It's been quite a journey. For over 5 years I have been waking up at 7:30am trading equity, index, and commodity markets. Generated thousands of round trips every month, and wrote myself consistent pay checks month after month. But last week; ending September 11th 2005, I have finally reached the beginning of the end of my trading career. I have told myself that no matter what, once my account reaches to a level breaking under $10000, I would have to step aside and re-evaluate. Unfortunately, it happened a lot faster than I have expected coming from a $300000+ account in July.
I lived thru the days of nasdaq lvl2 day trading, the tech boom, the bust, the dull time, and then the war. I took pride of my ability to buy into fear and sell into greed. It has been very rewarding, but all this "knowledge and wisdom" were out the window when I was faced with the ultimate test in trading; Discipline.
The hurricane volatility wiped me out within matter of 6 trading days.
Dear fellow traders, if you have once experienced the feeling of great lost from bad entries or bad exits, I can guarantee you that the feeling of despair cannot be compare with trading lost due to the lack of discipline. It hurts a little bit to have sold that GOOG a little too early, It hurts a little more to have not held on to that QCOM short back from 2001, and it definitely hurts selling all that 50 QM crude Sep contract below $60 a month too early. Those are small cuts on your skin when you look back. A deep slash is when you churn longs and shorts of the QM crude 30 times around the $70 level. $4500 at a time, your account just evaporates into those wild whips. The next thing you know, you are down over $150000 within a week. The worst is when I was asked how I lost it, where exactly did I get cleaned up. I couldn't find an answer. That's when I realized that I was the sucker between those bids and offers all along. I had no plan, no levels in mind, but only a naive anticipation of a direction.
Frankly I don't really know why I am sharing this tragedy with you all. I don't have any complicated trading systems to share, nor do I have wise words to make your trading life easier. But before I take a break from trading, I thought I would maybe share my failure as a way of contributing back to the great ET community. Take care fellas.
I lived thru the days of nasdaq lvl2 day trading, the tech boom, the bust, the dull time, and then the war. I took pride of my ability to buy into fear and sell into greed. It has been very rewarding, but all this "knowledge and wisdom" were out the window when I was faced with the ultimate test in trading; Discipline.
The hurricane volatility wiped me out within matter of 6 trading days.
Dear fellow traders, if you have once experienced the feeling of great lost from bad entries or bad exits, I can guarantee you that the feeling of despair cannot be compare with trading lost due to the lack of discipline. It hurts a little bit to have sold that GOOG a little too early, It hurts a little more to have not held on to that QCOM short back from 2001, and it definitely hurts selling all that 50 QM crude Sep contract below $60 a month too early. Those are small cuts on your skin when you look back. A deep slash is when you churn longs and shorts of the QM crude 30 times around the $70 level. $4500 at a time, your account just evaporates into those wild whips. The next thing you know, you are down over $150000 within a week. The worst is when I was asked how I lost it, where exactly did I get cleaned up. I couldn't find an answer. That's when I realized that I was the sucker between those bids and offers all along. I had no plan, no levels in mind, but only a naive anticipation of a direction.
Frankly I don't really know why I am sharing this tragedy with you all. I don't have any complicated trading systems to share, nor do I have wise words to make your trading life easier. But before I take a break from trading, I thought I would maybe share my failure as a way of contributing back to the great ET community. Take care fellas.
