If you're still struggling, or if you're encountering a rough patch, i do have some thoughts and recommendations.

Consider a combine, but not in the way people tend to, rushing through. Use a live environment in a sandbox with a tiny bit of skin in the game. That's what they are good for if you treat it as such. Think of yourself as a struggling Starting Pitcher in the Major Leagues that has to temporarily get sent back to the AAA minors to work on your form.

better to lose $500 than to lose $50,000.

11675 sh.... had to short nq nice 40 point $NQ_F drop

Here was my thought process on today's $NQ_F 11555 short zone trades today:

Remember, 11555 was a SIGNIFICANT pivot since September 23rd, after JPow's October FOMC speech. It was worth an attempt to reject higher price exploration post-CPI... for instance, as discussed this morning with where I covered $NQ_F shorts and others were getting long $ES_F, look where we rallied
prior day RTH

so you could consider that level respected because anyone stuck short yesterday, viewed today's dump as a god send to cover losses

If you wait around looking for WHY or scramble around looking for what news headline just hit, you've missed the trade. the WHY will make you second guess when the trade is about to happen. i never care about why - other than market structure and what rates are doing, which - the bond market is the driver of our macro environment

Consumer Credit is out of control. The Fed has work to do.

A recent GOBankingRates survey found that 30% of Americans have between $1,001 and $5,000 in credit card debt, 15% have $5,001 or more in credit card debt and about 6% have more than $10,000 in credit card debt. Although 6% may seem like a small amount, that means that based on the survey results, 14 million Americans have over $10,000 of credit card debt.

33% of Americans Believe It Will Take More Than 2 Years To Pay Off Their Credit Card Debt

I re-read my own understanding of it every week, and many of the lessons are from years upon years of lessons learned through pain. I believe traders do have to experience failure before truly respecting the Risk involved in trading.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1581684… The biggest thing I can try to impress upon anyone is to stop thinking in terms of gut feeling, STOP thinking in terms of X *will* do Y, and start thinking in terms of Systematic Execution. Most people would do better to follow simple systems, than try to come up with complexity.

People who say it’s not easier to make money if you have money don’t know what they are talking about or have never had to live life in a place of lack. I can assure you it’s a lot easier to make money with 25k than at 5k and again at 50k than it was at 25k, and yet again at 70k I trade the same way every day & start every trade with 1 lot & scale no matter what, I’m just nowhere near as levered compared to notional now as I was then. Your confidence in a setup has nothing to do with what happens in the next tick. Every moment☝️in the market is unique.

Holy Shit. I shit you not. I just went to go pick up some Kung Pao Chicken at Lotus in Milwaukee. I open up my Fortune 🥠 Cookie. Inside of it I see an official @FTX_Official advertisement and the fortune says “I HODL therefore I am.”

Fortune did not favor the brave. I wonder what the other cookies say.

Just counting down the hours before I can cook the family a breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns and bacon. LFG

Asked about what confirmations i look for before I enter a trade. Answer: None. Confirmation = you missed it.

Know that every trade is a probability of outcome and not a guarantee. Plan to lose money first in order to make money. scale in, enter close to failure, or enter smaller # of contracts further away.

it happens dozens of times per day, and hundreds of times per week, thousands per month, 10s of thousands of times in a lifetime.

What people don’t think about early in their futures life is how undercapitalized and overlevered you really are.

You take $5K and the broker offers you $500 margins to trade ES intraday. Up to 10 lots. Each lot is $50xPoint of notional risk. Over $1.8 Million levered on 5k. I see it all the time in combines and even live accounts. People dream of massive daily gains every day but what is more likely is you take a major blast to the face on even one trade and it knocks your ass out, to the point where you can’t even use same size next trade.