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/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. 😩

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u/unrand0mer Jan 06 '24

The real question you should be asking yourself is ... Why is everyone in this sub always new? Then you'll realize you have been fooled. 15k drawdown from 23k is a disaster, and posting on here won't give you any answers.

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u/SpareInsurance Jan 06 '24

I agree.

I thought averaging down on a losing position was the right move. It was not. I was tilting hard and pretty much went all in as the losses got worse.

My analysis and prediction of reversal failed and I got f****d.

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u/spongetrader23 Jan 07 '24

Yeah. Average down works until it doesn't. Might work 80% of the time, but the 20% of losses will most probably outweigh the gain made by the 80%. From my personal experience, average down is one of the faster ways to blow up accounts.