A year in. Lessons Learnt, Fingers Burnt

I've been live trading a year now and though it worth sharing some of the highs and lows of my journey.

I got into trading after my daughter was born. I'd taken 3 months off work and decided I could solely focus on day/swing trading with the 100K I had in savings.
Being in a technical profession (also have a PhD in math) my style was indicator/rule based and to that end I watched every trading seminar, read every blog and learned about all the technical tools I could over the first month.
I went live placing 10K-50K trades on stocks I'd researched and charts I or others had liked. Sometimes I'd stay in the trade a long time (I still hold my first stock bought), but mostly I'd be out before the close not wanted to suffer opening bell shock.

I entered stops until i got level 2 access when on too many occasions saw the action move right in to take my stop before rebounding away. After that paranoia had me write my stops down and then manually exit trades that reached them.

I kept a trading journal and kept account of my P/L, plus did a nightly debrief on how (and why) the day had gone.

On a good day I'd make 500 bucks, on a bad day I'd lose 1000. The nightly tally showed I was slowly getting poorer and over time was not getting better.

It got to a point where I'd spend couple hours researching my picks then enter trades in the opposite direction as I came to understand the market was not behaving to any of the indicators or patterns I'd learned from any of the hundreds of Guru trainings I'd been through.

About 6 months in I came to realize that even with my account size intra-day was too hard to play, so my time frames move to weeks then months. I finally entered a trade that I was convinced about which went against me for 5 months. I'd decided to stay long in the stock regardless as I was that sure. The stock blew through any rational limit I would have set and I decided to wait for it to recover. I eventually sold for a 40% loss through fear that the company would go bankrupt.

At one point in the year I was 15% up. I'm out now (apart from my first stock) for a total loss of 15%.

I've never really failed at anything and have been very humbled by the experience. Learning so much in a short time about trading and then failing to make it work has left me with the feeling that knowledge, a strict trading plan, and the willingness to put in full time hours really offer no guarantee of preserving capital let alone make a healthy living.

Respect to those that make it work. For a time I was one of you but for now I'm poorer and out.

Don't lose heart its only a year. While you are out, take the time to learn more, practice more. then come back with a bang if you want

in anything we do, we need passion. If he has the passion, nothing can stop him coming back. he just needs to fine tune on how he trade etc.

A 15% overall loss in year 1 is a pretty remarkable result actually.
You might well be made of the right stuff.

I agree. Its better to stop, take a breather, learn what mistakes one makes, fine tune it if needed, accumulate capital, and then make a come back. All done when you don't give up on what you are happy doing.

that's why i said he needs to re-evaluate his methods right? I agree, passion is not the only thing.

I have to concur with PATrader, a 15% loss in your first year can almost be classed as a success by many newbie traders!

You certainly seem to have the correct mindset of planning trades, doing a post mortem and, having not completely busted your account, at least some sense of decent money management. You already mentioned you had expanded your timeframe for trades which is a good move and one which hopefully will allow you to trade on the side whilst you continue with other endeavours. Fewer trades also amounts to less in commissions, something many new traders fail to factor in.

The piece I have quoted above though is a classic error and it is amazing how much one move like this, where emotion takes over, can wipe out weeks, if not months, of hard work and good trades. A good way to combat this mindset is to look at the stock afresh and ask yourself would you open a new long/short at this point. If the answer is no then you are simply running the existing trade hoping for a recovery, which is no way to trade as it sounds like you've realised.

My advice is not to lose heart and to continue trading, even if it is not full time as you have been doing. Failure and making mistakes is a part of life. The problem with trading is it magnifies these failures/mistakes to astronomical proportions. Making a small error at work is something which happens and you learn from, doing it trading could cost you 5% of your account which just made your job that much harder.

Best of luck and keep on trying, it is the only way to learn.

Can I ask which gurus you purchased training from?