Tommy, I am 100% ok with all feedback and comments.
I definitely need to work on my emotions with the newborn. This morning I was frustrated with the lack of sleep and I shouldn't have traded today. I knew it before I started, but I went ahead and traded anyways. This was a big mistake and will be a thing that I check daily.
As far as the larger stocks go, I do adjust my share size accordingly. If I can tolerate a $30 loss then I will take 100 shares of AAPL which a normal large move could be 30 cents in a minute which is my $30. If I am trading MU I will take maybe 300 shares because I normal large move will be 10 cents in a minute. Both of these trades will give me $30 loss on large normal move as long as I stop out appropriately. ( I just need to make sure I stop out! )
As far as my weakness go, I do track them in a journal, and I do need to tackle them one by one. I was taking an approach to fix it all at once, but it becoming clear that it hasn't been working and I need to go problem by problem. I do keep track of a journal, I use tradervue and they allow you to tag trades. For instance some of my tags are double down, broke stop loss, gambling. I can search by tag and see how much in $$ each problem is costing me. What I plan to start doing going forward is to open up my tags every morning before I trade so I can see that doubling down has cost me $XXX, breaking my stop loss cost me $XXX and so on. I haven't been doing a good job of holding myself accountable and I think reminding myself each morning that I have loss $1000s on these problems could point me in the right direction.
Mike, I do remember the Yelp trade and I have to say that doubling down on my losers has become a really big problem for me.
I had to add DAS Risk controls to auto stop if I go to $90 loss on a trade. This should prevent the big big meltdowns. I have had a few of them.
I also unfortunately have a set of rules in my head for what to do if I have added to my losing positions. I must stop out at break even or near break even for a small loss if there is a clearer exit point. There have been times, where I have turned losers into winners. I have had trades where I have significantly passed my max loss and had those turn into winners. It isn't a good feeling either way.
Doubling down is my biggest problem and I have had many days ruined by one bad trade that I couldn't/wouldn't get out of.
The doubling down issue, wasn't a problem until a few months after going live. I never did it in sim, but once I did it once or twice live, and it turned a losing trade into a break even/winning trade, I couldn't stop it. I know its wrong, and not a successful habit to have while trading, but it is a newer problem that I am working on removing.
I am obviously an overtrader, so when I first started trading, I would quickly get out of the trade, knowing that I could reenter when the stock presented another opportunity. I had no issue with breaking my stop loss, or doubling down. When I went to correct my overtrading habit, by placing a total trades limit for the day, that is when these habits came up.
At the time, my thinking was that this is one of my X trades for the day, so I didn't want to stop out early, or let a trade go to waste. I sat in the losing trades or even worse, I added to them. I decided to get rid of the total trade limit in a day rule but I carried the stop loss breaking and doubling down habits with me. I have a hard time accepting a losing stock, and that I think is the next piece of the puzzle for me.
I need to accept that losing is going to happen and that it is normal to have a loser. Nobody is batting 1.000. It is normal to be wrong, and that I'm not going to win every trade. When I can accept losing, I then can accept stopping out appropriately and not adding to a loser. I can let the losers be losers and move on.