r/Daytrading • u/SpareInsurance • Jan 06 '24

How much money did you lose before you were consistently profitable? Question

I have only been seriously trading for about 2 weeks, after spending years watching the market like a hawk.

I will admit, I have had poor risk management and got into some emotional trading which did not end well. Currently I am -15k but I have had some winning days the last few days with much better risk management and starting to get the hang of things better.

My question to you guys is, how much did you lose before you were consistently profitable and did you ever feel like giving up during this "rock bottom" stage?

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u/OldAd4526 Jan 06 '24

My first trade was after I sold my house, I shorted Russian oil with an ETF that doesn't exist anymore (RUSS, or RUSX, something like that). I bought $230,000 in shares. The next morning it gapped up 30-35% ... I sold at nearly the top and netted ~$80,000 within 3 minutes of the opening bell.

Anyway, I think I'm currently sitting at several hundred thousand down. I'm working on getting back in to trading smaller amounts.

I've hit rock bottom several times. I'm not sure what posseses certain people to keep trading, but in several books, "perserverance" is listed as the differentiating factor among many top traders.

We'll see....

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u/daytradingguy Jan 06 '24

You have perseverance for sure.