mistake of course will happen , no way to avoid it. but if we do same mistake again and again there is no way to come out loss project , second mistake always our own choice.
1 Like
Yes! Yes! Yes! And what businesses do not have some kind of costs on the way to their profit. It is the same thing in trading - except we call them losses not overheads or costs.
Any business whose overheads consistently exceed profits will end up bankrupt. And every successful business manages and optimises their costs - not avoid them! Even minimising costs is not always the right answer in a business. 
2 Likes
NeilKruger, Hadden, Manxx, Tommor, Peter Borren
Thanks guys for your early responses. You have already brought up some very important points which i hope we can discuss in more detail as the thread progresses and look forward to your contributions.
I deliberately chose to start at the sharp end and work backwards because as new or intermediate traders the scenario i described in my first post is a place in which WE find/have found ourselves with an alarming frequency.
I want to address those who are going through “I had £1000 now i have £300, yes i know XYZ i really do but its not helping me, I’ve just lost £700 this time.”
I plan to use rooms as a theme starting at the operating surgery which is pre-account graveyard and go backwards until i reach the calm of the mountain cabin with an expansive view of everything.
I hope we can discuss each room in depth and hopefully really help those who may be struggling currently, starting with their most immediate concerns.
Win
1 Like
you are most welcome.
And in the meantime, if you get bored, take a look at one of @WinPsych’s earlier topics from 2014. I read it through once and am now reading it again - in my opinion, brilliant stuff… and as fresh today as it was then (even if I and even maybe @winpsych are not quite so! 
):
Going back that far as a daytrader is like looking at a photo of yourself in the 80’s and trying to convince yourself that those clothes you were wearing and that hairstyle really were fashionable back then hahaha
I definitely second your future proposal of a 10 year trial period before publicly posting anything for public consumption. Just hope i didn’t contribute too much to the appalling retail success rate…sure i threw in a disclaimer somewhere.
I think you people focus too much on losses. ‘Losses are inevitable, losses are a part of trading’. It’s all overkill. And it’s all BS. It’s not a ‘loss’.
Just look at it as a part of your system. If I ask you to draw a circle 10 times, you can even do it, you might make a mistake and it doesnt look right. But you wont care, you’ll just draw the next and next. That’s just like trading, you’re not right so move on. All this oh you lost, plays a trick on you that getting it right is a win. No, its not a win. You just drew the circle right. That’s it, now move on. All this focus on loss is a massive part of trading is just rubbish and not the right way to look at trading.
When you cross the road, sometimes there’s a car coming so you stop, that doesnt mean you lost time. Lol! You didnt win because you crossed the road. Just like that you dont win anything for trading your system. Just trade it as if you were crossing the road, sometimes you cross and other times you dont. In the end you’ll be profitable or not, you dont win or lose anything. Drop the win/lose attitude and you’re on your way to being successful. Threads like this really focus on the wrong things and breed bad psychological habits.
Excellent point. Our real underlying asset is “odds”.
I am going to copy and use your very smart and catchy observation. Hope you don’t mind 
Thanks for the GREAT contribution.
Brilliant. I love it! But curious as to why options are excluded from this postulation. Options add a time variable but we are still dealing with probabilities, no? What did I miss?
The only reason i excluded options was because, as you say, they also include a time element. And time can be traded as well as just defining an expiry point.
This time element has a monetary value which is included in the option price. It is therefore possible to construct strategies combining short and long options, with or without an underlying position in the actual instrument, where the intention is to earn from the time decay component of the short options rather than from a directional move.
However even these constructions include some element of risk or effect from price movement but whereas the underlying movement part is also a probability, the time decay element is an inevitability.
I was just excluding time decay issues, since there are some smart people here, like you! 
1 Like
Hi @Rickster99
I fully agree with what you say and i think you will find that the aim of this thread is precisely that - to explain and demonstrate to primarily new traders that individual losses are inevitable and an integral component of trading. Just as overheads and costs are an integral part of any other type of business.
So i agree with you except, that is, for this bit
It is not talking about this that breeds the bad psychological habits. Those bad habits already exist and form in the newbie mind from their own experience. And that explains why any threads here dealing with “why do traders lose money” attract so much interest and tend to continue ad infinitum.
And it is a serious issue since around 80% of traders do lose money - that is a fact confirmed by the broker themselves. So the issue of losses is very, very serious!
