The title says it all. As of right now I am up a measly 31 points for the year. Now, if I was trading at my goal per point of £200 then that's not all bad. That's £6200. Nice. But I'm not. I'm trading at £0.50 per point and trying to build my account. So that's £15.50...in 8 weeks. It's profit and not loss so I am happy for sure, but man, it's so damn tough, especially when I was up 233 points after the first 3 weeks of the year!
Had I followed my strategy religiously, and not made silly mistakes, it should be 301.
If you take my unofficial target of 20 points a day, by now I should be at 800. I say this because (100 points a week = you're able to double your account every 10 weeks = you're able to move up in £/point). So as you can see, I'm a little ways behind schedule.
There is a big part of me that is very disappointed. Of course. In May of this year I will have been trading for 2 years, and still my account is not even back at what it was when I started (£1000 - it currently sits at £546.38). In fact as I read that it's a little bit more than disappointing, in fact it's marginally depressing. But now at least I truly understand how hard trading is. When I first started I had these dreams that by now I'd have quit my job, I'd be living in a rented house on my own (I live in an HMO with 5 other people and I hate it, but it's cheap, convenient and I can keep myself to myself), and most importantly of all I'd have the freedom of life I'd always dreamt of. In fact, I worked out that if I doubled my account every 10 weeks as planned, somewhere between 22nd September 2023 and 1st December 2023 I'd reach that magic number of £200/ per point. So as you can see, things haven't quite gone according to plan.
The question is - Now I know this, what do I do with this information?
Do I change my strategy? Do I trade more often or for longer? Do I take trades at a bigger size? Do I pay for a course, attend a seminar, or sign up for a funded account challenge? Do I try and seek out a mentor? Do I read more and start to actively participate in the many forums? Do I stop trading indices and trade something else like Forex? The answer to all of these questions in my honest opinion is....no. Stick to my strategy and just be patient.
I have to realise and take into consideration one very important thing before I do anything else, and that is that, when I first placed a trade back on 20th May 2022, my mindset and my psychology was very, very different to what it is now. I was a scared money bunny. As I've said in other posts, no sooner had I placed a trade than I was looking to close it. As soon as it was just a couple of points in profit I got scared, I felt uncomfortable and I just desperately wanted to get out. If a trade went against me, I wanted to snap close it to stop myself losing more. God forbid it stopped me out! Flipping the switch or adding to a trade? Yeah okay. Whatever! That's something professional traders do, that's not for me. I just want to quickly make points, and feel no discomfort whatsoever whilst I do it. A losing trade was truly heartbreaking. I didn't keep a record of my trades other than writing them down in my trade log (a couple of which I have torn up in anger a long, long time ago when I was losing and yet another trade went against me). I didn't have clearly defined rules to my strategy. I was wet behind the ears and desperate to change my life. In fact, I was not only a very different trader to the one I am now, I was a very different person, both mentally and physically. So now when I look back over these last 2 years, I realise I had no chance at all of realising my goal. None whatsoever. In fact, I am grateful that I am still on my original deposit, because as you can see from virtually any post in any forum (WallStreetBets I'm thinking specifically of you), most people have deposited multiple times in their first two years of trading, if their still even trading that is. Many have given up. They certainly haven't been grinding the smallest stakes possible trying to rebuild! No. And this is what makes me not want to change anything. I know now that trading is a marathon, not a sprint.
You see, I now know better than at any time in the last two years just what it takes to be successful at trading. It takes patience. Patience with the markets. Patience with your strategy, as no strategy that we know of yet wins every time. Patience with the losses and the slumps. But most important of all, patience with yourself. If you can be patient with yourself, it helps you to feel gratitude for that which you currently have. We all have desires, that's human nature, and no matter what they are, we should never be afraid, ashamed or dismissive of them. But we don't all have gratitude, and in my opinion, gratitude and patience go hand in hand. They feed each other. For me, you cannot truly have one without the other.
And this is where I am right now.
Yes, I would love to have achieved my desires as previously mentioned by now, but the fact that I am still trading on my original deposit, the fact that I am still learning more about myself every time I trade, the fact that I am fortunate enough in the first place to even be able to trade, are all things I am truly grateful for. Not only that but in a perverse sense, I am also grateful for my losses. Why? Because in experiencing this loss I am building stronger and stronger synaptic connections in my brain, which help me accept loss as an inescapable part of trading. Every time I lose, how I react to that loss is an indication of my mindset. If I am calm and accepting then this shows I have great patience. Take this morning for example. I held a trade for an hour and a half, and I finally had an opportunity to move my stop to breakeven. Within 5 minutes of doing this, I was stopped out for zero. An hour and a half of what for many would've been an emotional rollercoaster, for nothing. Nada. Diddly squat. Did I get angry? No. Was I frustrated, sure. But I sat and I smiled. It is what it is, and I know full well it will happen again. But without patience would I have held the trade for that long? No. It came back to my entry price many times and I could've closed it out way before, but I didn't. I was patient. I watched as it moved into profit on numerous occasions. Did I scalp it instead of sticking to my strategy? No. I was patient. Was I rewarded for my patience? No. Not financially at least. What I made on this trade cannot be seen in any tangible form. It's not reflected in a balance on a screen. It's buried deep within my orbitofrontal cortex and my medial prefrontal cortex (according to a study in Japan) and this is worth way more than a handful of points in a balance on a screen. It created new connections and strengthened those that already existed. It reinforced the foundations of the correct trading mindset, and this is what will help me make many, many more points in the future. Just remember, from tiny acorns grow mighty oaks, and at the moment, I am just beginning to grow my seed.
I just have to be patient.
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