If I had to give advice to my own son (without handing him my methodology in detail)...don't come back to this or any other trading site (sorry BARON) until your confidence and PnL have improved! There's a lot of value in the trading journey that you've accrued to this point...you need to dig deep into all that experience. Think deeply (intuit) about all the losses you've endured over time and what seems to have persisted the most! Try and put any common denominators together that expose the mindset...market condition recognition...method selection..etc...that has influenced your trading negatively. If it's only a question of method (not likely), value can be found where losses have persisted and a unique angle of inversion may be applied! You can combine this unique method perspective with better overall market condition analyses to improve performance. Where do you get better market condition analyses? It's already in you! You must dig deeply within your memory and hit replay over and over until you have some conviction or epiphany that explains why the past happened the way it did. Fluctuations of emotions and PnL never helped me either...I like to be calm and in control, where self restraint is easier to master. I know I'm in trouble if trading feels like I'm on cocaine! Maybe your personality is more at home with data and numbers and less with introspection (reflection)...if this is the case then I'm probably not helping, but I believe the experience of trading is so intense that most traders eventually look inside for answers, especially if all the advice from websites and trading friends fails to help. I believe something very powerful is contained within the human element...each of us that have persisted with passion and single-mindedness have learned much more than we realize! I believe the "ANSWERS" are already within you...now you must put a puzzle together...there's more than one to find. GOOD LUCK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Over the past five years as an active day trader I have seen things you people wouldn't believe: awesome daily P&L fluctuations leading to elation and subsequent despair, the painful respect developed for the dominance of randomness, the misranthropic and self-disgust derived from those who profit off of trader's naivete and longing for father figures in this predatory field.
I have longingly stared into the absent reflection from the void, the same void that awaits 99.99x percent of my discretionary day-trading peers, even more if my message is ignored.
I have seen childish dreams quickly swallowed whole by the markets. I have seen the futility of human effort to improve their condition without first removing the veil of ignorance, the source of despair. Once ignorance is replaced with understanding there is a small chance that your dreams are not dead. After five years of struggling as a trader all I can do is cling to the diminishing hope that my dreams are not dead.