The market cannot defeat you
- Thread starter Buy1Sell2
- Start date
This is how I win. I trade an account. Profitable strategy: lose no more than 50x per day. I can lose many days in a row. I am still winning. When I make money, it's 200x to 500x per day. The only way I ever have a losing month, is if i lose more than 50x on any given day. Plain and simple. The huge days come, and they seem to come more often and bigger the more strictly I stick to my downside limit.
If you have ever played tennis, at any winning level, you will find the same strategy too. Don't lose many points. Dont' hit the ball out wide. Keep the ball in, and the huge winning streaks come. Did the tennis thing at a high level, and now I am becoming a better trader than I ever thought really possible.
In trading, if you stick to a discipline, its funny how easy the good trades come. They are clear and you have the focus to stay with them. When you are beaten by the markets, it's hard to see opportunity at all.
The one thing that I am still mastering is sticking to that downside limit. It's getting better, becuase my winning days far outshadow the losing ones (i haven't had a losing day larger than my largest win) . However, I seek consistency in discipline. The graph of my equity is a positive slope.
How many of you graph your equity? For those of you that keep losing, what would that graph look like if you kept your losing days small? Maybe do the exercise, and if it turn from negative to positive, then you know you have some new habits to build.
If you have ever played tennis, at any winning level, you will find the same strategy too. Don't lose many points. Dont' hit the ball out wide. Keep the ball in, and the huge winning streaks come. Did the tennis thing at a high level, and now I am becoming a better trader than I ever thought really possible.
In trading, if you stick to a discipline, its funny how easy the good trades come. They are clear and you have the focus to stay with them. When you are beaten by the markets, it's hard to see opportunity at all.
The one thing that I am still mastering is sticking to that downside limit. It's getting better, becuase my winning days far outshadow the losing ones (i haven't had a losing day larger than my largest win) . However, I seek consistency in discipline. The graph of my equity is a positive slope.
How many of you graph your equity? For those of you that keep losing, what would that graph look like if you kept your losing days small? Maybe do the exercise, and if it turn from negative to positive, then you know you have some new habits to build.
Wise words.
Take bell curve of results. Cut off left side with sharp knife. Keep right side open. Do this ten thousand times.
Great post. This is also what has brought my trading around. Im not that good at making money...what I AM good at is not losing money. If you start to really focus on the losers, keeping them small, then you will really start to see some progress. My old roommate and myself both kept track of our p&L on a basic spreadsheet. After 6 months of trading its amazing to see that although we traded different markets with different techniques we both suffered from the same problems. We could make money fairly consistently for 10 days or a few weeks. Then like magic we would suffer from 1 or 2 large losing days that would wipe out all the past gains. It was an amazing thing to discover. Focus on NOT losing and not so much on making money and you will see a change. I guarantee it. good trading jim