People suffer from fears and phobias and misconceptions about all kinds of things. And the answer is not to just ignore it and hope it goes away, rather help comes from talking about it with the right people and remedying the underlying issue. (Whether we are the right people here is, of course, another issue! )
You are absolutely right that a trader should never be obsessed with losses. But losses are dangerous if not managed correctly, even fatal in some cases - as regularly evidenced in various journals on this forum.
The fact that many do not understand losses as you clearly do, ás an experienced trader, is surely good reason to explore the issue rather than ignore it?
1 Like
If you discount a book before its written is it any wonder that you miss whats inside?
Patience.
1 Like
Exactly!
Not only do some people assume the direction of the thread before its written but they assume that everyone has the exact same amount of experience as they do, the exact same personality, the exact same abilities, capabilities and countless other “ilities”.
Comical:rofl:
Teaser:
A few years ago a scruffy Amreican college dropout with a passion for poker took an account of a few hundred dollars and in the space of 2 years ran it up to around $4million.
As it always does, variance inevitably kicked in (maths, statistics) and he went on the prerequisite losing streak. What happened next turned into a blood bath.
When interviewed years later he said that when he was down to his last $200K there was a pause, a quietness.
He said that in that moment the distance back to that $4million looked so great that all he could see and focus on was that distance, the $200K meant nothing.
He decided to play and to play big with what was left. In less than 2hrs the $200k was gone.
Looking back he said that $200k could have paid for my rent, food and other expenses for a year and i could have still had enough for a small poker stake to grind with. Instead I didn’t have a penny and didn’t even know where i was going to live.
The next post will be released Tomorrow before 6pm (UK), inspired by the story above it is entitled, “200 is plenty in the operating room”.
2 Likes
its a nice message, really mistake actually is our choice
1 Like
You are both right that it is our own fault if we keep repeating the same mistakes - but “mistakes” and “losses” are not the same thing at all. And that, I think you will come to find, is going to be one of the conclusions of this thread!
Mistakes may certainly result in losses (and, for some reason, usually do! ) but they can just as easily (sometimes) even result in a profit!
The point here is that a loss is NOT automatically always a mistake. Losses are an entirely acceptable, inevitable and integrated part of the trading process. You cannot gain without a trade, and the outcomes of all trades will (mostly) be either minus or plus. The key issue then is not trying to eliminate losses but learning to control the frequency and size of the minus trades compared with the plus trades. Three steps forward, one step back, on we go.
The mistakes are not the losses, it is in the negligence or ignorance that leads to taking trades that result in excessive losses. Over exposure, greed, impetuousness, revenge, correlation, and so on. These are the ghouls in the brain.
I remember reading something about this in Trading in the Zone, I shall try and find it again. But the core issue is that the outcome of each individual trade is unpredictable and of no consequence psychologically to the experienced trader - it is the pattern of result over a period of time that counts. As Mark Douglas put it, the casino is not concerned with each individual win by the client, they gain their profit consistently, month after month from the overall edge in the rules of play.
Whilst I hate to infer that trading is similar to gambling, our trading rules are also our edge and the outcome of each individual trade is not a mistake if our rules are applied. These rules cover risk management as well as direction/entry/exit.
1 Like
200 is plenty in the operating room
The large room gives the impression that it’s part of an abandoned hospital. In the middle there is an operating table, obviously very old, it has a steel frame with brown leather restraining straps and oversized wheels. There is nothing else in the room. There are no windows, the only light is provided by the glow of a projection of a giant 5min EUR/USD chart on the ceiling above. As the current candle moves there is a flicker. There is no sign of a projector or any other technology in the room.
There are no staff in the room, no voices in the distance, banging doors or any of the noises you would expect to hear in a hospital, in fact there is no sound at all. If you you put you hands over your ears and press as hard as you can and then remove the “worrring”, thats whats lack of sound feels like.
You didn’t even see that there was a figure on the operating table did you?
Slight pause
You: It’s me isn’t it?
How can it be you? You’re reading this on baby pips.
You: I don’t know how. i just know.
The lone figure seems to be oblivious to the restraints and the 5 min chart on the ceiling above him. He’s staring at it but it’s doubtful that he sees the 5th candle forming a range above the 00 big figure, or the 97% margin used warning.
You: That’s my account isn’t it, it’s my money?
Equity £202.16
You: I’m feeling really uncomfortable, i’m actually really starting to feel ill. Lets stop this.
That’s not how this works i’m afraid. You see those 2 doors to the left? Sometime between now and the end of today that operating table will wheel itself through one of them. Look at the floor, see how most of the marks lead to the door on the left? It’s a direct access point to the Account graveyard. That’s game over you wont see a penny.
