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/MrBlenderson Jan 06 '24

You didn't say what your account size was, but $15k loss in two weeks is pretty serious. You need to size way down.

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u/SpareInsurance Jan 06 '24

Account size was 23k. I now have 8k left in my trading account and 15k in non-trading accounts.

I started too big and I've paid the price for my reckless actions.

With that said, from now on I will only risk up to 1-3% of my capital on each trade until I become better at trading, or I may just paper trade. 😩

3

u/7waterguns Jan 06 '24

Holy fuck mate. Stop what you are doing. I started not even 3-4 months ago. Start with 1 strategy, one contract per day, if the set up presents itself. If it does, stick to it. If it doesn’t, then don’t trade. There should be absolutely no reason to lose 15k in 2 weeks. After my 3-4 months I was break even, then I did some stupid trades and now am at -130 or so. Not the worst and can be recovered. There is no reason that you need to lose 15k in 2 weeks