Tubbs
Have you read Piper, Elder or Tharp. It sounds like you are carrying-over some emotional affect on those substantial losses which are now hindering your progress.
You may well have seen it posted before but there is no 'holy grail' system, signal etc. Nothing always works all of the time. Trading is about the balance of probabilities, the expectancy that you will win more often than you lose. By restricting your loss to a minimum or small % of your trading capital you safeguard this capital in an attempt to make it grow through your winners; or to allow you the time to learn how best to trade to your own peculiar specifics in order to become successful.
You need to establish what time frame you feel most comfortable with. You need to establish what style of trading you feel most confident with. Once you have established this you need to confirm which of the trading signals you have employed or read about and tested work best for you. You will have to trade and keep a journal, or go back through all your losing trades and identify why each failed. Then see if you have common faults that lead to these losses and what you could have done to restrict them or avoid them. From your journal seek out those deals which proved most reliable, not necessarily those that produced the largest win. From this group produce a selective group of tested signals that you know from your own trading have served you well more than they have failed. You will have confidence in them. Then establish your risk policy. What you can afford to lose on each deal, create a stop exit, a stop profit. Each deal should have a realistic target consideration, this stops you from dreaming that the deal will never end and that you do lock in some profit rather than watch it all slip down the drain. An expectancy of your system will show you levels at which you can regularly expect to gain and when things have gone a little to far. A trailing stop loss can help.
To be successful you have to come to terms with accepting loss and accepting something from the market. If you always look to make massive gains you will find trading very hard indeed. The object is to make money and allow your trading capital to grow through repeated success. It is far easier to become successful if your mindset is right. I feel being prepared to accept a small gain on occasions is just as important as maintaining your stop. By expecting to make unrealistic gains you have not opened your mind to being happy in taking something from the market. The market may move by x amount and you want to get in on the trend and take all or most of it. If you settle for a reasonable amount, what you will find is that when the market does not offer you such gains but a small amount you will be able to take it and avoid what will undoubtedly become a loss.
By producing a trading plan that deals with all the demands and mechanics of opening, managing and closing a deal that can provide you with all your answers beforehand so that you do not have to make any decisions during this process but follow and repeat a tested process then you will avoid your emotions and trade with discipline and become far more successful than you have to date. A successful trader becomes a boring trader because the way to success is to trade your system and just watch for the market to provide you with your chosen set up and then trade it according to the rules of your plan, a repeating process. That is the holy grail of trading IMHO.
Good luck
Kevin
Have you read Piper, Elder or Tharp. It sounds like you are carrying-over some emotional affect on those substantial losses which are now hindering your progress.
You may well have seen it posted before but there is no 'holy grail' system, signal etc. Nothing always works all of the time. Trading is about the balance of probabilities, the expectancy that you will win more often than you lose. By restricting your loss to a minimum or small % of your trading capital you safeguard this capital in an attempt to make it grow through your winners; or to allow you the time to learn how best to trade to your own peculiar specifics in order to become successful.
You need to establish what time frame you feel most comfortable with. You need to establish what style of trading you feel most confident with. Once you have established this you need to confirm which of the trading signals you have employed or read about and tested work best for you. You will have to trade and keep a journal, or go back through all your losing trades and identify why each failed. Then see if you have common faults that lead to these losses and what you could have done to restrict them or avoid them. From your journal seek out those deals which proved most reliable, not necessarily those that produced the largest win. From this group produce a selective group of tested signals that you know from your own trading have served you well more than they have failed. You will have confidence in them. Then establish your risk policy. What you can afford to lose on each deal, create a stop exit, a stop profit. Each deal should have a realistic target consideration, this stops you from dreaming that the deal will never end and that you do lock in some profit rather than watch it all slip down the drain. An expectancy of your system will show you levels at which you can regularly expect to gain and when things have gone a little to far. A trailing stop loss can help.
To be successful you have to come to terms with accepting loss and accepting something from the market. If you always look to make massive gains you will find trading very hard indeed. The object is to make money and allow your trading capital to grow through repeated success. It is far easier to become successful if your mindset is right. I feel being prepared to accept a small gain on occasions is just as important as maintaining your stop. By expecting to make unrealistic gains you have not opened your mind to being happy in taking something from the market. The market may move by x amount and you want to get in on the trend and take all or most of it. If you settle for a reasonable amount, what you will find is that when the market does not offer you such gains but a small amount you will be able to take it and avoid what will undoubtedly become a loss.
By producing a trading plan that deals with all the demands and mechanics of opening, managing and closing a deal that can provide you with all your answers beforehand so that you do not have to make any decisions during this process but follow and repeat a tested process then you will avoid your emotions and trade with discipline and become far more successful than you have to date. A successful trader becomes a boring trader because the way to success is to trade your system and just watch for the market to provide you with your chosen set up and then trade it according to the rules of your plan, a repeating process. That is the holy grail of trading IMHO.
Good luck
Kevin