You: But it’s my money! What about the door on the right… wait a minute who are you, are you even human? Stop this, i feel sick!
The door on the right is convalescence.
You: Why isn’t someone helping me, where are the doctors? If my account is on the ceiling then someone obviously has access. Shut the trades down, that’s £200, the accounts still alive, CUT THE LOSS!!!
There are no doctors, The Algorithm is projecting your account. The Algo decides which door you go through. It’s decision is always 100% final and 100% correct.
You: What kind of a sadistic being are you? Look! The range is going to break, my money!
The range doesn’t matter, the EUR/USD doesn’t matter, the trading and study don’t matter, more importantly what you want means nothing, not in this room. This room is way beyond all of that.
Pause
Before you entered this room there was a pause, in that lobby you were already beyond your limits but you had just enough consciousness and strength to execute one decision, one single decision, shut it down or let it run. Your decision was let it run. After that you were so far beyond your limit and your capacity that your brain shut down to protect you from the pain that you are not feeling right now.
You: This isn’t real i’m just reading a thread on babypips but i feel like i’m going to vomit. This is mad.
So now you are going to act tough or are you going to go the i’m too intelligent or too disciplined for any of this nonsense route?
In every industry there are rooms just like this one and there are men and women strapped to operating tables in all of them. No? OK, i’ll prove it.
How many retail store chains can you name that were around for decades but no longer exist? How many airlines which flew thousands of passengers around the world and employed thousands no longer exist? Politicians…Ok, ever heard of a guy who became president of the most powerful country in the world and then got himself impeached over a “cigar”? Athletes, doping, stripped of their titles, . What about manufactures that employed whole towns that went bust ???
At one point there was a pause, men and women like you were in the lobby, over the limit of what they could personally bear but with just enough left in them to make just one more decision. They all let it run, hoped they would get back to where they were…and tehn stepped into an operating room just like this one. From then on the Algo took over and the Algo is never wrong.
Authors comments: To get to the operating room an individual will have gone through many rooms, all with various options and challenges.I hope we will discuss those in this thread (The lobby is next)
I introduced personal limits in this room but we will discuss that more in other rooms. For now i will just say that in my opinion we all have different limits when it comes to the ability to handle pressure and stress. Once those limits are exceeded by enough you are no longer in control. I believe those limits can be increased through deliberate practice, increased knowledge and understanding but like most things we all have a genetic limit as to how far we can improve in that regard.
The operating room is beyond all of that anyway. Whatever your individual limits are once they are surpassed by enough, that’s it. This is not a room that you practice for or an environment that you try to conquer. If you think that is what profitable traders are doing day after day you are wrong.
Most of us have been there at least once on our journey but suppress the memory. I try to keep the memory fresh enough so that if i should find myself in the Lobby at any time in the future and there is a pause, it may influence my actions.
For those of you who made it to the end and hoped for a happy ending, the operating table went through the left door…this is not Hollywood!
I could be wrong but I detect sarcasm. I wasn’t trying to be a smart Alec. I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me on some fundamental long held beliefs in the past so now I seek to get clarity and an understanding when I’m confused by something someone says. What I know for sure is that my perspective is not always the right one and that I do not possess more than the average intellect. Therefore, I’m constantly seeking to gain a better understanding of things.
Thanks for the explanation. I see now why you might exclude options.
Not at all, @QuadPip! I meant it with all sincerity. Really!
I am always very pleased whenever anyone bothers to read anything I post - and you not only read it, but you also thought about it and asked a very relevant question - and I really appreciate that.
I often feel that people skip-read forum stuff especially when posts are too long (something I am always guilty of!) and that it is all just a waste of time - and so it is reassuring to find people who read thoroughly and critically of what is posted! Thank you!
Hey @WinPsych
I’m afraid you have lost me with the “operating room” it is a bit too subtle for my poor brain cell 
But I do recall one situation in my early days when I realised I was helpless to do anything with my position and I remember the feelings associated with that!
I was a day trader and rarely left positions open even overnight let alone over a weekend. But I had a position open in SP500 on a Friday afternoon and was watching it into the close ready to close it out. I was also reading something on another site and missed the market close.
That weekend was probably the longest of my life. wondering where it would open on Monday. Even having a stop was no consolation as the market could easily gap past it. As it happened all was ok on Monday but that was a big and permanent lesson in staying in control of exposure risks!
But that operating room? No, can’t say as I recognise having been there at all!! 
What about others here?