I am new to day trading and traded trading sim a long time before going live. But i am not yet 2 weeks in and went berserker style. Today I knew ES were going to touch 4200 and instead of getting stopped out (went short) i just removed my stop. I did it again when I knew we will go to the openig of the day. Did never inflict my rules in sim trading. Luckily I was right 2 times in a row, else my (small starting out) account would be busted. Now I am sitting here almost 200% in the green. I am fearful that my success will make me repeat this behaviour. What should I do now? Go back to Sim? Do you have an excercise that might help? Any advice is kindly welcome.
You never mentioned how successful you were following your rules in sim trading. If you did better live by going into bezerker mode than following your rules in sim, then maybe you have a gut feel after your one day of success. Only you can answer the question, because only you are in your head. I'll give you a hint though... Re-read that many times over, and your path should be clear.
A few of my thoughts: 1. Sim trading is not trading. If you stop trading and go back to sim, you are going back to not trading. There may be good reasons for going back to not trading. Learning more about the market you trade and improving a non viable trading method are good reasons. 2. Let go of the money you put into your account. Consider it tuition paid for learning a new skill. If you cannot let it go, you are too poor to trade. Trading futures is not for poor people. 3a. As a beginner, you should be trading the absolute minimum. That could be 1 ES or 1 MES. Paying more tuition than necessary is irrational. 3b. From your description it sounds like you should be in MES. The commissions are relatively much higher for MES but the market volatility trumps trading costs from a risk standpoint. 4. You should only add contracts from profits. Set a reasonable profit goal to add another contract and stick to it. 5. If you have to reload the account, that’s OK. It usually takes a few reloads to get to operational. Consider each reload a clean slate. The time between reloads should be longer and longer until you no longer need to reload. Again you should let go of the money as tuition paid. If you cannot let go, then you are too poor to continue. 6. After you triple your account, take out the initial capital. Congratulations, you are operational. Relax, you are trading with profits going forward. Keep learning. Keep improving.
That is bad trading. Trading is a long term game. It is not about a trade or 10 trades, but about 1000's. Anyone can get away with a few winners out witting their own system. Don't use the "up xxx percent" as justification. Because the other side is blowing up. What to do? Look at your system and if justified modify is to account for todays setups that you altered your plan for.* Then codify the new rules into the system and go back to sim until you are sure the new modifications are justified and tradable. There is nothing wrong with that. Your system needs to evolve into a stable, follow-able, system. It can take years, and potentially NEVER happen. Otherwise, you are on the slippery slope of "use the system, only when it suits me", which is a rather shaky ground to be trading live upon. * Also, more importantly, but often overlooked, is modify your plan so that if you had followed it, it would have been minimally damaging. This part is the most common overlooked by new people, but looked at first by experienced people.
Hello David's faith, I understand. Here is my input and I'm not a consistent profitable trader, yet, so be cautious. You only have 3 options: 1. Trade your plan strictly. 2.Trade a mixture of your plan and gut feel strickly. 3. Fuck that trading plan, and trade your gut feel and make a good guesses strictly. Whatever you do, just be consistent.