I set this punishment for myself that if I broke a rule, I'd have to cut off an inch of my hair I'm so frustrated with myself today I am so frustrated I I broke a rule. The rule that I broke was giving back half my profits and not walking away. usually. what I've been saying is if I give back half my profits I got to throw in the towel and walk away and I was really, really frustrated myself the other day because I followed that rule and then I ended up missing a great opportunity that no doubt would have gotten me out of the red today.

I give back more than half my profits on one trade I was up $3,800 and in one trade I gave back about 89 bucks. So I was up only a thousand on the day and at that point I should have followed my rule. I should have said, you know what, hey, take $1,000 Is it 3,800 No, but it's still a thousand more than you had the beginning of the day. Take it and be happy, Be grateful.

but no I wanted to get back up to 3,800 on the day and so I took another trade and lost like 1500 on it. and then I was down 500 on the day and then once I was right on the day, you know that's the place where I should have said alright, I'm done I'm right on the day. You know if you go from green on the day to red if you go from being at the daily goal or above the daily goal to red, on the day, you've got it. you know that's another trigger.

That's another threshold you got. Throw in the towel. Did I do it? No, of course. I Took another trade and then I was down.

eleven hundred dollars or a thousand bucks or whatever it is and you know you could say alright. Ross Well, whatever, being down a thousand bucks, it's not not the end of the world, it's but it's the frustration. It's not the dollar amount as much, it's just the frustration of giving back those gains. And I'm so frustrated myself.

so this is my punishment. This is what happens when you break rules, so that's probably good enough. Whatever. I Don't care.

Stupid stupid day. Live to trade another day. I'll live. I'll get through it.

It's not a big deal, it's just it's just frustrating. That's all. It's just frustrating. It's it's stupid and he was unnecessary and I should have followed the rules and been grateful for the thousand bucks instead.

I Kept trading and you know Here I am. So the moral of the story is that as frustrating as it is to hit that max loss and then to watch stocks continue to run up or to hit your trigger of giving back half your profits. It's much much worse to keep trading and then go from being moderately green to being red. going from green on the day to being red, that's a trigger and you know what? I'll be grateful that I'm walking away right now I'm not at my daily max loss I could go back in there and I could keep trading I could find myself down four grand, five grand, eight grand, 10 grand, 15 grand.

You guys know I could do it I've done it before. it's not gonna do it today. and I take this loss, eat the loss, and take the haircut and be back tomorrow. All right.

So we're gonna go over the trades from today. You can see the P&L they're down one thousand forty dollars. It's actually one thousand thirty nine dollars and ninety six cents. It's not the end of the world, but it is frustrating.

It's frustrating because well, on my first two trades, my first trade was on C PAH right out of the gates. So I took a trade on C PAH out of the gates squeezing up. As you can see here, this set up was the first daily candle to make a new high. Alright, so the entry here was 350 for the break over.

that level ended up squeezing up to a high of 388. but I I didn't make good money on it I tried to add thinking was gonna squeeze over four Ended up making only a hundred dollars and my second trade was on a ESC where I lost one hundred and sixteen. So after my first two trades, this was a break of the pre-market highs. I was down fifteen dollars on the day.

Not a great start. Alright, well then we had FLN t FL NT ended up being a really nice one. As you can see here, it started to squeeze up and I jumped in this to ride the momentum from this pullback right here all the way up to the high of 390. So I made $2,100 on that and that put me up over $2,000 on the day daily.

Goal: Awesome! Next trade: A quick little trade on my SZ off the high damn mentum scanner 350 there now I'm up 1300 or 2300 on the day, 2400 on the day. Then things start to go south. This trade on PEC PE CK is where things started to go bad. So PEC pops up on the scanners right here.

at Squeeze, it squeezes up from 5 up to 582. no trade on it. It resumes from the halt and it dips down for a second. I Was looking for an entry but the resumption was kind of funny and it didn't really.

I didn't really give me a I didn't feel like I could manage my wrist on it. so I didn't take that trade and then it ripped up and got halted a second time at 660. Okay, then it resumes from that holiday. It's a high of 7.

It dips down and when it starts to surge back up right here. I Bought at at $7 it rips up to a high of 750. Boom I made $800 on it and just like that I was up about three thousand eight hundred dollars or something like that I was Ov over three thousand dollars on the day maybe was 3300. Alright, drops back down to love 65 65 and then on this Campbell right here I got back in back over seven I thought it was gonna bounce and rip up because I was noticing the volume was really coming in right here.

