I have started training since last Jan. It’s almost a year. In this 1 year - I saw profits and losses and learnt a lot.
I once lost 90k on a single day in Sep and I wrote about it here. I got many suggestions! After that I was very careful and by god’s grace, I have recovered the loss recently.
I do trade in commodities and F&O. Now, recently, I am noticing that if I don’t trade at all on a day, I feel uncomfortable. So, I trade and nowadays I am doing risky put/call long and short. Of course, I don’t remain on a trade and follow the stop loss quite rigidly most of the time.
But in the last two weeks, there are days when I ignored my stop-losses. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost with that decision. This does not happen every day though. If I make any loss in F&O , I try to recover in Commodities. I spend time looking at the charts for proper entry. Basically, I am spending a lot of time in trading.
For my greed, recently I am overtrading or made loss (nothing major) for not stopping on time. Today only, I made lost my 1500rs profit only because I traded extra.
I have tried to switch off my phone to stop myself from trading. But then, I again switch it on on seeing any good movement in TradingView chart opened in my laptop. Somehow I can’t stop myself checking the charts.
Any tip from experienced traders on how they stop themselves from overtrading or looking at charts all the time?
Hi! You can use the Kill Switch feature to disable a specific trading segment or take a break from trading. This feature is part of the nudge initiative, which aims to prevent you from experiencing burnout due to excessive trading.
Find more, here.
i hope this is just a figure of speech / way of writing, but phrases like “by god’s grace” and “recovered the loss” do not install confidence that one is operating systematically. Rather sounds like someone who is likelier to fall prey to their emotions.
Any thoughts on whether you can give-up thinking in terms of recovering losses,
either with additional trades in the same day, or even over longer durations?
Maybe convert your weakness into a strength.
Based on the system you have come-up with beforehand,
once you deploy a set of trades, and are done for the day, maybe make a “God-promise” that you will stick to your system for the rest of the day
and not be tempted by what may seem like additional upside from time to time?
Note: Even if it works, it does sound like a temporary crutch and a not a long-term sustainable solution. Maybe ask yourself if there are others things for you to do with your life / spend time on instead of being idle and risking falling to temptation.
I personally liked that phrase. It shows his belief in his inability to make profits. Trusting in your own self and confidence is just recipe for disaster.
Profits are luck, but controlling losses is skill. Most people when met with profits it gets to their head… they think it’s their own skill and trade until account is busted. Not this guy. I think He gets it. -90k to + is a great testament to that.
I need to control my greed which suddenly has spiked
I do have my work and I am kind of neglecting my work for last 2-3 weeks. I got into a good system of making trades everyday and even though the profits were small, it was consistent without overtrading. I did earn a few relatively big profits too.
As this system has started working, I think greed is overtaking me. Perhaps I have to accept that I can make small profits every day and build capital instead of winning the race soon.
All of these are red flags and i guess you know that already.
Somehow you need to be able to objectively define when to trade, as much as possible, and then judge against that else a lot of this stuff gets evaluated in hindsight and we can falk prey to all sorts of biases.
Frankly, i found this whole process when trading intraday with discretion extremely stressful and exhausting and i never really had a clear cut concrete proof that what i did was actually useful in long run.
If you can, consider backtesting to verify your edge, that way you definitely know which trade to take live. And then later you can move to automating execution as well. Thats all i can say, i did not find good success trading with discretion.
Not really, when you know what works ( with uncertainty as a looming figure), then day to day is a lot easier. You still dont know whether things will continue to work, but atleast you know what you are doing is correct thing to do, and then we can adapt as needed when time comes.
Yes, usually all of this evens out with law of large numbers. Controlling losses can be as simple as sending your stops as per plan and not deviating. Where to send should already be tested. And then not getting greedy, using position sizing that allows you to keep trading through difficult periods.
Thanks. Yes - intraday is stressful. So I used to short PE/CE and get help of theta decay. But then I am trying to get extra opportunities too. This is actually making me a trading addict which I don’t want to be.
I trade intraday too, but its all automated. I can disengage completely and that helps a lot. But still to be able to trade, we need to have internal confidence in that what we are trading really can work and has worked in past. I did not get that until i had tested things out with clear cut rules, and after seeing live markets somewhat matching past data.
When you are a struggling trader, make sure you trade with capital that you can afford to lose. Keep size as low as possible. Some of things may get easier with time. It took me 5+years to make that transition and i traded very small until then.
Dont trade with capital that you cannot lose, dont trade for expenses - you need to make a living elsewhere or have some sort of buffer/support. And dont take loans to trade. Good luck. Cant give more advice than this generic stuff.
Maybe read Trading in the Zone, i haven’t but from what i understand it explains stuff that we have to get into our heads properly.
Thing is we are not robots. We are humans with emotions, and don’t want to stick to a routine. While this does cause issues, I believe if we can be human and still make profit, I think that’s the edge. That edge isn’t in a system or programmable, but in the person. Doing the same thing over and over again: what glory is in it? Plans do fail. And as you’ve said they won’t continue to work as well and that there is a time to adapt. That adapting part is human and I think how well you can adapt makes a lot of difference between someone who repeated the same plan millions of times and someone who adapted millions of times. But, everyone has their own strategy and there’s no bad way to make a profit though, as long it is consistent.
Sure, i am giving my view and experience, but nothing is set in stone.
imo, we need to stick to plan and execute like a robot, even when trading with discretion.
It probably should be already decided where discretion plays a role and where it doesnt. Not in the middle of trade of instance.
Sending stops + position sizing is quite basic and i think for 99% of us, should be clear cut and predecided so that we keep risk in acceptable control.
Profit we cant control, but risk we have to try to manage. If by consistency you mean say month by month profits or similar, other than option sellers, i haven’t seen that. Even for them, it might be more like quarterly turnaround in tougher situations, dunno.
At a single system level, i have had periods of losses/no profit for 7-9 months so far and have tested systems with twice that.
I do watch chart, OI and latest news as I trade mostly on F&O and Commodities. However, I need to study a lot more to understand the price action better and to make proper predictions. For past two weeks, I try to get into trade even if I see a little ray of hope and overtrading which I don’t want.
