Art Of Trading Member Asks Me A Good Question

I have been working on trading the crude oil futures and have been doing okay.

I trade one or two contracts. Today I saw I pattern I got very excited about so I thought I would do 4 contracts (about 10,000 shares of USO).

The trade fired off and I had an $800 stop. It moved about 12 cents in my favorite so I thought to bring my stop to close to break even.

I still do not know how I did it in Trade Station but the stop became like a sell limit instead and I got sold with a $80 gain.

By the time I tried to get back in, crude was running really fast.

You can see crude moved close to 2 more dollars two. One trade and I could have made my quarter in two hours

I got to be more calm when I trade.

I feel like a tight end in football (real football not the crap you get excited about) that dropped a game winning touchdown pass.

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I do not know if you have had this happened but with me the less I have to lose the easier it is to take on risk.

When I was newly divorced, I had to use my credit cards to make ends meet. I knew of a good company that just went public that was very under valued.

I had about $2000 in cash. I borrowed $2500 off my credit cards and took a $2500 loan out against my car.

I put it in a margin account and bought 2000 shares of a $7 dollar stock. Totally insane.

I sold the stock 4 months later at $12 and paid everything off. The stock later went to $30 about 18 months later.

That 18 years ago. 5 years ago I could day trade an account of 25k where many times I would buy 50-75k worth of stock making or losing 1,000 a day - no big deal.

Now I finally have an large account to trade with 150k. No debt other than a small mortgage. My only kid is out of school. I have a decent retire nest egg. But now I find myself out being able to stomach a $200 loss. 10 years ago I had many losses of 2 or 3k and it was no big deal. I also had wins that size too.

I have seem to lost my balls in my older age. I wonder if it has to do anything with my Blood Pressure meds of the last 5 years.

I do know if has to do with the fact that most of my trades are done in minutes or hours instead of days or weeks or months.

Any thoughts? It is driving me crazy that I went from being way too aggressive to not being able to handle the pressures of normal risk.

Jeff.





Here's my response:


Hi jeff.
Your story is awesome and i will tell you one thing: i can relate and i know EXACTLY why!! A few years ago, i used to swing hard for the fences with 5 figure swings in my PnLs almost daily. It's simple:: you are getting older! LOL. As traders when we are young we are fast, furious, aggressive, cocky and well......'DUMB'!! Also, in your younger years to take those kinds of risks shows that you had a 'nothing to lose' attitude!! Now, you have a nice nest egg and a sweet size of a trading account, no debt, YOU HAVE A LOT to lose!! You instinctively want to keep what you worked so hard to build!! I think what you could do is pull out about 20K from your 150K account and use that 20K as your aggressive portfolio. That will help your "gambler's high" going! But as always as i preach here daily: Whether you TRADE conservatively or trade aggressively just MAKE SURE TO TRADE WITH DISCIPLINE!! Know your risks, know your setups, know your stop losses and always factor in worst case scenarios.

hope this help jeff!

p.s. I love Jeff but i think he is a little misguided about soccer: It is the number one sport on planet earth!! ;-)



As always guys, i am here to help in any way i can! I will always give my truest honest answers for better or for worst.

Happy trading!!