Hey all! Kind fucked up this month. I know I should’ve probably been journaling this, but I’ve been hella MIA this month since I wrapped up with finals, then graduated and moved to Seattle and then I had to get furniture and utilities set up and all that shit in the last few weeks, so I had basically no time to do anything except scalp SPY based on TA. Will get back on the wagon and start journaling starting tomorrow for a new month reset.
On the bright side, as a byproduct, scalping and daytrading finally fucking clicked for me, and I had the most fucking successful trading month of my life (even after counting my today’s fuckup). I’m up ~55% compared to May 1st (was up around ~60% before my fuckup), and only had like 3 red days the entire month, all but one of which were peanut losses. (The one big loss was an unrealised loss for a longer term play that I averaged down that day, which I exited green the following day.) Otherwise, mostly all green days with consistent 2% daily profits, even up to 3, 4 or 5% on some rare days. Almost exclusively day traded SPY (and TWTR puts when they were hot).
That brings me to today: I made my daily goal and then some in the first 15 mins of open with about $135 in profit (~4% gains), and I consciously thought that I should call it quits for the day and come back only after volatility goes down if there’s a clear trend. But nope. I overtraded, and ended the day with $58 in losses. $58 might not seem like a lot but it’s ~$200 down from my day’s high (of realised profits), which is like 3 DAYS of trading undone, and after a month of successfully checking my emotions and trading consistently well, I hate how this was how I ended the month.
I can’t even begin to rationalise how this happened especially when I was able to consistently trade with a working strategy all month (including checking that I don’t overtrade on winning days) but somehow threw it all out the window during home the home stretch of what would be a near-perfect month for me.
Any advice would be appreciated. This is the most a -$58 day has stung, and it happened just when I felt like I was getting the hang of consistently trading well.
Something that I’ve learned to do after something like this is to take a couple of days (or weeks) off. This is the most crucial part in retaining your capital, because if you allow yourself to tilt, your bad decisions will start compounding. Its helped me to place a hard stop on all trading until I am no longer in this headspace as to protect myself from my future trades being affected by that mentality. Hope you find your own way of “un-tilting”!
Learn to cut losses fast and not be emotional about them(stubborn or hardheaded in my case usually). It’s a problem I struggle with, and it’s even worse when limited by settled cash to trade with so I would tend to hold on longer hoping it would go green.
Try to paper trade for a few days or take a break and get back to it since you were clearly doing the right things, just be prepared for a trade to go bad for no reason since it happens.
Darn hedgies and their super short ladders get me all the time
Smart asking for advice, I just doubled down, chased losses then tried to swing trade and all of that just made it much worse
Being limited by settled cash is definitely a big mental block to get over. I’ve found myself holding onto positions that I would’ve cut if they were a smaller % of my portfolio just because if I sold I’d be out of settled cash and done for the day. Taking a break and watching more successful members/reading journals was a big help for me.
Breaks will also help you refocus, it’s easy to think that after getting your goal of 2% a day more often than not that you might be able to go for 4 or 5 instead. Sure, maybe you can, but a lot of the time this is an unhealthy thought that will devolve into more gamble-like plays.
It’s also important to remember not to feel bad about red days if you’ve stuck to your plan, no one can be 100% right. +55% in a month is insanely good even with the small fuck up at the end and in my opinion, you should still be proud.
