Profitable on paper, losing money live! Fear plays a big role.

F

ftrexx1

Hi,
I would like to share my frustration with my recent day trading experience.
I have been day trading the NQ for about six months and my account is definitely shrinking. Every time I go back to the paper account I make big profits. Nothing changes, same number of R/T between 50 and 100/day, same price actions rules but
when i go back to the paper account I average 2K every day consistently. With the live account it is a great day if I'm up $150. I was aware that the fear plays a big role but WTF!
Do you guys have some suggestions how to overcome the fear? Some tricks?
 

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Thanks for replay!
I usually trade 1 contract, sometime two with two profit targets. I have some price action rules that I have never been able to translate into a strategy to automate or back test. Mostly rules that come from many hours of chart observation.
 
I have never understood why the account size is important. Losing consistently $300/day is awful regardless you have a 5k or 500k account
 
ftrexx1 said:
I have never understood why the account size is important. Losing consistently $300/day is awful regardless you have a 5k or 500k account
More...

You clearly do not understand the psychology of fear yet then.

And then there is this problem...

...I usually trade 1 contract, sometime two with two profit targets. I have some price action rules that I have never been able to translate into a strategy to automate or back test. Mostly rules that come from many hours of chart observation. ..
More...

Hmm, looking at that screencap you provided, you seem to be doing more that one-lot trades?

P.S. That screencap you posted is a terrible display of what you have been doing. I could make neither heads nor tails of it, just a guess.
 
1 or 2. Maybe 3 a couple of times. In some trades when the price approach the stop loss, I double the contract in the attempt to close to breakeven, so sometimes I have 4 contract in play.
 
ftrexx1 said:
I have never understood why the account size is important. Losing consistently $300/day is awful regardless you have a 5k or 500k account
More...

Because if you're risk too much of your trading capital on each trade, you will set stops that are to short, trade out of good set ups too soon, and run out of funds faster.

Then you get issues with those that have too much money. They have no fear, never exit when they should and do not follow the rules they set for trading.

So, what are you doing differently. You must know.
 
That is so true! Do you think trading 200 shares of QQQ instead of 1 NQ and eventually scale up the size would help? Is QQQ price action comparable of the NQ?
 
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