What to do about my mind? I'm losing my edge.

Quote from ChaosNSX:

Hey brothers, I don't know why I am having trouble with this hurdle. Maybe its fear maybe its greed. I will be up nicely for the day only to push it and give it all back and then some. I'm taught to strike while the irons hot, but when the iron get hots I only end up burning myself in the end. This slump I am now in is really destroying my equity curve. What has been other peoples experiences in tackling this, and walking home with something in your pocket consistently. I'm on day 12 of a straight losing streak, and its slowly breaking my will. I need advice. I hate to think my last month was pure luck. How does one handle this or change this course? I feel each day as if anouther bullet (no pun intended) is causing another wound and I'm slowly bleeding to death. Thanks in advance.
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If pushing is what gets you in trouble, then stop pushing for a while. If you find you're up nicely for the day, then protect what you have and be more discerning rather than less so for the remainder of the day. Once you break your losing streak, you can slowly ease back into a more aggressive style if that is what suits you. If you're generally up for the day before you blow up, your technique is probably ok, but something else is not. What else is up with you? Until you figure it out, you may wish to make the process less expensive by trading smaller and thinking more in terms of points rather than dollars. My thinking is that overeaters, alcoholics and gamblers are all looking to fill a void. Similarly, why are you pushing to the point of detriment if you are otherwise doing well?

I also agree with the other folks who suggested a bit of time off. Good luck and Happy Holidays!
 
Thanks for all the thoughtful responses.

I find I blame myself, because it does no good to blame the market as much as I want to. Now the specialist, that guys a different story. I like the idea of not looking at my losers in row, and looking at it as the beginning of a winning streak. I have just found it so hard to snap out of the fixation on my current performance. I am going to just focus on being positive this next few days.. before break.. no targets. I really need that monkey off my back to clear my head. You guys are right, I am trading with to much emphasis on the $ and making it back. :(

Thunderdog, you bring up an interesting point about the need to fill a void. Maybe its I'm pushing to get out of this rut, or maybe I do have a gambling mentality once I am up. I will be up and be thinking wow I have a lot more maneuverability and take riskier trades with larger risk/reward ratios. The only thing is I am on a losing streak now so I am starting to cut my profits earlier due to a growing lack of confidence and I know thats killing me. So its like I am making things worse.

Yeah I am going to call it pretty much a year, the momo scalping hasn't been the best as of late.

Happy Holidays to you all. :D

I think for 2004 I am going to start keeping my journal on ET. Does anyone find a journal helpful looking back? Or is it just helpful for collecting thoughts of the day then starting tomorrow a new. I would think looking back would be dwelling in the past?:confused:
 
I've been dealing with the same kinda problem. For the past two months, I've been slowly giving back everything I'd earned in the past year. I was down to a 26% up for the year from my peak of 60% up--a devastating blow to my ego and account made in tiny paper cuts. Every consecutive losing trade sent me spinning between blaming myself for not having the discipline to trade my methodology and wondering if my pseudo-system had simply run its course. My patience is great enough that I took every hit in stride for two months with wholehearted faith in my ability to fix what's wrong, but I finally broke down two days ago when I realized I was totally lost. That day was the most depressing day of my recent trading life, and then after hitting rock bottom (should I pull my remaining profits out of my account and move them into other passive investments?) I realized that I had to drop everything--get back in touch with the market itself. My pseudo-system hadn't been checked against recent data, and I found that I'd been fighting the market the whole time, insisting on making an obsolete methodology work as well as it used to. A little bit of living the glory days, as it were. So I am trading now on a completely discretionary basis, getting a feel for the current market behavior, and building a new methodology for today's times. In one trade, I made back 20% of my account--proving I'm not totally lost--followed immediately by another profitable trade this morning. We'll see what tomorrow holds, but I have my confidence back, sad as it may be to have to let my old methodology go (until its preferred type of market conditions come around again). I'd recommend that you not quit the market entirely to go on vacation but instead take a step back, maybe develop a new system or reoptimize your old one, and paper trade to get your bearings in the new market conditions. When Tiger Woods is unhappy with his swing, he tears it apart and builds a new one, knowing full well that he'll lose a streak of tournaments while rebuilding it--but he comes back ten times as strong. I wasn't far-sighted enough to see the coming failures of my methodology before they hit me head on. Rest assured, you can turn things around--you just gotta let go of your emotional investment in the rules, methodologies and systems that had previously fueled your own glory days and be constantly developing new systems to match the current market.
 
dchang0,

That was quite a story. who said this was easy.....right?

Michael B.


Quote from dchang0:

I've been dealing with the same kinda problem. For the past two months, I've been slowly giving back everything I'd earned in the past year. I was down to a 26% up for the year from my peak of 60% up--a devastating blow to my ego and account made in tiny paper cuts. Every consecutive losing trade sent me spinning between blaming myself for not having the discipline to trade my methodology and wondering if my pseudo-system had simply run its course. My patience is great enough that I took every hit in stride for two months with wholehearted faith in my ability to fix what's wrong, but I finally broke down two days ago when I realized I was totally lost. That day was the most depressing day of my recent trading life, and then after hitting rock bottom (should I pull my remaining profits out of my account and move them into other passive investments?) I realized that I had to drop everything--get back in touch with the market itself. My pseudo-system hadn't been checked against recent data, and I found that I'd been fighting the market the whole time, insisting on making an obsolete methodology work as well as it used to. A little bit of living the glory days, as it were. So I am trading now on a completely discretionary basis, getting a feel for the current market behavior, and building a new methodology for today's times. In one trade, I made back 20% of my account--proving I'm not totally lost--followed immediately by another profitable trade this morning. We'll see what tomorrow holds, but I have my confidence back, sad as it may be to have to let my old methodology go (until its preferred type of market conditions come around again). I'd recommend that you not quit the market entirely to go on vacation but instead take a step back, maybe develop a new system or reoptimize your old one, and paper trade to get your bearings in the new market conditions. When Tiger Woods is unhappy with his swing, he tears it apart and builds a new one, knowing full well that he'll lose a streak of tournaments while rebuilding it--but he comes back ten times as strong. I wasn't far-sighted enough to see the coming failures of my methodology before they hit me head on. Rest assured, you can turn things around--you just gotta let go of your emotional investment in the rules, methodologies and systems that had previously fueled your own glory days and be constantly developing new systems to match the current market.
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At the risk of sounding like Dbphoenix; do you have any sort of plan/methodology that you employ or are you attempting to trade in an intuitive manner?

