Venting plus big loss

[Fernando Samora 11]

Hey BBT, 

On my second live trading day I lost 1k. I just had to say it. I feel dirty, miserably, sad, annoyed, angry at everyone and everything, with me with the market but with me most of all.

• I overtraded, I did not respect stop loss, tried to revange trade to make my first (small loss) back. I messed up..
• I was ok with my size but I kept adding to my commissions, kept adding more and more small lossing trades. 
• I did not stopped trading, I was angry. 

What will i do now? STOP trading at max loss. STEP AWAY. I will respect stop loss and if im feeling emotional I will take a break. I don`t want to blow up (more) my account. I want to do this for a living. I know this is a massive hit. I feel so dissoriented.  RESPECT MY RULES. BE OBJETIVE. KEEP THINKING POSITIVE.

I will re-evaluate my daily goals and focus just on ONE main trade hit my goal and move on. My new goal is 100 bucks per day over the next 10 days. I will make my money back. I WILL rebuild this blow. I will be focused, disciplined and a good trader that respects the rules. 

 

Anyway, just had to blow some steam and get it out there.

Cheers,

Fernando Samora.

[Norm 45]

Keep your head up, Fernando. We've all been in that place at one point in our trading careers. You have the right thoughts moving forward. Reduce size and goals as you get a feel for trading live money.

[Fernando Samora 11]

45 minutes ago, Norm said:

Keep your head up, Fernando. We've all been in that place at one point in our trading careers. You have the right thoughts moving forward. Reduce size and goals as you get a feel for trading live money.

Thanks Norm. New rule for the time being is 2 trades MAX per day. 100 USD goal per day. Just realized its around 20k per year. So for my first year that would be amazing since im still holding on to my current job.

 

[Robert H 453]

@Fernando Samora We've all been there! You are definitely not alone.

I would suggest forgetting about that loss. The moment you start thinking about "making it back" is when emotions enter the equation again. 

Focus on trading small and trading well. Your recovery plan sounds like a good start. Also look into Risk Controls to prevent these types of days from occurring. Best of luck.

[Fernando Samora 11]

1 hour ago, Robert H said:

@Fernando Samora We've all been there! You are definitely not alone.

I would suggest forgetting about that loss. The moment you start thinking about "making it back" is when emotions enter the equation again. 

Focus on trading small and trading well. Your recovery plan sounds like a good start. Also look into Risk Controls to prevent these types of days from occurring. Best of luck.

Thanks Robert, thats my plan as for the rest of 2019 lol, 100 a day builds the account, and paves the way for jumping to full time.

[Carlos M. 230]

That is great advise, forget the losses and let's focus on the process not the outcome on future trades you take. 

[Sheela 31]

Same here, with my couple of weeks trading experience, today I lost $1200. Have habit of starting with big volume and kept adding as the price drop and ended up with that big loss. Lesson learned with big price pay:), during first 5 mins after opening, never expect to buy stock with bottom or lowest price when the stock is violently shooting up! which is what I did today and did not get filled on time. Should had let go! but I did not and resubmitted and ended up filled with bigger price:). 

[WilliamH 66]

@Sheela A friendly reminder that you are not alone. I have been there over a handful of times. And I personally know how hard it is to recover from it.  A couple ideas of insight on what to do going forward

1. Do you have risk controls and a max loss to prevent this? If not, search this forum and our youtube channel for "Risk Controls" and consider implementing them on your account

2. Forget about it. Take the lesson learned, never do it again, but do not agonize over it going into tomorrow

3. Some of my BIGGEST losses are the next day AFTER a somewhat big loss, so consider doing a no trade or 1 trade challenge tomorrow

4. This is a silly one in terms of trading insight, but I promise you it has helped me every single time . . . . Do Something randomly nice for a loved one or stranger. Go out of your way to help someone else or show compassion to someone that needs it.

After doing that you might be reminded that Trading isnt everything in Life and there are so many more important things in this world. It really helps me to put everything in perspective . . . 

