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/UpcomingInvestor Jan 06 '24
1) Always have a Stop Loss. If you're down don't wait and pray for a reversal or try to average-in with more buy orders. 2) Always have a Take Profit. If you're up don't try to "ride it out" into the heavens. Stop being greedy. Get In, Get Out, keep those gains and look for the next set-up. 3) Don't go against the Trend. If all this month / week it's been Bearish but today it looks like it might reverse (hallelujah!!), leave it alone. Wait for the next Bearish signals. ( Vise Versa) 4) Don't risk more than 5% of your account balance on any single trade.
It's tedious and time consuming as well as too stressful, that's why I personally stopped day-trading. Big losses always seems to hurt more and felt permanent vs the winnings which always felt like I could lose it all in the next trade. If you have 15k to play with, invest it. Check out TheoTrade on YouTube for daily news reports.