Dealing With Down Days

Today was the first rough day I've had since the opening of the Live Room. In my trading past I've dealt with plenty of days, weeks and even months like this so it's not really a big deal, but to many (especially the newer traders) this was there first experience dealing with one of those "getting punched in the face" kind of days.  As I stated at the start of the session, I expected the day to be a little odd simply because it was the last trading day of the month and many professional traders like to close out positions for their monthly records or what not. However, I have never done any testing on this theory, therefore I have no rules set about trading on the final day of the month.  Regardless, today was a great learning experience. As a member of the room stated "my ski instructor used to tell me your not learning if you're not falling down." Same with trading, to truly test your market psychology you need to have days like these and persevere.  Do we want them to happen? No, but they do so we need to deal with it.  A good question was brought up in the room about switching to a different system when things aren't going our way.  I responded by saying that I tried that in the past out of frustration and it ended up with me just doubling my losses and getting mad because I misses a few winners that I would have had if I stuck to my original plan. No matter what system or strategy you use whether mechanical or harmonic based, the key is being consistent.  I started off the month winning 9 out of my first 12 trades (75%) which was great but I was fully aware that in the long run this win percentage wouldn't hold so I was expecting some losers to come.  Unfortunately one of the losses we took today happen to be more of a swing trade, so the draw-down was a little more than what we're used to. But none the less we still finished with an overall profit for the month for the Live Room as well as my personal account (assuming some of these longer term swing trades don't get stopped out by tonight). See you guys next month!

*I forgot to add this to the original post but one of the things I like to do on days like today is go back later in the day (after I clear my mind) and run through my trading hours again to see if I would have taken the same trades. If the answer is yest then you know that you traded correctly and that the market just had one of those days. However if you don't see a reason to get involved in the trade again then you know it may have been emotional and revenge based. If you do find mistakes make sure you write them down and put them someplace where you can see them so you don't make them again. That is something that helped me greatly #Kaizen