Live Trading

It was pretty exciting to open a trading account because it meant my time and money could finally really start paying off. My first trade was a small one, but was a gain of .3, or 6%, so I was excited. The next day I made one trade for a gain of .5, or 10%. The third day I made 1.4 points, or 28%! I was really excited at this point. I had made almost 50% in three days! I never thought anything like that would be possible.

Unfortunately, I found out the next day that overconfidence is never good in trading. I decided to trade with 2 contracts, or $1000, when I only had $2000 total in my account. My first trade was a loss. It was a hard cookie to swallow. Not only was it a loss, but it was double the loss since I was trading with two contracts! I recognized why the trade I made was a bad one and decided I needed to quickly make that money back. I looked for any signal I could to make a trade. Once I found the smallest indicator to make a trade, I traded. In hindsight, I am not surprised at all that I lost on this second trade. There was low volume and I made a largely emotionally based trade, which is always a recipe for failure.

On the simulator, I had some days where I was down a few points and made several trades to come back into the positive, and I thought, "Why should it be any different live?" I made more trades, all emotionally based, gaining on some, but losing on most. When all was said and done I had lost $900 in one day! I felt devastated and shaken up.

My next week or so was filled with mixed results. I gained some days but lost other days, losing more than I gained. After some time of this, I decided I needed some more time on the simulator and that I needed to take the KISS classes and methods a little more seriously.

Looking back, I was not even close to being ready to trade live when I decided to, but learning to trade is a process, and it helped me get closer to gaining consistency in trading. I learned lessons I wouldn't have been able to learn any other way.