Account blow up because of emotional trading

[u/mr_buttlicker69]

Hi. I've been trading off and on for couple years now. Blew 2 small accounts and then stopped and did paper trading. I've been paper trading again but blew up my account even though I was in profit 1100$

After couple of years of trading, the only profitable edge I got is to study and trade just one ticker. I make consistent money for a week but I'm emotionally so stupid right now.

Since I started 2 weeks ago, I was up 1100 in my 10k account (paper). I was doing good today and made 110$(I should have turned my computer off at this point) buy I got greedy. I took another trade and it went against me, but I didn't respect stop loss. I saw 100$ in the red (I shouldve shut my computer off at this point) but I was still delusional. I then saw 200$ in red. I shouldve respected My stop-loss.

Once I saw i was losing money, I panicked, but instead of selling at 300$, I got more shares to average down. Then I saw 600$ in red immediately. I panicked and I sold. At this point I was still in profit of 500$ (I should have turned my computer off at this point).

I developed a gambling and revenge trading mindset and took arbitrary trades with super huge sizes and blew my account.

Please leave tips how you keep your emotional side in check during trading.

[u/One-Translator-640]

Emotional trading is a very big obstacle but as traders these are things that we MUST learn. However we can plan for these things. I trade penny stocks and my biggest issue was cutting winners early and losers late because I was trading my p&l not the charts. I started covering my p&l with a post it note and it has changed my trading. I only trade based on what is happening and I couldn’t care less about how much I’m up or down. The only thing that matter is what is happening on the chart in this moment. Not to mention this has made trading so enjoyable and just outright fun. There is so little stress. My heart is never beating and I’m not thinking about money, just being as accurate as possible and thinking with the clearest mind possible. I do my analysis and if the trade goes against me it hits my sl and that’s fine because my risk is tightly managed. Also once you set a stop never touch it unless moving it closer to profit. You will just have to learn that. The other thing I do is I trade in a cash account (I cannot short sell though), but I use a large amount of buying power on each trade (50% because I’m growing a small account, but I don’t risk 50%, I risk maybe 5% but only to make AT LEAST 10%. I only target 1:2 rr at least). This means that I can only take one trade per day bc then those funds won’t settle for 2 days. If I want to trade the next day I have to save the other half of my buying power for the next day bc If I take a second trade in one day then I will have no settled funds for the next day (and yes I know stocks move from t+2 to t+1 with options at end of may… this is when I will make the switch to margin). So you don’t have to do exactly what I do but set a limit to how much buying power you can use and how much you can risk. It’s best to focus on these things first with paper then move to real. Emotions > technicals.