Yesterday, I had limited number of trades and ended the day with a small profit. The typical pattern took place:
- Started the day with a few small profitable trades
- Became more conservative and backed off for the rest of the day
- Ended the day with a small profit of about 1%
Today, the market was mostly choppy this morning, and even as I told
myself not to get involved in the chopfest, I patiently waited and took what I thought was a
decent trade, which then opened the floodgate into many many more small choppy losses in a row. Discipline failed.
So once
again, the typical "dig myself out of a hole" pattern took place:
- Started the day with a loss, which then accelerated into many small losses. It was a chopfest in the morning
- My usual setups weren't developing
- My portfolio was down as much as -5.5% for the day. Started to approach my "blow-up my account" levels
- Market started to pick up a bit in the afternoon, and I needed a comeback, so I decided to scalp TZA
- Scrambled my way back to a -2.5% loss for the day
- Didn't get to the usual breakeven this time, but I wasn't as in tune with the market today
Attitude Trader left a great comment under the prior post with a link to something
Don Miller wrote
regarding putting himself into the "comeback mode." Don said he visualizes the
following chart so that he always feel as though he just suffered a
"devastating loss" and needs to refocus for a big comeback:
 |
| http://donmillerjournal.blogspot.com |
Once again, this brings up a question I have to seriously consider --
more often than not, I seem to be able to consistently scramble my way
out of relatively considerable losses, so why don't I just trade this
way all the time? Am I fooling myself trying to follow a certain
trading methodology that I may not be "wired" to follow?
My trading week will be winding down starting tomorrow due to family
visiting, so these topics will be food for thought for my mind to digest as
I spend some time away from the markets.
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