I've been into stock market trading for a good amount of time now. I'm able to analyze basic charts to include patterns, support/resistance levels, EMA's, earnings, current news, the greeks, implied volatility, etc. But for the longest time have my experience with trading defied all that I've learned about the stock market, and felt that the essentials and basics behind trading go straight out the window.
I've even resorted to joining paid Discords. I will do very well at some point, then the next following weeks it will be loss after loss after loss. When it comes to the point to where my port is extremely exhausted to take any more plays, the market rallies. Everyone is taking profits. All the gains they've acquired are shared in their chats while I just stare at the screen, angry.
Some may say, “risk management”. Set stop losses. Only invest what you're willing to risk. Do your own research. Just don't trade at all since it's clearly not for you. Re-learn the basics of investing. Set some periodic goals for yourself.
Now out in the real world it's fairly common knowledge for some, if not most investors, and for the millionaires out there, it's a given. It's easier to say, and certainly practice and live by when most of your lifestyle is centered around stock market investing, and by this day you've already developed an excellent but modest portfolio. But if you're an aspiring trader who's trying to learn, and looks up to the most seasoned traders in a Discord chat, you follow their plays or you miss out.
It's also safe to say that if you've followed virtually all the alerts, considering their track record (may vary) your gains will, time to time, outweigh your losses. But if you're part of the other half, who just happen to take all the wrong trades at the wrong time/economic climate, and left too exhausted to take the ones that actually succeed, everything starts to run amok. You start to doubt the Discord. You start to doubt yourself, and virtually everything you've learned about the stock market. You question your own sense of goal and achievement. You demote yourself from “aspiring trader”, to arguably “an idiotic trader”. Since it seems you don't know any better about the market anymore, you start blindly taking trades from Discords, hoping the gains outweigh the losses, but it doesn't. And all the stop losses and mind games start to compound and compound until you're completely drained.
That's where I feel I'm currently at right now. Make no mistake – I am where I'm at today because I follow the basic and essential principles. I'm down substantially the past 4 years, and I've been striving to slowly build it back up the past couple months. But each time I'm making real progress, I suddenly get put back in my place – one step forward, three steps back every time. There are clearly some more advanced variables that I don't know about which everyone's using, and pretending they don't exist.
Who else has felt this way? How do you deal with losing on every trade you take, and FOMO'ing on every trade you don't take? – I can't make this up by the way.
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