Intuition is borne through experience. Not only experience of the markets, but of yourself. From your post it is easy to see that you are trading your ego, as well as the market.

My advice to you would be to take a step back, come up with some objective way to enter/exit the market. Exhaust this methodology, put some coin in your pocket, and after a few years you may know yourself and the markets well enough to graduate to the intuitive state.

PEACE and good-specul8tion
 
Quote from kungfoofighting:

Rather than fear or greed, you may be having trouble letting go of the loss and trying to make up for it the next day. As the string of losing days has continued, it may be more and more difficult to get it out of your mind and therefore when you push it, you are losing discipline or not determining risk/reward correctly.

I used to struggle with the after effects of one losing day because I traded with too much emphasis on a $ amount that I wanted to net each day. If I had a down day, mentally I would think that I needed to make up the lost p/l, plus the daily goal I failed to meet, plus the current days goal, in order to be back on pace. This would invariably lead to poor trading because I would over-trade, and throw on more size than normal. The bigger positions would lead to larger than average losses if the trade didn't work out, and the commissions would add up. Usually one losing day would lead to a string of three or four.

I have since learned to take losing days in stride and do not let them influence my next day's trading. I do adapt my trading if I am in the hole early in the day. I find that many people trade worse when they are in the red because their criteria for which trades to take is lowered. They fear missing the one trade that could get them positive on the day and therefore trade everything that looks remotely viable. I call this the "I'll fuck anything that moves", mentality. Rather, when I am down on the day, I adopt an ultra-conservative strategy, where I will trade only the absolute best setups(low risk/high reward). You can't afford to have scratch trades, or even worse, losing trades when you are in the hole, they just increase the hurdle you need to get over to get positive. By being more selective than normal, I can ensure that my p/l is moving in the right direction with every trade I put on. If nothing presents itself, so be it; the loss hasn't widened.

If you aren't having trouble getting up on the day, lock a couple of those days in to put a literal end to the losing streak, and to get your confidence back. I find that I make 60-75% of my day in the first hour and a half of the day, then I put in on cruise control and coast the rest of the day picking off trades here and there to round things out. If I don't make my piece at the open, I don't try to force anything just to make my #'s, because the opportunities are rarely there. I should mention that I am a scalper, so the times where volume is heaviest are my best bet. Most importantly, forget the down days/lost money. They are gone. Keeping track of how many days in a row you've lost will affect your ability to trade well. Instead maybe you should keep track of how long you can go without a down day. That way, a down day only signals the start of a new win streak, rather than some sort of failure. [/QUOTE


Very good post....This is a great way to not get crazy when you are having a bad day....

Again...great post


M
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Quote from burnin:

fasterpussycat,
maybe some day you will
get a life loooooossssssseeeeeeerrrrrrrrrr boy
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i suggest you find a stock chat board which is suitable for your limited vocabulary preferably a board with a lot of hahhahaha....... you will have found a home with people similar to yourselve. you might actually make some friends
 
Quote from dchang0:

I've been dealing with the same kinda problem. For the past two months, I've been slowly giving back everything I'd earned in the past year. ...
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After losing over 50% of my equity over the course of 3 years, I started all over. One thing that helped me was to trade very small size until I could get confidence in my system. This is possible with IB's low commissions. Then the risk was low enough that I wouldn't make stupid emotional decisions.

g
 
EliteTrader: LOL! Yeah, successful trading is far and away the greatest challenge I've ever faced. I've learned as much about my own psychology as trading, and I've had to face down some of my biggest demons (and I'm sure every one of you has too).

Gotta love the challenge--even as much as I get knocked down, I get up every morning to gladly take 'em all on again...

Best of luck to you, ChaosNSX. BTW, I don't personally use a formal journal, but I do take mental notes on why I've screwed up on trades. One of my friends keeps a intricate watchlist and trade journal, and it does amazing things for his skills and discipline. He's able to go back through months of spreadsheets and see where he made mistakes (his problem is pulling the trigger). It's worked wonders for him, and when I tried it for myself, I gained much more insight into and confidence in my decisions. (I'm just too lazy to keep doing it and prefer to just write down the biggest blunders.)

In some ways, keeping a journal *is* dwelling on the past, but it really depends on how you deal with it. For me, I'm motivated to correct myself by looking at past idiocy, so a journal works well for me that way--it whips me into shape. My mistake was in that I was also looking at my past successes and trying to relive them (like Al Bundy and his "four touchdowns in a single game.") That blinded me to the new conditions.

So, keeping a journal isn't going to change the fact that you still have to manage your emotions and psyche. It may all be cold, hard facts on screen, but it's the way you experience them that matters. In the end, there's nothing to protect you from your own emotions but your sharpened mind.
 
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