Did not journal before trading. Then just chopped myself to pieces. Not sure what’s wrong with me. It’s like I have to put myself in a position of feeling horrible before I stop. Yesterday was bad enough, but this morning driving over, I was thinking to myself, rationalizing: ‘well, it’s not that bad, I’m still not doing as bad as I did in September. At least I stopped myself. It’s a new month, I’ll start off slow & build up.’ Now I’ve made it as bad as September. I was rationalizing to myself ‘Well, averaged out over the course of the year, $500 loss average every month is just market tuition!’ I was rationalizing ‘Well, if I just make 2 points a day every day this month, then next month, then add from my bank account I’ll be able to scale up to 2 contracts, and if I keep making 2 points a day every day, by the end of next year I’ll be making $20,000 a month!’ These were the thoughts on the drive over. ‘Well, I’ve only transferred $2,000 from my bank account in the last 6 months. That’s 2 weeks of paycheck, that’s nothing!’ I’ve now had to transfer another $1,000, making a total of $3,000 transferred to the market in the last 6 months, and a grand total of $7,000 lost for the year. There is still a voice in my head saying ‘That’s not that bad! that’s less than 10% of what you’ve made this year, you have the money.’ That may be true but this is still unacceptable, and the losses are unreasonable. Good thing I put a bulk of my money towards my credit card payment last month instead of leaving it as prey for my own self destruction in the market. Did I just need a more forceful reason not to trade in December? I rationalize to myself ‘Well, I made $2,000 in two weeks last month with not too much effort—it’s possible. It’s easy! Yesterday’s loss feels bad, but I’ll definitely make it back!’ I’m not going to make it back. It’s not easy, I have been considerably lucky in winning streaks. I have no tolerance for losing at all. At what point is a sunk cost fallacy distorting my perspective with trading. Am I beyond repair in my self destructiveness? It’s all within my control, and I fuck myself every time. Trading is a meritocracy and it’s exposing the exact degree of my merit, which is a pitiable sum in this moment. I do not exhibit self control, and I spiral into pain.
Am I a masochist? I was a masochist in college. Getting drunk, fighting people, falling off things and then just hurting myself worse to somehow numb the initial pain. This is an uncomfortable truth, but it is one: when I’m in pain, I almost encourage more as the first bout numbs me to feeling more. This is deadly in the market.
The thing is I’m already recovering. Already rationalizing. Already feeling better. Like this isn’t that big of a deal, like I am ok. And there is truth in this, but for the sake of my future and any hope I have for actually achieving any vision of prosperity I have for myself this behavior is unacceptable. I need to call it a year for trading. This was an unnecessary period on what could have been a reasonable down year. It was unnecessary to make it another 18% worse. I need to stay away from futures until I’ve built back some sort of cushion. Thousands of dollars have been burned just from commissions. In fact, the bulk of my losses have come from commissions at this point.