 

[buckgrad04 2]

I had a couple of days like that.  I was setting my max S/L to 1% but dropped that down to a fraction of a percent, which means small share size.  Until I trust myself to follow that rule, I won't go back to 1%.  Someone previously mentioned limiting trades to 1-3, I too find that unnecessary.  Maybe set it to a more realistic max 6 per day, really much more than you're entering Hulk territory...in my opinion.

[Rob C 826]

I remember my -1k loss day very well. That was the day that I can pinpoint that things got better. That day was my 4th episode of going hulk and my worse one. Each time was the same. 2-3 weeks of good trading and all the money gained out the window in a few minutes. 

I tried a few different methods to rid myself of my over-trading and going hulk with only short-term success. Instead of going hulk I was going to daily max loss about half the days.Then I made a few changes:

- Changed my platform back to DAS, mainly for risk controls.

- Held myself to a $25/trade risk

- Posted my journal on the BBT website everyday. I think about this on almost every trade, "am I sure I want to take this trade and have other traders read and think, what the heck was this newbie thinking"? The trades I don't think that are usually my bad ones.

- And the big one. Hold myself to one trade a day maximum.

Now I am pretty sure my level of discipline is much weaker than the average trader so I needed to be more strict. Plus, I have a real over trading issue that I need to address. So I needed to be much more strict. Can I say I overcame my revenge trading quickly, Heck no, it was very painful to walk away after a winning trade and excruciating to walk away after a losing one. It hurt every day for weeks. But it did finally change things. After almost a month at 1 trade/day I allowed myself a second trade if the first trade was a winner. And after 2 months I still have that rule because I still can't recover from a loss quick enough to trade again. Then today I traded terrible and I had zero instinct to trade again. No feeling of revenge at all. I broke many rules on the trade and my first instinct was, "that was too painful for me to even SIM trade, I going to walk away and help my wife get the kids ready for school."

The good news. You do forget about the loss as soon as you set goals that don't pertain to that loss. My goal was to have the discipline to walk away after one trade. After a couple of days that was my new goal and the -1k lost all importance. As Andrew and the rest of the BBT instructors say, "it was part of the tuition."

All of us could have had very happy, satisfying lives without reaching inside of ourselves, to our deepest part of our psyche and pull out our darkest demons and confront them. Who does that? I spent the previous part of my life making an effort to avoid doing that. But, we are doing it and I finally feel better that I am.

Edited April 2, 2019 by Rob C

[Sheela 31]

15 hours ago, WilliamH said:

@Sheela A friendly reminder that you are not alone. I have been there over a handful of times. And I personally know how hard it is to recover from it.  A couple ideas of insight on what to do going forward

1. Do you have risk controls and a max loss to prevent this? If not, search this forum and our youtube channel for "Risk Controls" and consider implementing them on your account

2. Forget about it. Take the lesson learned, never do it again, but do not agonize over it going into tomorrow

3. Some of my BIGGEST losses are the next day AFTER a somewhat big loss, so consider doing a no trade or 1 trade challenge tomorrow

4. This is a silly one in terms of trading insight, but I promise you it has helped me every single time . . . . Do Something randomly nice for a loved one or stranger. Go out of your way to help someone else or show compassion to someone that needs it.

After doing that you might be reminded that Trading isnt everything in Life and there are so many more important things in this world. It really helps me to put everything in perspective . . . 

 

@WilliamH, Thank You for the insight and support and making feel that I am not alone. Risk Controls- in general terms those are 'Duration' (time in the stock), 'Volume' (position size- which I am working on to reduce  and go smaller ). Will research on any specific tech Risk Controls that we can set up on DAS in specific (other than SL) - I use TOS for trading. 

Its like no kid can learn bike riding with out falling or scraping their knees or elbows including my little one  will keep going. After all "Greens" are mine and "Reds" are to my husband LOL

[Sheela 31]

15 hours ago, buckgrad04 said:

I had a couple of days like that.  I was setting my max S/L to 1% but dropped that down to a fraction of a percent, which means small share size.  Until I trust myself to follow that rule, I won't go back to 1%.  Someone previously mentioned limiting trades to 1-3, I too find that unnecessary.  Maybe set it to a more realistic max 6 per day, really much more than you're entering Hulk territory...in my opinion.

