Time to profitability

Quote from xtrhvydty:

It was well said earlier that is not important when you are profitable, but when you are NOT profitable. It's a crazy oxymoron but until you lose really bad you really can't be any good. If you keep winning you will keep thinking you can keep winning. So finally one day you lose bad. So you learn your lesson and win big for a long time again but get careless and then lose really bad. Then it takes you a month to regain what you lost in one week. During this time you go around saying "I have worked a whole freakin month to make nothing. This sissy money management crap sucks." You look at your waitress girlfriend and say "she makes more than me". You look at your dog and can hear him say "what's next, dumpster diving?." You tell yourself you can shake it off. Just hang on.

But shit floats, and every character flaw you have comes to the surface. Soon your life becomes about treating your own inadequacies while waiting for the damn market to bring some damn relief already. This is not why you got into trading. You soon find it difficult to study the markets. When it's time, you're nervous to trade. If only you would make a few bucks then you could concentrate again. You follow your systems but they are not making money quickly enough. You become frustrated and agitated. You yell at your girlfriend. Then your dog. Then yourself. You see your whole life sink like a bad stock as you watch your own relative strength hit rock bottom.

And you know that with only one trade you can redeem yourself from all of this madness. Your mouse is the giant broom that can sweep all of this misery away, if you would just man-up and place that one big trade.

So you do.

:eek:
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Yep - thats about it. Good post. I had the same thing careerwise until I learnt to be myself - ego is a hard thing to not be attached to.
 
i dont know if this thread is dead - cant be bothered to read through all the pages. but here is my experience.

began studying elliot wave in may 04 *after* taking an overnight loss of 25k. at that time i was full time working and not an active trader. in oct 05 i went into day trading getting 20% loses/gain per day. one month later, i realized that without *proper* discipline to step out asap if the market is moving against you, i wouldnt succeed. after this lesson my trades began to be profitable between 5-40% a day. yes, i trade leveraged products and enter/exit at extremes - dont wait for 'trend confirmations'. but it requires bang-on attention through out your session. and one day in november i was off for a few moments, vupti - market closed and i was stuck with an overnight position - which was worth nothing the morning after :( so i began to look for fully automated trading strategies so i could go snowboarding some more. came up with a scheme that would return in average 240-300% a year. i've had it backtested on several markets in north america and europe going back to 1999. based on this i am now writing a business plan to set up an investment fund.

there is a big difference in trading elliott-wave by hand, which is similar to art and extremely profitable, and setting up ATS, which is akin to industrial farming. the winning argument for going with ATS, is the time it frees up on my side.
 
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