Why I can't win

Quoting iandekoker

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hhhmmm.....maybe i am the guy referred to as being from another planet but i have never lost a trade in my life. And i dont intend to. Loosing is not part of my strategy. So once u can make winning trade after winning trade then ur ready to make big money on forex. But as long as u accept loosing trades or stuff up ur account then i suggest NOT to do forex as it will make u a very miserable person

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Quoting iandekoker

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I have been trading live for 4 months now, before that i tried demo for 6 months. So that would make me a newby i suppose, always eager to learn from people who has something worth learning from like Dirk du Toit (Dr. forex) and my mentor Rene Hedley.

Currently i have 10 trades open, each of them can take a 5 000 plus pips swing against me. Currently the market is less than 500 pips against each of my trades. All those open trades together is not even 10% of my account so far. So i have more than enough room to manouvre thanks to my gearing of only 1:7.

Sorry but i dont trade JPY. It's just too wild currency for me even though i think it is a very undervalued currency right now. I only trade GBP/USD and EUR/USD and on daily charts and nothing else. They suite my personality and way of trading better

ps....i do have 2 questions about the 9000 pip downdrown u were talking to

1. Why would someone have a 9000 pip drawdown on EUR/USD if since trading started there has only been a 5900 pip range in the history of this currency pair if i am correct. The lowest = 0.84. The highest = 1.43. Please correct me if i am wrong? (So you might have a 5900 drawdown if u went short in julie 2001 and are still holding ur position. But then again that person might also need a pair of new glasses cause he read his trend wrong)

2. Why wud someone have a 9000 pips drawdown on EUR/USD if u trade with the trend which happens to be an uptrend since middle 2001. Yes the market might retrace a few hundrend pips but those are all seen good buy oppertunities.

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Quoting the_wizard

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For anyone out there who knows me (mainly from the J16 thread) you will know that I've been having a difficult time trading of late.

Infact I'm supposed to be having time out to clear my head because something is fundamentally wrong. My win/loss ratio in picking trades through price action is good, I can hold my winners (although I do sometimes still close a little on the early side), I cut my losses quickly and yet I lose money consistently. I have found out that this is down to my risk management and yet I really think I understand the principles of money management clearly - I just can't follow them.

Well Saturday it was my birthday and I got talking to my girlfriend about my trading. She is not a trader but she is very logical and she is a good listener and has a habit of getting me to think about the right things.

We were supposed to be going out to celebrate but in the end we talked for hours and it was all very serious and there were tears and there were realisations.

A long time ago, I read Market Wizards and I remember Seykota's statement: "Everyone gets what they want out of the markets" and I also remember the interviews with the psychologists that talked about working with traders who had issues with their self worth and who actually wanted to lose and I remember thinking - "This is rubbish - who actually wants to lose? We are all in this to make money."

But talking to my girlfriend yesterday about my trading, I was just being myself and being truthful and it seems like it was the first time in ages that I have allowed myself to be like that and one part of the conversation in particular, went like this:

Her: "What do you like about trading?"

Me: "I like the drama. I like the fact that a trader lives and dies by the sword. There is an incredible sense of self worth to be achieved as a trader. I guess deep down I have always felt like I have never succeeded at anything and trading gives me the opportunity to not only succeed but to do it in a big way - to achieve what few else can and have done."

Her: "And you like to tell other people around you about your achievements?"

Me: "Yes - without a doubt. I always tell people. I suppose I'm boasting."

Her: "What would be your ideal trading related boast?

Me: "Well, my ideal boast would be to say to someone - I lost five million pounds today and be very cool about it.

Her: "But why would you boast about losing?"

Me: "Because if you can lose that much money and still be standing then you are obviously worthy of respect"

Her: "So what you are saying is, that losing is, at least in terms of the story you tell people, better than winning and that really to be respected, you aspire to lose."

At this point it really dawned on me what I was saying and was happening when I trade.

There are lot of issues in my trading but this is certainly key: I really think that on some level I want to lose and my trading history reflects this - when I start with a small amount of money, I have always run it up phenomenally well and then sabatoged my own progress.

I wanted to post this here to see if anyone else could relate to this at all or just to encourage others to post their own thoughts or psychological issues or even turning points where they realised that mentally they were on the wrong path and are trying or have actually succeeded in turning it around.

Thanks for reading.

Wiz

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