@buckgrad04 Thank You for the support. I need to correct few of my habits like not being able to take small losses and end up with bigger ones like this.

[Sheela 31]

13 hours ago, Rob C said:

I remember my -1k loss day very well. That was the day that I can pinpoint that things got better. That day was my 4th episode of going hulk and my worse one. Each time was the same. 2-3 weeks of good trading and all the money gained out the window in a few minutes. 

I tried a few different methods to rid myself of my over-trading and going hulk with only short-term success. Instead of going hulk I was going to daily max loss about half the days.Then I made a few changes:

- Changed my platform back to DAS, mainly for risk controls.

- Held myself to a $25/trade risk

- Posted my journal on the BBT website everyday. I think about this on almost every trade, "am I sure I want to take this trade and have other traders read and think, what the heck was this newbie thinking"? The trades I don't think that are usually my bad ones.

- And the big one. Hold myself to one trade a day maximum.

Now I am pretty sure my level of discipline is much weaker than the average trader so I needed to be more strict. Plus, I have a real over trading issue that I need to address. So I needed to be much more strict. Can I say I overcame my revenge trading quickly, Heck no, it was very painful to walk away after a winning trade and excruciating to walk away after a losing one. It hurt every day for weeks. But it did finally change things. After almost a month at 1 trade/day I allowed myself a second trade if the first trade was a winner. And after 2 months I still have that rule because I still can't recover from a loss quick enough to trade again. Then today I traded terrible and I had zero instinct to trade again. No feeling of revenge at all. I broke many rules on the trade and my first instinct was, "that was too painful for me to even SIM trade, I going to walk away and help my wife get the kids ready for school."

The good news. You do forget about the loss as soon as you set goals that don't pertain to that loss. My goal was to have the discipline to walk away after one trade. After a couple of days that was my new goal and the -1k lost all importance. As Andrew and the rest of the BBT instructors say, "it was part of the tuition."

All of us could have had very happy, satisfying lives without reaching inside of ourselves, to our deepest part of our psyche and pull out our darkest demons and confront them. Who does that? I spent the previous part of my life making an effort to avoid doing that. But, we are doing it and I finally feel better that I am.

@Rob C  Thank you for the support! I can see the intensity and depth in your comments. I totally agree as its internal process which takes time but reduce the impact of risk during that process is very important. Will research on Risk Controls! Have decided to have one small green day (candle stick) everyday to cover the big red day (drop of red candle stick from yesterday) going for couple more days/weeks. Its like Andrew saying, you study Med for all those years and you perform anatomy on dead bodies to learn (like learning on sim in our case) but when its time to perform surgery  on a living person, its up to that surgeon sending that patient home happily or somewhere else. We learn all the theory about the stocks all the studies and understand and analyze those strategies very well and we know when to get in and out Etc.... but when we trade live the psychology plays major role and dominates everything else including all the studies and strategies that you very well know-  just like surgeon in the OR with his patient right in front of him:)

 

[WilliamH 66]

14 hours ago, Sheela said:

@WilliamH, Thank You for the insight and support and making feel that I am not alone. Risk Controls- in general terms those are 'Duration' (time in the stock), 'Volume' (position size- which I am working on to reduce  and go smaller ). Will research on any specific tech Risk Controls that we can set up on DAS in specific (other than SL) - I use TOS for trading. 

Its like no kid can learn bike riding with out falling or scraping their knees or elbows including my little one  will keep going. After all "Greens" are mine and "Reds" are to my husband LOL

"After All "Greens" are mine and "Reds" are to my husband" . . . HAHAHAH. This gave me a surprising late night laugh and deserves to be on a t-shirt

[RTrader 20]

Fernando,

Definitely stay positive. How a trader handles losses, even bigger ones is going to be the difference between success and failure over the long term. That seems to be the main difference between winning traders and ones that don't make it, is how they deal with the losses and drawdowns. Focus on positive thinking and moving forward. 

I found that avoiding negative terms like don't really help. Instead say, "I will make 100 dollars today"... I will follow my rules, stops, max loss etc.

Good luck!