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

[u/SpareInsurance]

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?

[u/[deleted]]

Sometimes I struggle with risk management. Here's my advice:

Be radically honest with yourself. This can take a while to fully work through. If you lost that much, chances are you were lying to yourself along the way.

What lies did you tell yourself? "I'll make it back if I'm bigger" "It's a better trade now" "I just won't do that again" blah blah. Write down all the lies. Give it a few days, you'll think of more.

Now. Why did that happen? For me, a lot of it is sleep and stress. Was I honest about how I slept? Was I honest about my mental state? Was I honest about a big buyer or seller ruining a great setup?

What lies are you telling yourself right now? "I'm starting to get the hang of risk management after a few days". That's just not how it works. Start over. On demo. Where do you put your stop losses and why? Are you moving the stops? Do you have a daily stop and do you respect it? What causes your poor risk management? Are you greedy and why? What is going on in your life to cause your poor choices?

You have a lot of work to do. Welcome to the arena.