No matter how many times I have been through this it always amazes me that even after 31 years even I get a little tempted to join the emotions and "buzz" of the stock market this past week.  And the market was exciting.  There was this feeling of excitement that I could tell was causing me to review trades I was in and trades I was looking to take.  These are examples of my internal dialogue, which were starting to be magnified by my growing emotions, going on in my head:

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• ​Sunday: Maybe I should take some profits. 

• Monday: Maybe I need to protect the profits I have in open trades and look for an inverse position to the long side.

• Tuesday: Excellent, Market is down.  I can take some profits now even though they are borderline, maybe I should do that.  But market is at support though.

• Wednesday: Yeah, market is still holding that support - this market could be reversing.  Let's just load the trades in case I decide to.

• Thursday: Market still holding support.  Jobs number tomorrow has got to come in good for the market - the entire market is planning on it.  If it reverses to the long side my put positions are going to get smashed.  

• Friday: Well that worked out well.  Weekend.  Bloody week.  Time to lock in some profits.

• Friday AH: Aww crap - market is still going down and I think Monday is going to bloody.  If I had not scaled - nope.  Protect capital.  The higher the market volatility the tighter the leash.  

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At each one of those examples my responses were:

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• Wait for price to confirm.

• Not part of the plan.

• Follow the rules.

• You know better.

• Good job.

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I don't know of any trader that is able to excise completely this type of internal dialogue.  In fact, I believe this type of mental back and forth is good and necessary and actually leads to a higher degree of confidence when I am in the trade; sorta like getting all the objection and temptation out of the way at the beginning.

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At anytime all of those thoughts were being magnified by my emotions that were being sparked by the market action.  Add to all of that: ongoing discussions in Discord as well as private conversations with VIPs and well, it can be a challenge sometimes to find enough clear "head space" to continue to monitor open and possible trade ideas.  However, because I have arrived at a decision after doing my typical analysis I am significantly less likely to succumb to any of the above temptations.

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The point is this: I battle with some of the things YOU battle with in trading.  Even though I have almost 100k hours of screen time, even though I have made thousands of trades, even though I was mentored by an incredible natural trainer - even with all of those benefits I still am challenged with temptation to break the rules.  What stops me is all the data.  That every time I am tempted I remind myself of the data but not the data you might think.  Not the successful data.  Not the returns, not the gains.  No.  The data that I am talking about is this:

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Every single time I have allowed myself to give even an inch to any of the above temptations it has exponentially increased the chance of ME not only making a good trade a very bad trade but also it started a sequence of bad decisions.

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Look. 

I know its hard;  Suck it up. 

I know it sometimes feels like you are making no progress;  You are.  Maybe that progress is backwards.  Maybe it's forwards. 

I know that even with the community trading can be lonely: losses are yours and no one really seems to care about the wins (except for theBoss); I understand.  Toughen up.  This is your MONEY.  It's serious business.

I know sometimes you feel so much hope and yet at other times, you feel like you will never stop losing money in the stock market.  The hope is valid.  Make the fear of losing a reminder of what you are fighting against: all that money that has been stolen from you by the industry and Washington D.C. via the stock market and all of its' bad actors.  I always trade a little angry.​

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I have been often asked what is the secret to successful trading.  I often answer with different answers because for each person the answer is often different.  But if I am pressed to really boil it down to what does it take to be a consistent trader, what will it take to stop giving into all the bad temptations from above, when will I stop consistently LOSING money, when will I stop doing what I KNOW is wrong, etc.?​

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You must become sick and tired, of being sick and tired.​

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It's not a cute saying.  It's the place I had to get to before I was willing to completely trust the process, follow the rules explicitly, and humble myself.  It was the point that I had to start really accepting responsibility for MY bad decisions trading.  It wasn't the market's fault.  It wasn't the Shorts.  The losses were mine.  And I had to get to the point where I sucked it up and started acting like freaking ADULT.  Seriously.  Money is THE decider between a little more access to the world or a lot less of everything.  You have enough that you can invest.  Either be serious about protecting that asset or don't: but stop fooling yourself that you can be somewhere in the middle.  

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If you want to get to the "sick and tired of being sick and tired" decision point and you just can't seem to find the trigger?  I can help with that.

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I want you to following steps exactly as that are written:

1. Print out the last 12 months of the $ amounts of the losing positions in your account with a total.

2. Print out the last 12 months of losing trades in your accounts with a total $ amount. 

3. Ask someone who you trust to keep whatever you share in confidence; if you are married, your spouse.  But find someone that you can sit down with that when you share the reasons for each of the losses in #1 and #2 you will feel embarrassed with.  Someone who will give you honest feedback.  

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Hard?  Of course.  But the goal is to finally change your investment and trading fortunes.  Or are you here just for entertainment?  And why don't I have you pick out the winners and share them?  Because you wouldn't be reading this unless you were at least just a little bit interested in not losing money consistently, correct?  Which tells me that you probably do NOT have a methodology that consistently makes money.  Which means your winners were luck or someone elses.

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Life is short.  The only thing that you cannot make more of is TIME - so make the most of it. 

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You CAN make more money though. 

Are you ready?​