Ladies and Gentlemen (you know who you are), Many of us recently went live in February and are experiencing some challenges trading with real money. I'm starting this post so we can motivate each other and share our experiences in hopes of improving our current situations. I feel that writing and speaking with others can definitely put things in perspective. It also helps to know that you're not alone. So I'll go first: I went live on Valentine's day but the market showed me no love. My account is currently down 15% from my starting balance. After seeing how poorly I was trading, I've made the decision to alternate between real and sim. Going back to pure sim for 2 weeks feels like punishment and a step backwards. I'm hoping this structure will allow me to develop the psychology of trading live, while also training my emotions to return to the 'carefree' state it was in sim. My day trading journal provides the following insight as to where I am going wrong: 1. Revenge trading - After a big loss at the open, I find myself trading the same choppy stock(s) in hopes of getting my money back. This is the definition of madness. 2. Over-trading - On day 2, I made 15 trades (not tickets). On day 3, I made another 13. This highlights the fact that I am taking very poor and low probability setups. My reward-to-risk average is nowhere near what it was in sim (~1.5 vs ~2.0) I believe my emotions are getting the better of me, and I am trying to make back prior losses (point 1 above). 3. Jumping the gun and chasing - Of my 32 total trades, 11 I have categorized as 'impulse trades'. These are where I don't wait for a candle to close at a certain technical level, or I end up chasing a stock where the risk/reward is not favourable. 4. Holding on to losers for too long - Back in sim, I wasn't afraid to exit a trade before my stop if the price action was telling me to. Things like engulfing patterns and lower-highs/lower-lows were signals that I actively watched for. In live, I seem to ignore these signs and just hang on until I am stopped out. This results in my losers being bigger than my winners. 5. Not stopping when I hit max loss - I had no problem walking away from sim when I was down big for the day. With real money, I can't seem to let those losses go. I keep trading until the close, only to realize that I would have been better off just taking a nap. Here are my goals for how to improve in the coming weeks: 1. Be in a mindset to process the information that the market is providing. This means to stop being fearful of being wrong or losing money. Have laser-like focus and ignore the chat/Andrew if necessary. 2. Forget about P&L. I am trading with such small sizes that the dollar figures are really immaterial. If I can stop worrying about $25 here, or $50 there, I can pay attention to price action and trade management. What I make or lose in the beginning is irrelevant and I shouldn't beat myself up over it. 3. Focus on the process and execution. Profits are a by-product of good trading discipline and risk management. The money will come once I reduce the number of trading errors. 4. Lower share size when losing. I always get tempted to up my position size to recover losers. This is the gambler's fallacy! The other day I traded 400 shares of FOSL, which was twice the size I would normally take with this much buying power. 5. Only take A1 setups. Back in sim, I could finish my day by 10:30 AM with two or three really good trades. Instead, I am trading garbage for the full 6.5 hours and letting a series of small losses slowly eat away at my equity. 6. Ignore time-based profit goals. Having a daily profit goal this early on can be dangerous because I am putting too much pressure on myself. This leads to taking poor setups in hopes of hitting the target via quantity and not quality. If anybody is reading this, I hope that the above was useful or helpful to you. I'd love to hear from the rest of the Feb 2018 cohort--again, you know who you are! Now hold hands and repeat after me: I am a consistent trader. I know this for a fact because I've traded consistently before. Kumbaya My Lord, Kumbaya...

In today recap Andrew mentioned "expressive writing", this is an article about it in Harvard Health blog https://goo.gl/5HeLAq

Thanks for the update, Robert. I was literally reading this thread when you posted your update. I found the thread when looking up the word "quitting" after so much frustrating trading. From the month or so that I have been watching the chat, I would never have know the depth of your psychological trading struggle because you seem so calm now. I appreciate your statistical method and how you came up ways to measure something so elusive. I am going to take a stab at building some statistics and see what truths flow from those.

I've been neglecting this post since beginning the Robert's Rant series and doing daily recaps. I thought it was about time for an update. As much as we all love the thrill of being in trades, remember that our goal is to make consistent profits--not actively being in every single setup. Day trading has a lot of similarities with gambling. I use to think I was trading, but I was just a gambler who chose stocks as my preferred game. Now I take a much more serious approach. Be patient and selective so I can hit my daily goal with the least amount of stress/effort required. This means waiting for those A1 setups to fall on my lap. React rather predict. Let's compare my trading from 4 months ago. BEFORE - EMOTIONAL OVER-TRADING GAMBLER May 10, 2018 Trades: 12 Tickers: 8 Shares: 12,800 P&L: -348.02 Commissions: -55.95 AFTER - PATIENT SNIPER RUNNING A DAY TRADING BUSINESS Sep 18, 2018 Trades: 1 Tickers: 1 Shares: 1,000 P&L: +335.49 Commissions: -4.46