If I am honest I got into trading because it seemed similar to my passion as a small time adhoc gambler. Similar feelings resonated with me that I felt when I used to gamble. I matured though!
I quickly realised that this was a probability activity although there were much better probabilities to it and there was a proper technical side to this. With a genuine interest in numbers and statistics I was hooked!
What happened to me was the worst thing that could happen - I started winning and I was winning big! I wasn't realising this but we were in the middle of a bull market and it was hard not to win. I was watching youtube videos and following some tips and it all seemed just too easy. I was already thinking that I should make this my full time job! The market then turned....
What I experienced next was an absolute emotional nightmare. The losses within days had wiped out all my previous winnings. My ego was in tatters because now all I could do was lose. I was revenge trading on steroids, fighting the market direction and insistent the market was wrong. I was entering trades and getting stopped out to see it then rip! It was traumatic, frustrating, disappointing and soul destroying. I thought I had found something I loved to do and was good at.
The reality was that the gains i had made originally didn't belong to me and the market was taking back what was rightfully theirs. It took me some time to realise this and I continued to trade like I was right and the market was wrong and this only kept the losses going. The only thing that I did manage was risk and having a strong discipline to use stop losses. If I hadn't I have no doubt that I would have blown my account.
What a dilemma though because I loved this activity even though it was traumatising me on
a daily basis. I still wanted to make this work and at least get to the point of making some regular passive income. The dream to trade from a beach in Thailand would have to wait.
Reality is that the market participants are some of the most intelligent people in the world and if we are to withdraw money from the market we need to do what the 10% do not what the 90% do. It sounds easy but I can assure you that it is not, from my experience anyway.
I am fortunate to be mature enough (currently 46) to realise that something seriously had to change if I was to achieve my goals.
I decided that I needed structure and this was to be addressed in 2 steps. The first step was to properly define what my trading strategies would be and rules for entering trades and the second step was to create my own journaling tool to work out where I was doing well and where I was not performing so that I could pivot and continue refining my trading plan.
For the trading strategies I kept this to a relatively small number and created my own rules, which I am, even now, constantly tweaking. The reality is that while this theory is great I still take trades that are either off plan or have been entered when the rules have not all been fulfilled. I am working on this though.
For journaling I enjoy analytics so I spent a large amount of time creating a spreadsheet model that tracked all of my trades. I track my win ratios and average profit / (loss) by trade across a multitude of variables such as day of week, time frame, strategy, mood, asset class etc. This has proved remarkably useful as I have now progressed to a stage where I am now regularly winning on an overall basis despite my win rate needing some improvement.
This has taken over 18 months to see the results and the light at the end of the tunnel. The intention of my content is to give hope to people and share my journey as I move into hopefully becoming a millionaire trader. Maybe I can be like every other social media influencer and one day be a millionaire trader. My content is real and I will share my losers and winners with you and hopefully we can share conversations and a successful journey together.
If you are looking for fantasy then I can't help you but if you have patience and the maturity to understand this activity takes time then follow me for more as we succeed together and learn from our mistakes.
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