I don’t know what’s wrong with me the last three days but I am not trading up to par. It’s much more eye opening when the market is actually decent and others around me are making money. I’m disappointed (to say the least) by today but I didn’t do anything fundamentally wrong at first. I even made money initially.

I don’t know how to explain it but from the opening bell, I was very unhappy before making even 1 trade. I was probably a 1/10 in confidence. I had no go to idea so I was thinking negatively — “I’m probably be stuck in all the wrong $hit again, watch me start off all red in my first 5 stocks, I just don’t get trading”.

I missed just about every money making trade for no other reason than just not believing it will work and this bled past 10 am too. Then when they all worked (CAR, AEM, CF — which I was the one to alert on the vtf, GM), I couldn’t stop beating myself up and questioning everything I was doing. I took a 1 hour break from the desk, then came back to make random 100 share piker trades….  but eventually got into trouble trading a breaking news stock in VVUS and turned my day gross negative.

These aren’t my worst results but I feel embarrassed to be negative today. If I sat down and analyzed the patterns that I saw, I could probably come up with objective answers why A was a trade and B wasn’t, but I don’t know if that’s the big problem for me right now. It’s doing it in real time and not getting stuck in bs worries like “well i just brought it up and now it’s 10c away from the ideal entry, i cant feel comfortable in this and it’s probably a worse pattern if it actually gets back to my offer”. Maybe I’m just too slow on top of being too scared. My psyche is just a trainwreck right now and I’ll be thankful tomorrow (or at any point) if I just have fun trading at the open again, regardless of results.

Bella

Greetings from Singapore. I received the email above from an SMB trader.  He is one of those Newbs that make you want to work with new traders.  He does everything you could ask and more.  So it is in that context that I share his thoughts.

I have had these same thoughts.  I have them every quarter.  I have had them every quarter that I have traded.  I will have them again.

There are times when you feel the markets are too hard.  That you just do not get it as a trader.  And then there are streaks where you feel you cannot do anything but be positive.  The truth is those streaks end as well.  You are not as bad as you think when you feel you cannot make money.  You are not as good as you think when you believe you will never have another losing day.

A few comments from the above.

Do not concern yourself with how anyone else is doing.  Ever.  The bank takes your trading check.  It is does not cash your trading partner’s.  This is a journey about your trading.  Do not worry about anyone else, or anyone else’s trades.

Second, you ought to create a roadmap for the open.  But you cannot predict how you will make money.  You do not want to put pressure on yourself that you must be able to predict where and how you will make money.  Trade with an open mind.  Have some ideas on how you might make money but then let the market confirm your bias.

And be ready for easy plays to present themselves.  Often and easy trade you never knew was coming enters and can make your day.  Remember MHS and ESRX from recently?  But you must be open to it coming to capitalize.

You will have bad streaks.  It is the life of a trader.  Keep doing the work the market requires to improve everyday.  Keep searching for the patterns that make the most sense to you.  Do not be so hard on yourself when you are just a little off.  There is a fine line between crushing it and underperforming.  You are not selling iPads at an Apple store here.

When you are feeling like the trader above, make the game easier.  Lower your tier size.  Trade your best set ups.  Trade your best time frames.  And just put up a positive number.  And then repeat the next day.  A lack of confidence can infect every future trade. Rebuild it.  Soon you will forget you ever were in a trading bad streak.

Finally channel the negative feelings above into energy to improve.  Embrace the pain.  Use it to rip through charts so you never feel like this again.  Use it to archive your best patterns so you never feel like this again.

Bella

One Good Trade

no relevant trading positions

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