Putting your hard earned money on the line can be a difficult circumstance to deal with when you're first getting into trading. Especially when you hear statistics like 95% of all traders fail. My advice is don't think about the money. Rather judge your trading off of how well you execute your plan and how well you identify goo trading opportunities. So here's a question for you. If 98% of all traders fail like they say, then how come most traders seem to do well in their demo accounts? I believe, it's because there are no emotions or attachments to demo trades. In a demo account traders find it easy to enter trades, stick to targets, hold stops, etc, all because there is no consequence to losing. However, when you start trading with real money it can be a lot different if you're not properly prepared for it.
When I first started trading (before going through the T2 training) I was a demo account king. I didn't have a written plan, no set in stone rules, but whenever I entered something it seemed to win. As you could expect I soon decided to trade live. After all I was realizing all of these demo profits so why shouldn't I take advantage and make some real money.......A month later I decided to stop trading live because I pretty much blew my account. It was at this point that I realized the psychological difference between trading with pretend money and real money. When trading with my own cash, I suddenly started to miss trades because I would think too much about them more before entering or I would take profits out way to early in fear that the markets may reverse. My winning percentage was positive, but that meant nothing since I was letting losers ride, and cutting winners short. Because I had a small account I would get upset at my wins because the payoff seemed so minimal compared to the amount of stress it took to get there, and I would get upset at my losers because I had to watch my hard earned money go down the drain. It was a never ending cycle that not only did a toll on my account, but my psyche as well.
After my hiatus from trading and finishing the T2 training course, I started over with a clean slate. I had properly back tested, written a detailed training plan, and laid out specific goals that I wanted to reach. I opened a small account and was trading pretty consistent for the first few months. After seeing that I was doing well a family member of mine wanted to get in on the action. (I honestly knew I wasn't ready to trade anybody else's money but eventually I agreed.) I was given about 20 times the amount that I was trading before and although I continued to trade consistently for the following couple of months he wasn't happy with the monetary return I was making on his investment. This pressure lead me to focus on chasing a dollar figure rather than a consistent monthly percentage and I fell back into the same boat as the previous paragraph. (Luckily for me, I noticed the path that I was heading down and decided to cut trading ties with this client before it got too bad.)
Jason once said this in his class, "if you can make a dollar in the market, you can make a million." This seems odd at first but if you think about it it's very true. Trading is about controlling your percentages not profits. If you can make a consistent percentage trading each month with a 10k account then your $300 a month profit will easily change to a $3,000 a month profit without you doing anything different. This may be hard to realize at first, but give it time and you'll slowly start to see a difference in your account balance and even more importantly your trading habits. Being a trader with a small account I tried to remind myself of this every day by putting it in the psychology & philosophy section of my trading plan (which I read every day before trading) but also by having a note in my room that says "Just Keep Doing What You're Doing." I realize that even though my account is small, my percentages are high and if I can consistently trade the right way it's only a matter of time before I get rewarded more for putting in the same amount of work.
When I first started trading (before going through the T2 training) I was a demo account king. I didn't have a written plan, no set in stone rules, but whenever I entered something it seemed to win. As you could expect I soon decided to trade live. After all I was realizing all of these demo profits so why shouldn't I take advantage and make some real money.......A month later I decided to stop trading live because I pretty much blew my account. It was at this point that I realized the psychological difference between trading with pretend money and real money. When trading with my own cash, I suddenly started to miss trades because I would think too much about them more before entering or I would take profits out way to early in fear that the markets may reverse. My winning percentage was positive, but that meant nothing since I was letting losers ride, and cutting winners short. Because I had a small account I would get upset at my wins because the payoff seemed so minimal compared to the amount of stress it took to get there, and I would get upset at my losers because I had to watch my hard earned money go down the drain. It was a never ending cycle that not only did a toll on my account, but my psyche as well.
After my hiatus from trading and finishing the T2 training course, I started over with a clean slate. I had properly back tested, written a detailed training plan, and laid out specific goals that I wanted to reach. I opened a small account and was trading pretty consistent for the first few months. After seeing that I was doing well a family member of mine wanted to get in on the action. (I honestly knew I wasn't ready to trade anybody else's money but eventually I agreed.) I was given about 20 times the amount that I was trading before and although I continued to trade consistently for the following couple of months he wasn't happy with the monetary return I was making on his investment. This pressure lead me to focus on chasing a dollar figure rather than a consistent monthly percentage and I fell back into the same boat as the previous paragraph. (Luckily for me, I noticed the path that I was heading down and decided to cut trading ties with this client before it got too bad.)
Jason once said this in his class, "if you can make a dollar in the market, you can make a million." This seems odd at first but if you think about it it's very true. Trading is about controlling your percentages not profits. If you can make a consistent percentage trading each month with a 10k account then your $300 a month profit will easily change to a $3,000 a month profit without you doing anything different. This may be hard to realize at first, but give it time and you'll slowly start to see a difference in your account balance and even more importantly your trading habits. Being a trader with a small account I tried to remind myself of this every day by putting it in the psychology & philosophy section of my trading plan (which I read every day before trading) but also by having a note in my room that says "Just Keep Doing What You're Doing." I realize that even though my account is small, my percentages are high and if I can consistently trade the right way it's only a matter of time before I get rewarded more for putting in the same amount of work.
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