john263

I very much respect the honesty of the thread, as sometimes, even if just seeing myself, I too can learn from losers. The key being able to learn from my mistakes before I fail. I am an extreme over achiever, and as such have made and kept far more than I have lost. But explaining why I have ever lost, or more importantly why I would continue to keep losing, is certainly important if I care how I am spending my life. Markets change and people change. Most of the documented successes in life, including mine, come from a time when the strategy, or niche, hence the "edge" of the writer matched the market conditions existing at that time. If the markets did not change, then once anyone found "what worked" "for them", would soon own the world. What is a more likely cause of failure is not realizing either how the markets are changing or how I as an individual am changing. In my case, it was a transition between being single with full time market focus to raising a family, and losing my "edge", which was the ability to trade the trending markets of 1970-2000 in no cost mutual funds. The key was the diversification the funds allowed large amounts of money to be traded safely,with smaller percentage returns per trade, and that trends often lasted 11 days rather than 11 hours as might be the case today. Trying to keep up with those changes while being "distracted" with anything else (Miss Market feeds off the temporary success of eventually distracted participants) will soon lead to mistakes, and the repeating of those mistakes generates losses. It is what I do with those losses that lead to temporary success or more losses. (Losses are objective, while most of my activities yield subjective results.) One way to fail is to pay tuition, or worse drive, to any school or guru at which the price of admission is so high as to imply success will follow rather than just learnng. Worse is to do it all on your own thinking you cannot learn from others. Those who can, do, and those who can't teach. I have done both. The key is for how long. The MOST serious losses in my part have been any time that I become so fixated with one side of a trade that I become complacent and do not fully consider the other side. This might involve a too large position, or even leaving the room with unfilled orders in place at some "support levels" below the market. A variation of the same error is not clearly allowing for exactly how much pain might be involved before any gain, and ignoring the volatility inherent in trading around any events that will move markets while I am invested. Another most serious cause of continued losses if NOT working through my diaries of my trades, and analyzing the emotions and feelings that occurred during any large gains or losses. (There should be none.) And finally, since the 90% of traders lose adage is reasonably optimistic, there is the realization that trying to live a "normal" life, and trade, is not going to work. Trading requires attenion proportonate to the time horizon I am trading, and the precision of the trade is just as important on the daily chart as the 30 minute or 1 minute chart. When one can have overnight trading ranges exceeding both sides of the prior days range, it is impossible for most people to think they can turn their back on their "story" and live a full life with other people and succeed at both.