As a trader, you have to be very resilient. There are times when you go into a slump and you question your ability to make money. There are times when it’s so easy to make money that you wonder how you could ever lose money. You have to be able to weather these ups and downs, and remain sane at the same time.

As an example, let me refer to my performance yesterday. I went up nicely on the open in RIMM, but then got involved in one play and held my loser against me for a huge loss. I ended up getting stopped out then turned back on. This happened two or three more times. There was so much money out there to be made, I wanted to make some of it back. Almost everyone on the desk was doing extremely well, making money, and here I was, not being able to make one positive trade.

It was possibly one of my most frustrating days in trading. On my walk home I was questioning whether I was a good trader or not. What did I do wrong? Was I in the wrong stocks? Why was I so gun shy once I got turned back on? Was I ever going to make money again? Last night before I went to bed, I did some review of that day’s trading in my head. By this time I had calmed myself down, and thought about what it was that I did wrong. It wasn’t that I was in the wrong stocks. I was trading stocks that had order flow behind it. My problem was that in that one trade that I got stopped out on, my mindset had altered. And it ultimately led me to not hit LEH when I saw it at 10.50 when it traded down to 8 within minutes, and led me to not hold my AIG short when support dropped. I left a lot of money on the table because of my lack of discipline the first 15 minutes of the day.

So when I woke up this morning, I visualized myself making chops on the open, and making back the money I had lost yesterday. I got here early and traded LEH on the earnings announcement, then traded RIMM again on the open. I made back all the money I lost yesterday with a little extra to spare, and it’s only 12:30.

So moral of the story? Even when you have a rough day, take a step back, breathe, and then think about what you could have done better. Sure you’re frustrated. But in order to be successful in this business, you have to be resilient. You have to be able to bounce back from the bad days and not let it affect you in the future.