Crappy New Year
Posted by robbiechicago on December 31, 2009
What a dreadful day. Yet again I have taken two steps forward and five back. I simply do not know how to convert these bad days into something less financially destructive and emotionally demoralising. My good days are still too few, the bad days are very often massive and more than wipe out any progress I’ve made. It’s so incredibly frustrating. I wouldn’t mind if I could pinpoint where I went wrong, but days like today seem to have absolutely no logic to them, and I just don’t know how to trade in these conditions. How the hell are you supposed to make money from markets when they’re completely random and seem intent on throwing up as many false signals and red herrings as possible?
I know there are many traders out there who can operate in these conditions. I wish I could see what they see. It’s also frustrating that after all this time I’m still no closer to cracking it. I’m not stupid. I’m a smart bloke who has overcome more difficult things than this before. I can’t believe that this is beyond me, but days like this just baffle me.
So, that’s five months traded, and five losing months. Things were so bad today I never looked like putting together the run I needed to make December profitable. The progress made over the last couple of days has been blown away and my confidence is back to rock bottom. Unless I can figure out how to avoid blowing great chunks of my bank every few days this whole thing is going to end in dismal failure.
So, good riddance December, good riddance 2009. Another month begins tomorrow. I wish I could go into it with even the merest hint of confidence in my ability to make 1p profit over the next 31 days.
I hope your day, month and year have been better than mine! Have a good evening tonight – Happy New Year!
Cash or Crash? 
Andy R said
Hi Chicago
Just discovered your entertaining blog – hope 2010 turns out better for you, and sometimes you have to pay to learn with trading, which I did in the early days way back in 2005 when I first started.
Feel free to get in touch if you ever need to chat and discuss ideas…..and finally if you could spare a copy your spreadsheet is superb, much better than the efforts that I have been managing over the years, my trading has got better and better my Excel hasn’t – hopefully you can spare a copy.
Keep going m8….little and often is the way at first.
Cheers.
Andy R
Cran said
You need to have a reason to enter every trade. If there is no reason to trade don’t enter the market, just wait for the right time.
That reason should be based on an edge, a known advantageous probability of profit to liability (either from experience and observation of the markets or statistical analysis of past prices and outcomes) so that over time you will win more than you lose.
You need to know your edge, and your entry point and exit point both red and green, and you need to accept that you will not win every trade and have confidence to take reds as well as greens at the right time, you must be able to move on from each trade without emotion even when the reds come several at a time.
Until you have refined your strategy and you can consistently manage your emotions and your bank you need to use small stakes that you can afford to lose.
That’s what I keep telling myself anyway… 🙂
Hope you have a more successful 2010.
neil said
Cran is right. You need to have a strategy, an edge, that works. The only way you are going to work one out IMO, is to play around with the markets, see what they tend to do. You would only want to do this with £2 stakes so your losses will be minimal. I used to think like you do, that trading should be easy, and couldnt understand how people were seeing the same information as me, but were interpreting it so differently. Trading is not easy, its probably one of the hardest things to be able to do well. The good news is, that even someone who has struggled for a year and a half( i.e. me) , can still turn it round and learn how to be profitable, but it might need you to accept that you dont know enough yet, I dont know if its pride( or greed) that is stopping you from using £2 stakes, Im sure it was with me, and only when I swallowed my pride, started to have fun trading, as well as doing a bit of hard work, using £2 stakes, did I manage to turn it round and find consistent profits.