Time to talk about a trading lesson that many will never be around to fully comprehend because they try to hard.
How many new traders come into the game with visions of grandeur? I know i did. Like walking by a one-armed bandit for the first time in Las Vegas with all the coins clinking, bells and whistles, little old ladies with buckets of coins, etc, etc, sooner or later you drop a few coins in the slots and win a few bucks...........you become a believer until you lose the last coin.
Same thing in trading (but trading is winnable, unlike gambling in a casino in the long haul). New traders come into the game with no fear, they come in believing this is gonna be easy because a glance of any chart makes it look easy. They trade large in the beginning and get some outsized gains............they can do no wrong.......they are hooked. They mortgage the house, the wife/husband, the kids.....the whole ball of wax. Easy street is but a couple more trades away.
Then as they say........the rest is history!!!! A couple hard and fast losses are a wake-up call and a dose of reality sets in.
Not to worry.........more time honing a few skills and all will be back on track. Sound familiar? I bet many traders went that route and are still struggling. Wanna know why?
Because unlike the casinos which always keep the percentage of losers to winners in the casinos advantage, the traders insist on keeping the number of winners to losers in their favor and come hell or high water they fight like the devil to accomplish that losing battle.
Trading is a game of chance.......... so is playing the lottery or betting on the ponies at the poor mans Wall-Street, the local horse track. I do not play the ponies but will drop a dollar quite regular on a dollar lotto ticket. Fat chance i will ever win. But.....I KNOW THAT, so no harm done. A dollar will not buy a cup of coffee so whats the loss of taking a unbelievable shot at a couple hundred million.

Someone is gonna win.
Ok, back to why the trader is still losing EVEN AFTER developing a decent trading strategy with some very good tactics.
Because of the NUMBERS. Remember the trader is looking for much bigger amount of winners to losers so the trader trades smaller thinking the skills will improve before they blow out. That is the wrong strategy. The right strategy is to develope a decent battle plan with LESS trades but with BIGGER amounts of skin in the game per trade.
Lets use the ES as example: lets say you developed a good battle plan and unlike before when you developed the skills to procede in the game you really did not make hardly any money but did not get knocked out either. The reason is because you traded tiny numbers and wanted more and more wins with ever larger ticks pertrade to get over the hump.
A casino considers all losers as winners. A trader considers all losers as losers. How can a trader reverse that? Well, the trader must develope a decent game plan and MAX that battle plan to his/her advantage by trading LARGE and going for LESS losers.
Lets say the trader was doing ES and trading 2 cars per trade and looking come hell or high water to get most of the days range. He/she traded lots of trades trying to make a few hundred dollars a day. Here is a better proven way: Trade a minimum of 20 cars per trade (to start) and go for far LESS handles per winning trade each day. Start going for a minimum of 2 handles + a couple ticks to pay for commissions per day. Do the numbers. Double the number of cars a couple, few times and assume you still do 2 cars + a day.
You do not need to master this trading game............but you must understand how the numbers work to be a BIG winner.
PS: When trading LARGE there is no such thing as .........."leaving cash on the table" or "I got out to early" because you battle plan is NOT to get most of the move...........your trading LARGE does the magic for you by allowing fewer winners in a losers game for you to be a winner.
It is not easy to get the LARGE numbers in your head... Do not fear commissions, they are simple the cost of doing business.