First live hulk day

[Snaps 12]

I was in sim for 3 months and went live on July 24th. I've had only 2 red days, both below my max daily loss and one of those green days was 2x my daily goal. So as you can imagine I've been feeling pretty good about myself lately. Despite that, I do have realistic expectations about my first year and poetically enough just yesterday I told my wife that the first year will probably have some ups and downs. That brings us to today, which got off to a bad start as I woke up late and didn't get to my computer until 10 minutes before the open. I set up my watchlist and levels just in time for the open. Then I entered ROKU long after it popped up and pulled back to VWAP within the first 2 minutes. Now it's not against my rules to trade in the first 5 minutes, but there needs to be a clear pre-market or daily indicator. There was no such setup on ROKU. If you traded today you know I got stopped out and I let it run a bit below my stop loss. So I started my day off with a bad trade and a broken rule. It was all downhill from there. I went hulk. Christmas trees on multiple charts, following Andrew blindly (I usually mute the chat during the open to prevent this), trading P&L. When I was at twice my max loss I actually made almost all of it back on ROKU short from $100 and I knew I should have stopped there and walked away, but it was still early and I didn't want to be red! So I went from 2x max loss, to about half max loss, to ending the day at 4x max loss (all of my profits since going live, almost to the penny). I was literally laughing at myself for being so stupid after I was stopped out of what was finally my last trade of the day. 

What did I learn from this? Use risk controls, lol. I really thought I'd be disciplined enough to stop myself from going beyond my max loss, but I underestimated how those emotions can drive you to be totally irrational. I even thought to myself "this is stupid" as I entered a couple of those trades and that still didn't stop me. So now I have my max loss set in the DAS risk controls. On top of that, I'll remember this feeling the next time I'm at max loss and want to chase. Yeah it sucks to have a max loss day, but it sucks a lot more to have a 4x max loss day. If this day had to happen for me to learn these lessons, then I'd say that's money well spent.

[Abiel 475]

Welcome to the club, this eventually happens to everybody. Yes Snaps, one hulk day can erase a whole month profits and even more! Risk controls are great just as you respect them, I´ve known of people that change RC to keep trading and keep digging their hole. 

[Snaps 12]

21 minutes ago, Abiel said:

Welcome to the club, this eventually happens to everybody. Yes Snaps, one hulk day can erase a whole month profits and even more! Risk controls are great just as you respect them, I´ve known of people that change RC to keep trading and keep digging their hole. 

I thought about this too, but it does add an extra step and precious time to reconsider since the change has to be done manually by DAS staff. In fact I'm going to e-mail them and see if they'll honor a request not to change RC on the same day the change is submitted.

[Abiel 475]

Yes, they can do that, I guess William mentions this in his RC video. You set a period of time where you cannot change RC, expired that period you can make changes, DAS helps you to enforce your own rules. 

[Snaps 12]

10 minutes ago, Abiel said:

Yes, they can do that, I guess William mentions this in his RC video. You set a period of time where you cannot change RC, expired that period you can make changes, DAS helps you to enforce your own rules. 

I'll go watch that video. Thanks, Abiel. 

[KurtLoeblich 101]

Been there, done that. I know it's not a great feeling but its something soooo many traders experience. Just make sure when you're setting a max loss, it's a level that you are truly comfortable with; it's not just your max pain level, it's your max "I can live with this red day" level.