So I was like alright I think this looks good I got back in right here with two thousand shares at seven, it pops up to seven sixteen. it then in the next candle drops down to 66. That's fine I'm just gonna hold it for a second and see if it comes back through the highs. I'm only down 600 bucks I'm still green on it and then it flushes and gets halted going down and I'm holding 2,000 shares at 640, it resumes at 621.

it pops up for a second and then break 621 and drops down here and I stopped out right around 6:15 So you know that that was really disappointing. Um, I went from being up 800 on the stock to down 1,800 and just like that, I gave back two thirds of my daily gain. So now I was up only about a thousand dollars on the day after that trade right there and I actually I took another trade on this and lost on it. So this this loss I was actually more of a 1200 dollar loss than I took another $600 loss which was right.

it was like right in here I got in thinking it was gonna curl back up. it actually ended up curling back up but not where I thought it would. You can see it kind of dropped back down for a little while and then popped up up to seven. but I tried to do that that trade like right here and I was wrong and lost another six hundred bucks.

So why didn't I throw in the towel after I gave back half my gains today I was too frustrated I was just too frustrated and that's not a good reason. but I was just I was so frustrated that just like that I'd give him back. You know all that profit. I didn't want to stop trading I wanted to I wanted to get back to green.

You know, get back to where I was at and you know the thing with the thing with with that is you know then I'm down I'm up only $1,000 I take another trade I give back more profit then I'm going to the red and and then I'm like, well can I get myself back out of the red and then I you know I I lose some more so you know it's just a really frustrating thing And of course was it yesterday or the day before that? I followed that rule I was up two grand, followed the rule, finished the day up only a thousand but the stock that I was watching. but I decided not to trade because I had already given back half my gains ended up ripping without me and so that that that thing that's so frustrating is it's the inconsistent reinforcement from the market where you can have positive reinforcement for a bad behavior like breaking your rule. Like let's say right now, I could jump into Peck right now, let's look at this so you know. Let's say I jump into this right now with 10,000 shares.

Let's say it breaks over seven and then rips up to 725 750. I'm kind of gonna feel like a hero because with 10,000 shares, I'll make 2,500 bucks, maybe $3,000 and I'll be green on the day. Disaster averted. but I'm already down a thousand bucks.

What happens if that trade goes the other way? What happens if I get in with 10,000 shares here at 680 and then it flushes to 640 Now I'm down four grand on that trade I'm down five thousand on the day. Now that's a bigger loss that's gonna take more time to bounce back from. you know? So you have to draw these lines in the sand somewhere. and unfortunately, it can be very frustrating in the market because there can be days like this: I'm Peck where this thing might end up ripping over seven and it might end up going all the way to 750 or even eight and I'm gonna be thinking you know God dang it I just timed it wrong on every trade I took and then I kind of, you know, used up all the risks that I could take today and now I can't take any more traits and it's gonna just run without me and that's very frustrating and it can encourage you to think well.

I Should just go ahead and break my rule I should just go ahead and take the trade, try to make the money. Ultimately, we're here to make money, so you know this rule is holding me back, but then on another day you'll get the reinforcement where you continue to trade and just continue to lose money like today and it just gets worse and worse and worse until you finally throw in the towel. and I've had days where I start getting more and more emotionally impulsive and frustrated and angry and they just start saying you know what? Screw it I'm jumping in this thing I'm taking. You know what? how much buying power do I have I'm gonna max it out I'm gonna take 50,000 shares I don't care, you know and all of a sudden you're like I mean they're gonna finish the day green today or I'm gonna blow my career like you start just getting so emotionally invested and look at this thing now you've got a fourteen thousand share bid you could I could talk myself into trading this right now I guarantee you I can do it cuz it looks strong.

the five minutes strong the bid. the bid is here. at 80 there's 90 on the ask breaks over seven seven twenty five, halt level seven thirty. It's tempting right? and this might be one of those ones that I'm gonna just be so frustrated with myself for because it does exactly what I thought it would do but not when I thought it would.

