Live transition

[ansmau 2]

Hi everybody,

I have recently switched to live account and everything developed on the simulator seems useless to me! For sure I got the worst market period to start with real money and my edge seems not working with this market condition. However, the main problem is myself! I am experiencing overtrading and self-sabotage...that's really terrible to accept. Sometimes I have the feeling that I am happy only if I hurt myself.

In term of money I am not losing a lot because I have started with R=5-10$ and configured the risk management rules on DAS, however what is really damaged is my "mental account".

Sometimes I am making very good entry but due to lack of confidence I get out at BE or with a small loss.. then the trade develops perfectly. Other times the setup is clearly aborted but i still keep the position. Looks like I am putting effort to prove to myself that I have to fail in this job.

 

I am experiencing a drastic reduction of WR and RR... and the consequence to the P&L is the following (the red arrow is the start live around middle of January😞

 

Sometimes I am thinking to step back to the simulator but I don't think would be a solution, because before I was satisfied of the performance.

 

What is your experience in the live transition?

 

 

 

[ansmau 2]

Hi Peter!

yeah, without real money involved everything is easier 🙂. 

- have you overtraded in SIM too? at first yes, a lot! then I became more stable

- have you traded until you had green day? yes, in the period of time highlighted in the picture below. Then I fixed some rules and everything was much more smooth. 2-3R and done for the day.

Sometimes I went from max loss to target: for example having 3 consecutive stop attempting a reversal and then after 30 min making 5R with a good setup. Now I fixed -2R as max loss on a single stock.

 

- have you been using same trading rules in SIM? I have tried to be more conservative in term of risk management when I started live

- do you have an edge really? that's a good question. I would say that is still under development. I had 2 setups (ABCD and Reversal) that were working quite well. However I think there is still a lot of work to do. Since January the reversal did not work at all, because of lack of opportunities (based on my rules) I took some trades not really optimal. I am worried that what I have developed up to now is too much customized on a bullish market.

- do you journal properly all your mistakes? I improved a lot using TradesViz, now at the end of the day I add some notes for each trade and in the weekend i try (..just try..) to put all together and understand what worked / did not work. But sometimes the mistake is "what did I do here!?" and I shall minimize this category!

- do you have a trading buddy or mentor? I have a buddy, unfortunately not a mentor. I try to absorbe as much as possible from the BB webinars and chat.

- do you have a trade management strategy you stick to? when my mind is working properly, yes. But I was also able to convert +3R into -1R with consequent trigger of overtrading for that day. When I don't follow the rule and I get a loss because of that, a self-destruction mechanism starts.

- do you use hard stops? always. At -1R I exit and in case re-enter

- are you overprotective or jumping into everything that moves? more tendency to jump, however if I make something clearly wrong the next trade I am overprotective. Result: lost money because of a mistake and then lost an opportunity due to fear of another loss.

- what are your daily targets? At the moment at 2R I stop. If I make 3R, I use 1R for another shot however that can trigger self-sabotage attitude.

 

You are right, I shall change my mindset and "don't care" about planned losses. However that's really hard, in particular during tough period like this (in term of P&L).

Sometimes I have noticed that I am also not perfectly able to switch between 2 jobs. I live in Europe so I work up to 3pm and the market opening is at 3:30pm. An option could be to shift the trading time close to the power hours...however I am afraid I shall develop new setups for that.

 

[ansmau 2]

On 2/21/2022 at 9:53 PM, peterB said:

i am in europe too and also got often distracted by work or when coming to markets came exhausted already. just find your routine to be prepared. you dont have to trade the open if you do abcds and reversals so that is good.

what i notice from your answers that you changed quite some things already - more conservative management, sooner max loss stop plus. now the red to green is not possible which might be the cause. there are other aspects of live trading like slippage missed fills which can all bring in new psychological challenges. your p&l curve is impressive so dont give up try to let it settle down and work on the mistakes you do with live trading. with small risk you do not have to make up the daily losses. try to look at it this way: even 1 week of losses will be one trade later in your trading career so no need to chase the losses today or tomorrow. just do what you did in SIM (if it has chance to work live)

Hi Peter,

after your last message I had another couple of very bad days (at least psychologically), then your words came into my mind and I have realized that actually I was more focused on implementing new rules to avoid losses than to make money...

From 24/02 I have completely removed all the additional constraints added for the live transition and reduced the size to 50%. I was able to fill the gap the re-gain a bit of self confidence. 

I had a couple of overtrading days but out of all I am quite happy!

 

I have noticed that in the last days I have found more difficulties than in the previous 2 weeks (fear, BE trading, a 2-3 green to red trades). I think my mind has difficulty to adjust when there is a switch of market trend or volatility

 

thanks a lot 🙂