.

Don't forget...learn about risk management and make sure you're properly capitalized.

wrbtrader
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At this moment I Think its very difficult for me to build price action multi timeframe model to backtest. I can maybe add indicator to help me subjectively look at the market maybe
 
smallfil said:
One other problem traders have is they want to squeeze every last dollar of profit. Have done that in the past too. Just a dumb move. Most times, the stock price reverses and you are looking at giving up more profit because you were too greedy to get out when the going was good. You are not going to get every dollar of profit so, why even try? Selling into strength is the better approach.
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I need to set realistic goal I guess. I think I am trying to hard to stay in a trade so I don't missed a home run trade to boost my account
 
TripleJs said:
I can't follow, that's a why I am so frustrated at myself, it's not something that I can talk myself out of it. Do you have any method to deal with that?
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Is this a top? Is this a bottom? Is this a H&S? But wait - there's an IHS below? What the hell do I do? :)

I think that to trade discretionary successfully, you simply need a LOT of experience. There's no other solution. Working out rules and filters to help you takes time, too. But if you don't do it yourself and figure it out yourself, I don't think it's gonna help, either.

Maybe people break rules because the rules ain't any good to begin with?

Give it some thought.
 
smallfil said:
One other problem traders have is they want to squeeze every last dollar of profit. Have done that in the past too. Just a dumb move. Most times, the stock price reverses and you are looking at giving up more profit because you were too greedy to get out when the going was good. You are not going to get every dollar of profit so, why even try? Selling into strength is the better approach.
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Look at AMC today. Smart traders bailed out earlier in the day. Did I leave profits at the table, sure. Who really cares, when I got 553% on my call options? That is plenty of profit there in just one trade and just 6 days holding. That is the kind of homerun trades a lot of traders dream of. I did not seek it and it just dropped in my lap.
 
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