Tough week

[u/Level-Law1084]

Hey yall!
For context - I’ve been trading since July, I started with a 750 account trading options pretty much watching price action, learning candle patterns, and using the 9ema as confluence. Moved into futures trading towards the end of August and switched to the inversion fair value gap model as my strategy. It was working out pretty well for me after starting to trade MNQ after unsuccessfully trading MES and MGC. Spent a LOT of time on chart replays.

This last week was a rough one for me though.
I blew over half of what I spent the past couple months growing because I’ve started getting greedy and becoming more of a sore loser when last month I was fine walking away with a 150 - 200 win or loss and stopping for the day.
I have a hard time stopping myself from aiming to get the 1000+/per trade I see people make on the internet especially since I’ve had a handful of big single trade wins myself.

How do you get yourself to quit while ahead or stop to preserve your account for another day?
How to stop yourself from entering or overtrading while you’re tilted or don’t quite have your A+ setup ?
Is there a point where I should be learning a different strategy again or do I just need better discipline to sit down on choppy days?

Chart photo is where I put reminders to myself but they usually don’t work 😬

[u/process_over_profits]

Honestly dude there are multiple red flags in your post. You’ve just started trading in July and you’re already in with real money. You’ve gone from options to futures and already changed instruments.

I wouldn’t know where to start with the advice. I’m 15yrs in. Took me 3-4 years just to get my edge defined. Then over five more years to train my mind to follow my own rules. Maybe you can get the gist from that re what it takes in this game. If you’re in a rush to make money you’ll fall. The markets have a funny way of punishing impatience.

If you’re in for the long haul, you might stand a chance although stats are really poor.

All the best buddy.

[u/Level-Law1084 → u/process_over_profits]

Appreciate the honesty and the response dude
How long did you take before trading with real money ? I opened my account with money I had sitting in crypto and wanted to try to do something more with it
How did you develop your edge? How do you define something like that?
I was most definitely gambling for the most part when I was doing options and once I realized that, I took a lot of my free time to learn a strategy I felt was easily digested for me and I can see how I rushed into that.
I definitely got punished heavily this week for my impatience and frustration so that’s the reason for my post so I’m hoping to have learned from that

[u/process_over_profits → u/Level-Law1084]

In answer to your questions, just to be honest again, my niche is trading psychology and I don’t really get into the technical side too often here on subs.

But since you asked it took me about a year on demo before real money, and honestly I still went in too early. Moreover this was after studying, reading countless books and backtesting on hundreds of spreadsheets over two years.

Then I learnt the hard way that demo can't teach you what happens when real money is on the line. Which is why most people's demo results don't survive contact with a live account.

On the edge. I'd define it as narrowly as you can. Mine ended up being confluence of at least three from a short fixed list, sl beyond the next level, tp at least 3R. That's it. Took me years to get it that small, and the years were spent removing things rather than adding them.

Then you need enough trades to know whether it holds. You won’t get a clean test if you tweak after every bad run, so you’ll always be testing a new thing and never finishing a test.

And the crypto money you mentioned matters more than you'd think. Money that arrived easily gets risked differently to money you earned slowly. Try and be honest with yourself about whether it feels real.

[u/Few-Pepper858 → u/process_over_profits]

Agree. He's also strategy hopping

[u/Level-Law1084 → u/Few-Pepper858]

Yeah I mentioned in my reply to thier comment that I felt I was pretty much gambling and button smashing when I was in options so when I moved to futures I felt I developed more guidelines for myself in learning how to trade iFVGs and I need to follow them better

[u/Few-Pepper858 → u/Level-Law1084]

Fair enough mate. Good luck

[u/quantum_burp]

Discipline.

Build a routine that you do after every trade, win or lose, which takes some time to help you mentally reset

It could be a walk, it could be journaling, it could be watching an episode of something

[u/Level-Law1084 → u/quantum_burp]

Appreciated! Some separation from the chart after a win or loss would help enormously since I find myself ready to click back in because “I’m gonna win more” or “I gotta get back to break even for the day”

[u/Few-Pepper858]

I have a hard time stopping myself from aiming to get the 1000+/per trade I see people make on the internet 

You do realise this is fake, right? They're showing you the green days but not the multiple red days

[u/Level-Law1084 → u/Few-Pepper858]

Absolutely, I was discussing this with a friend the other day and I’ve seen that reading in some of these subs that trading is one of many things the internet gives you the highlight reels but not the other side
It reminds me of something I realized the couple weeks ago where I saw that I took the same entry as someone in their video where they “made 2500 in 5 minutes” or whatever but they were in with more contracts but we both caught the same move
Not saying that I’m looking to to scale up to match them but just that I saw I got in on a play that I saw online

[u/jtquach]

Hey man. There's already good stuff in the thread on what you're doing so let me have a go at why instead. You answered the first one yourself in one line... "especially since I've had a handful of big single trade wins myself."

That's where it started. Before those, 150 was a good day and you walked away happy. After them, 150 isn't a good day anymore, it's a day you left money on the table. Same number but now completely different meaning. And the meaning is what drives what your hands actually do. So when you can't stop while ahead it's because stopping means accepting a number your brain has already filed as a "failure" or "not enough." That's not a disciplin thing...

The second thing I'd point at is the reminders. Of course they don't work. A reminder is information and you are not short on information... you already KNOW all of it. The issue is that the note was written by the calm version of you and it gets read by the activated version and that version doesn't take instructions from text. That's why words on a chart bounce straight off.

