There’s a pattern in my behavior. Once I gain more than $2000 of profit, I always lose it all later. I already started over with a new deposit of $200-500 4 times this year, and the issue is every time when I gain so much profit, I’m thinking, now a lil bit more and then I’ll withdraw all my money. What happens in practice? I hit my first stop-loss, and then I’m getting emotional trying to get back what the market took from me. Therefore, I get 2-nd lose, 3-rd, 4-rd and then I lose all money. I don’t know why I’m able to increase my deposit from $200 to $2200, but eventually I lose everything. Could you help me, what’s wrong with my approach?
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Hello Buddy, I understand your question which is quite common in the beginning, You just need to set some sort of rules and create a trading journal, Keep your trades limited for the day, Never go for over greed, keep some patience and don’t repeat the same mistake again and again
I’ll note a few things.
First, by the sounds of it, you dont have enough money, to make the money you want. This is a trading trap, because you’re looking for $ returns instead of %/R returns.
Set a definition of the risk you want to take, most people do 1%, 1% of 200$ is 2$, This is not worth your time at all. What most people would do is recommend something like a prop firm, where you can spend x$ to complete an evaluation to control a higher simulated capital.
If you take a prop firm approach, give yourself a buffer of being able to lose at-least 10 trades in a row. If the rule is 10% drawdown, risk 1%, if its 5% drawdown daily, risk 1% and do a maximum of 4 trades a day.
If you lose a trade, ban yourself from trading for the rest of the day.
Have you got back tested data in a journal? Whats your average R per trade? whats your win rate? whats your average RR? whats your profit factor? these are all pieces of data analytics you ideally want before hitting the live markets. How is your strategy defined? Is it technical or fundamental focused?
If you can prove that you have an edge, figuring out your psychological pitfalls becomes a lot easier to manage. But currently it sounds like youre gambling for a payday instead of trading to build an account that can provide consistent returns.
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Yes, I can help. Just tell me what you’re struggling with your strategy, timeframe or risk issues and I’ll try to guide you in a simple and practical way.
How about withdrawing $1500 every time you get to $2000 and starting again with the $500 that is left?
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The main issue doesn’t seem to be your ability to make profits, it’s the lack of rules for protecting them. Growing a small account that much shows that your entries can work, but once emotions take over after a loss, discipline disappears. Setting clear withdrawal targets and a maximum loss limit could help protect your gains before revenge trading starts.
The key information for me is that you make so much profit - you mention you have gone from $200 to $2200. That rate of return suggests you are taking very high risks on very low probability trades - so a few big winners allow you to make a very high precentage profit, but inevitably the law of averages catches up with you and a few big losers eliminate your profit.
If you treat trading like it is a casino, you must expect the casino to win.
Make sure you risk only a small percentage of your capital on each trade.
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On this general subject of risk management, here’s a little brain-teaser that new traders sometimes get totally wrong.
Let’s say you start with $1,000, and each trade has a stop-loss which would cost you 10% of your capital if it’s a loser and would gain you 10% of your capital if it’s a winner. This is commonly expressed as a r:r of 1:1 - you will risk losing as much per trade as you might win, and most experts say this is a bad strategy.
So, if you lose 10 times in a row with a risk of 10% per trade, are you wiped out?
And if you win 10 times in a row with a gain of 10% per trade, have you doubled your account?
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If you lose ten times in a row, you effectively multiplied your account by 0.9, ten times, so it went down from $1,000 to about $350 (actually a bit less if you allow for rounding and spreads).
If you win ten times in a row, you effectively multiplied your account by 1.1, ten times, so it went up from $1,000 to just over $2,500 (actually a bit less if you allow for rounding and spreads).
I’ve never seen a method that will survive “10% staking” long term, though.
That’s mad gambling, not trading.
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The size of the risk in percentage terms for is very high (for trading, not for long-term investing) but that’s not the key take-away of the brain-teaser. Nor is the amount of starting capital.
Key points are that with a win rate of only 50% and a r:r of only 1:1, it is possible to make a considerable profit, and almost impossible to be wiped out.
It is traders’ attitudes which cause accounts to blow up.
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From my experience, traders struggle to get any profits, mixing win streaks with losses. Your problem should be something related to overconfidence. When you quickly reach a certain profit level, you start to consider yourself trading God and either slide from your initial risk management plan or overleverage. The best solution is reduce number of trades and shut down your PC, regardless of the outcome of your trade. Once lesson is learned, you can trade more.
That’s hard, but honestly pretty common. The issue isn’t your ability to grow the account, it’s what happens after. Once you hit a certain profit, your mindset shifts from trading your plan to protecting or chasing more money. That’s where overtrading kicks in. You might need a rule to withdraw or stop trading once you hit a target to lock in gains.
What’s wrong with your approach? You literally said that you get emotional once you hit $2k and start to overtrade, which essentially leads you to lose it all. Do I even have to explain to you that your psychological aspect is one of the only things ruining your trading journey… You have to work on it, and the easiest way is to make a clear trading plan. I think you already have it, because it’s really difficult to make 2k out of 200, but you forget about your plan completely and start to fall for your emotions. You don’t have to do that, you have to keep trading the same way as you did before. BUT, I would suggest you to lower your risk, because it seems like you put a lot on the line while trading.
Nothing is wrong with your strategy.
The problem is you switch from trader mode to revenge mode after the first loss.
You grow the account with discipline, then try to get it back when you lose one trade. Set a rule: after 1–2 losses, stop trading for the day. Protect the profit first.
How do you know this, Robert?
Fublant hasn’t offered any explanation or discussion at all of his strategy - only of his patterns of results, which are certainly a huge concern.
This isn’t a strategy issue, it’s a self-control issue.
You can turn $200 into $2200, so clearly you know what you’re doing. The problem is you don’t know when to stop. “Just a little more” is what’s killing you.
First loss hits and you go into revenge mode that’s where you blow everything.
Simple fix:
Take partial profits, don’t let it all sit there
After 1–2 losses, stop trading for the day
Right now you’re not losing to the market, you’re losing to your own behavior.
Fix that or this cycle will just keep repeating.
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That sucks, bro! I can’t even imagine what you felt after each liquidation. I guess you have just to withdraw a specific amount of profits every week maybe. As other guys already mentioned, withdrawing $1000-1500 is a good idea.
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May sound simple, by once you get to $2000, or even $1500, you just need to withdraw and make it $300 again.
The best long-term stability key is constant withdrawals.