Good times teach the worst lessons
Just sharing my humble 15 years experience for those feeling vulnerable right now because nothing has changed. your equity curve is determined solely by your actions, inaction, and decisions.
This is how I started, trading ‘bucket shop’ style accounts with my local brokerage houses to chase the relentless 2010/2011 bull market—almost no corrections until the crash triggered by the European debt crisis. No deposit was required for such account, yet a minimum credit of 20K was always granted, even without a salaried income.
Everyone wanted to make money, and that profit motive drove me to explore every opportunity I could, and often, the advice comes from paid educators (i trusted them because of their fame and popularity) who spend more time creating slide decks than actually trading.
The dream to be rich quick felt real and within reach—until it all came crashing down when I played with fire that i almost couldn't extinguish. The mentality is to trade the losses for more action, a hope to break it even at least.
Every time the market struggles to break out of a pivotal level and chops for weeks, I see the same pattern on Twitter—breakouts fail, and in hindsight, you’re told you should have used a pullback strategy instead.
And often, they are only being told after the fact. Imagine if you followed the hyped advice in early of this month to transit from a breakout into a pullback buy on intraday weakness at MA strategy (which seemingly worked for a few sessions)—you could end up digging yourself into a deeper hole if you keep averaging down your buy point from last week.
when your primary strategy stops working, your focus should shift to elevating your drawdown management skill and deep dive into your journal to refine your edge—not blindly taking trades like a slot machine just to satisfy your urge for action.
If you aspire to elevate your trading to the point where it finances your life—covering your mortgage, kids' education, and your parents' retirement—you need to have 'second level thinking' than everyone else.
At the very least, stop yourself from losing money during this period.
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