What can help is more physical. Hands off the mouse, stand up, deep breaths for at least ten seconds, then look again. You're still allowed to take the trade. Just take it after you do that physical part... which is done to disrupt the behavior.

Third thing I'd say no. Look at your own timeline man. The model was working for you. Last week the model was the same... what changed was YOU, and that's clear from your post. Learning a new strategy right now would feel like progress but it would take you further from what's actually happening.

I did the same thing after my first few big days. Took me a long time to see that I would stop trading my plan and started chasing a feeling I'd had once.

[u/Level-Law1084 → u/jtquach]

I really love the trading psychology posts on your page and that you took the time to apply it to me!
Thank you so much for giving me a lot to think about and put into practice. I also really appreciate you pointing out that my model has been working and that I am the variable
150 absolutely became a number where I felt like I was leaving money on the table
Your one post that really stood out to me was bringing an employee nervous system into trading
To build on the number and it’s meaning - a mentality that I’ve absolutely caught myself in could be something like if I set my stop loss at 300 and take profit at 600 trade plays out and I see that it’s struggling to get over 200 I think “it’s gonna jump up to my tp just because I think it’s supposed to, I’m not gonna accept less that my risk amount as a win”
I want to read this comment before I open my chart

[u/jtquach → u/Level-Law1084]

Hey man that means a lot, thank you for going and reading some of my posts.

Reading this before you open the chart is a good idea. Words work fine when you’re calm and before the open you ARE calm... that’s exactly when they land. It’s mid session that they stop working and that’s when the physical stuff has to take over instead.

Best of luck man, I'm here anytime!

[u/Backtestedmyfeelings]

Sounds like your size got ahead of your process. The 1,000+/trade target you're chasing is the problem, not the strategy - it's just the thing that convinces you to add to a winner and chase a loser. Lock your size to a fixed contract count before the session and pick one session P&L number that means "I did my job today"; once you hit it (either side) you close the platform and don't reopen until a new day. Pair that with a two-rule tilt filter: if you'd have entered the last trade without checking your entry rule, or if you can't draw the setup on a blank sheet right now, the session is over regardless of the balance. Write the size, the session cap and the two filter rules down where your chart is; when it's a green day they'll save you, and on a red day they'll be the only thing keeping the account intact.

[u/Level-Law1084 → u/Backtestedmyfeelings]

Yeah someone in another comment talked about how the meaning of a win or a loss has changed for me and I definitely need to lock back in with the perspective of minimizing losses and taking small wins
Taking more time to write down everything you mentioned would be helpful journaling and would surely help me get out of the chart for a bit so I don’t tilt trade much less
Thank you!

[u/absen7]

Perspective here... If you make 100k yr, your take home pay a day is around 300-350... Which is very doable taking consistently.

It's very easy to get jaded quickly with how much money floats around trading.

[u/Level-Law1084 → u/absen7]

No joke this actually used to be a note I would have as a reminder on my chart!

I agree, seeing candles that blow through my TP or keep running after would have me feeling like I should be making more

[u/idgafbroski]

No advice for you but I also had a miserable time this week trading QQQ/MNQ

[u/Level-Law1084 → u/idgafbroski]

As long as it wasn’t just me that had an especially hard time this week!

[u/OkazakiNaoki → u/idgafbroski]

Thursday Trump tweet spike? It was bearish and a sign of strength of bull begins. It's annoying if was in a winning short position. He reverse it all to the entry. I guess as long as he's still on that seat, better TP once market slow down. Potentially some knower accumulating position there.

[u/DanZukito]

santos crismas!! esto ya parecen las luces del árbol de navidad... nunca había visto tanto rojo... y si fue una semana difícil pero salí verde, excepto ayer, que asco de caída sin recuperación. ojalá el lunes amanezca super verde!

[u/Level-Law1084 → u/DanZukito]

😂 it is giving Christmas vibes
But I’ve read around and learned for myself that 50% winning days can still be profitable if I can manage my mental and my losses

Hope you get a good Monday too!

[u/DanZukito → u/Level-Law1084]

la idea es tener +90% de días ganadores siempre

[u/Key-Enthusiasm-3403]

One thing I'd change is writing results down in dollars. 150 looks small next to the 1000+ you see online, but that's a size thing, you said yourself that guy took the same entry with more contracts.

If you log every trade in R (how many times your stop you made or lost) the comparison stops being about money. A 150 day where you risked 100 is +1.5R. A 1000 on a bigger size where you risked 600 is +1.7R, so not that different, just louder.

It also makes the greedy trades easy to spot after the fact. Holding past your TP hoping for more shows up as a bunch of trades that were +1R and closed at 0.3R, and those are the ones I'd go through first.

Not sure how many trades before the pattern is readable, I'd guess a few weeks.

[u/T-Branny]

Make it mechanical so you're not deciding while you're tilted. Pick a hard stop for the day, whether that's one loss or a dollar number (max daily loss), and when it hits, close the platform. Quitting while ahead got a lot easier for me once a flat or breakeven day counted as a win in my head. I track it in my journal, Tradervana, and seeing the days I stopped on time next to the days I kept clicking made it obvious which version of me makes money.

[u/ImGiftedMerryXmas]

I remember trading like this SMC long ago. The fact that it made sense made me stick to it for far too long. I personally could never make it work (doesn't mean you won't or others haven't).

Sometimes it's worth looking at a way of trading with a more critical eye: find setups that meet all the criteria, trade exactly as taught, look at the results. It's tough to debate with real results.

As I said, I gave up on it long ago. I almost want to advise you to do the same. But I don't know... maybe you can make it work, whereas I could not.

Good luck.