Yesterday’s journaling helped me I think. I think I am having a confidence crisis and it’s not helped at all by my habit of only indulging myself in self criticism without balancing it with self praise. If my fear is that I become too positively delusional about myself, then the inverse should also be considered, that I may be too negatively delusional about myself.
Additionally, after my day yesterday, I began to ruminate on what was working before—how was it that I was able to consistently generate profits and what went wrong.
The partial conclusion is that I was not reaching for so much; for such large point gains in /ES. I was content with wins of 3 or even 1 point. A 5 point win at the beginning of my profitable period was massive to me. This changed after my first massive losing day, in trying to catch up I was seeking larger point gains, and I would get in positions where I’d see my 5 points captured, but hold them and then see the gains dissipate and crash swiftly into loses of the same size that I would take. I need to revert back to the prior perspective, and honestly—though it seems to be advised against in the trading community—it feels like looking at the dollar value of the trade may help me. Am I really so grandiose that making $100 is not enough? $100 is incredible. That’s 2 points on /ES, a complete trifle.
This is the mindset I went into trade with today: capture 2 points on /ES. You can do that, and that’s not some insignificant sum for you. $100 is solid. Compound those tiny gains, you do not need to be some swinging dick trader, nor do I want to be. You’re an incredibly analytical powerhouse, you are gaining an intuition for the short term ebb and flow of the market within small fluctuations. Capitalize on this. Cultivate the capacity to intuit large trends, but capitalize only on the miniscule, more certain ones. Build your account through your trades and add to it with your income and you will slowly bolster your capacity to being able to make $200 then $300 a day, at which point you will be making more than your salaried positions. There is no need to be a hero. If you make only 1:1 Risk to Reward trades for 2 /ES points at a time you can slowly grow your account. This should be your goal. Learn to take losses this way as well. Just as $100 is a solid gain, $100 is also a loss that is completely manageable and you should be happy to take.
I may be expressing too much elation at one small win, and the prospect of hope on the horizon, but this is an intentional indulgence in the positive side of my potential, which as I addressed initially is something I’ve been depriving myself of. My tendency is towards self criticism, and so I will be conscious about overcorrecting the other direction & deal with the inherent discomfort.
$100 is great, you can work with that. Small gains. Be your own trader, fit your own style. You know what you’re doing and what you need to do.