So right idea, wrong timing and when you've got the wrong time that you don't get paid for that so it's fry it. You know trading is is very frustrating in that way. Um, you know I try to think of another career where you know you'd have this kind of thing because it feels to me kind of like you know, building a stack of a block of Tau a stack of blocks and then having them get the whole tower gets knocked over and you just have to start over. And and that happens with traders.

I mean it. The reality is that happens every you know. Every couple of weeks we're gonna have a loss. The best traders in the world.

This happens too. It's not just you, it's not just me, it's this is part of trading. you know I can look into my Trader View reports here just for for reference and we'll go under detailed and we'll go under what is it? liquidity down here and now it's win-loss expectation I Always get this one confused, you know and this is this is my P&L from whatever last I don't know how long this is, but you know some of these drops were not fun at all. like down here.

that drop was like $50,000 off the highs. This little dip. this little dip wasn't much fun either. neither was this one, neither was this one, neither was that one.

and through here I was pretty good at keeping the dips really really small. but I had this period of like six months where I really didn't make a lot of money. So then you know I started to get more aggressive and as the accounts been growing I've been getting more aggressive and then the dips have also been getting bigger. So you know, like what I just don't know it like what other job you can have.

Not that the other jobs aren't stressful and I'm not. It's not really like the stress issue, it's the doing days of work, weeks of work even and then being told you have to start over. throw it away. you got start all over I Guess maybe it feels like writing a report in in high school or college and you do like a really long 10, 15, 20 page report.

or maybe longer and then you're told no, this is terrible. Start over this. You know, are you? You did the whole thing on the wrong topic, start over, you know, and and and all you got it. All you can do is go back to the drawing board.

I Heard a story about a musician in the Midwest who recorded an entire album and spent you know, this time in the studio recording the entire album and a studio got hit by lightning and the server got fried and it was gone. Just like that, the whole thing was gone. What do you do? You get frustrate, you get angry. sure.

but eventually you gotta just get back on the horse and start over. I Mean unless you're just gonna say, that's it I'm never doing this again I'm never recording another album. I'm done with this. I Mean if it's in, you know no one's gonna.

you're not gonna do that and we're trading. You know? not that this is a big loss by any means, it's just that it's a day that I'm particularly frustrated because I made a decision to break my rules and the result is exactly what the rules are supposed to prevent happening going further into the red. So you know that's just why it's It's sometimes just very, very frustrating. But anyways, um, cut my hair I cut about three inches off of it.

so let's try not to do that again and hopefully can get back in good shape this week. And you know what? Realistically, I made $11,000 on Monday like this again. it's it's fine, it's just it's just frustrating. and this month in general has been a little frustrating.

the last 12 months I've had several periods of being really frustrated with just sort of choppiness and unexpected losses and not responding fast enough when the market starts to cool off. and that has resulted in a few really big draw downs. This one that I had here in March I was the biggest one that I had had of all time up until then and then I did it again here and again here. So my cumulative drawdown.

This is the cumulative drawdown and so what this shows you is the most I've lost versus my all-time highs. So like if my all-time high as a million dollars and then I have three days in a row where I lose 10 grand total I have a ten thousand dollar drawdown and let's be realistic, we're looking at one point six million dollars of profit. So my biggest drawdown right now was in November At forty-seven thousand, it's not great. forty-six thousand, 34 and then 48.

so you know I've gotten myself back to, you know, back to all-time highs right? going into December December was awesome, so thank goodness for that. But the reason these draw downs were getting so big was partially because I was increasing my share size. I was increasing my risk and trying to swing for homeruns and not being quick enough to adapt to slow markets and and getting a little stubborn and a little frustrated and just saying, you know what? Screw it. I've got the money I've got I'll take 20,000 shares of this, you know I'll I'll just start to size up and I'm not gonna not going to back down and that's just as you can see here.

didn't work super well. Not that last year wasn't a good year and I'll do my to 2019 year in review where we'll go over it. But and you know just to say that I I don't like having those big draw downs and I'd really like to have less of them. And so one of the goals this year is to tighten that up and try to respond faster when the market cools off.

and I need to not have days like this. So anyways, that's where I'm at for today. you know, down thousand bucks, whatever. Be back at it first thing tomorrow morning.

Alright, I'll see you guys in the morning learn more about trading. Check out some of the links in my description and if you have questions, ask them in the comments. I Personally respond to every question posted on my channel and don't forget to subscribe.