#1 problem in trading. Impatience
Where does this come from?
Growing up I have done and achieved everything I ever saught out from life. My parents are incredible people my family is amazing, we all love eachother and support eachother so much that none of us really have many deep friendships outside of our circle just from the fact that we really dont need any since we have eachother. My dad is a pharmacist and my mother is a doctor so we have a beautiful home on 70 acres totalling probably at least 1.5 million. My parents have a high net worth in comparison to the surrounding area (bc we live in a dead coal mining town in PA) so we traveled a ton growing up and any hobby that I showed interest in, my parents would pursue and let me go as far or as little as I liked. To be honest, as much as I loved living this life, it was a life of cushion and easy living. The moment I got out of college (parents paid for that too) and realized that mom and dad are no longer going to come in and save the day anymore, I knew that my entire goal in life was to now recreate the life that they have given to me. I want a large family, I want a high income, I want freedom to do whatever I want whenever I want, I want to "spoil" my children, I want to create funds for them to never have to worry about money (my parents didnt do this but I want to), I want to foster every single hope and dream of a child that I can create. I want all of these things so badly and there is 1 overarching problem with the "want." I think I "deserve" it.
Why do I think I deserve to have all of these things? Well firstly my parents have given me every opportunity to succeed. If I cannot succeed at trading and I have a cushy life then how am I not the biggest failure of all time? All I hear about is people who succeed but I hardly ever hear about people who succeed while having successful parents. Its almost always the "I grew up poor, I was abused, etc" people who seem to have a serious vendeta against life where they will get what they want because the only alternative is death. I feel as though I fall into this group of people because I will trade until I am either dead or self sufficient but maybe I just dont want it as badly as someone else. Maybe I keep my life cushy becuase it allows me to stay sane and still live under my parents blanket. I see myself as a very driven individual but I never have anyone to compare myself to so am I actually driven or am I just pretending? I seem to put in a lot of work outside of trading with reviews and bringing in income so trading is easier and I really hardly ever see people put as much effort into DRC and reviewing as I do but for some reason those people are profitable and I am not. What am I missing?
Humility is my biggest pitfall. Again, growing up I was good at pretty much anything I tried and if I was bad I just didnt do it. I had shallow easy to attain goals that once I achieved I was okay with shutting the book of that story. Trading is anything but shallow and easy to attain. Trading takes many many many years to truly understand what the fuck is even going on and even then you may still just be an idiot hahaha. Because I was always only doing things that I was good at as a child, I took that into my adult life and expected everything in this arena to be just as easy as it was in high school. Boy was I wrong. When you are an adult it truly is life or death whereas as a child winning a football game or a track meet means absolutely nothing and nobody gives a fuck within 1 day of the event ending. This competition is unlike any I have ever tried but I take that same mindset of (I am smarter than the avg person, I work harder than the avg person, I am more creative and thoughful than the avg person) and I bring that directly into trading. Because I never had to delay gratification for a very long time as a child I struggle deeply with that as an adult. I never expected trading to take more than 3 years before I would see even a single dollar in profits. I have spent at least 1000 hours doing this and am still in the red overall by a few thousand dollars. I clearly have a superiority issue because spending 1000 hours on something that makes you nothing meanwhile all my friends are making nice 60k salaries and saving tons of money is a wild difference. I could easily have 50-75k saved right now with 10k in my bank account and 25k in emergency funds had I just had a normal job for the past 5 years. That superiority complex drives me to assume that I can and will be able to make back all of the missed out money that I dont have bc I pursued trading as a career instead of a salary job. Is that wrong to think that way? is it wrong to have blind optimism forever and extreme confidence in yourself? I think no but sometimes yes. That extreme confidence in myself will be my biggest strength once I am fully independent and reliant on trading bc then I can tell people this and they will say "wow congratulations" rather than "youve done this for how long and havent made money yet?". In the future, the extreme confidence will be inspiring but right now I think it may actually be hurting me.
How can extreme confidence hurt me? Well, if I assume that I will make it in trading and I deserve to be a profitable trader then on a week to week basis, there will be times that my strategy is performing poorly. A professional would size down and relax, a gambler will size up and push, an extremely confident person will let those emotions build up slowly over the course of a few days then they will let 1 day destroy their confidence via max loss and then everything comes tumbling down. This is exactly what happens to me and last friday seemed like the day it was going to occur but I stopped it from happening via using small size and walking away once I realized I was trading poorly. Something I need to make sure I am noticing is when my strategy is performing poorly, just walk away. Trust me, your biggest green day will not come from a day where you immediately lose a lot of money on a sketchy "not good" trade. Your biggest red day can easily happen on that scenario though. I want to make sure moving forward that I never allow myself to get caught in my extreme confidence within myself. I will make money from trading, I will be self sufficient from trading, I will live a happy and good life similar to what my parents have given to me. It will all happen in due time. I do not need it to happen today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, or within the next 5 years. I need to make sure I follow my process, size down when strat is not optimal, size up when it is, dont let a slow week make you angry on a friday and you lose a bunch of money, dont let a slow month make you angry and lose a bunch of money, dont let a bad trade at open make you angry and you lose a lot of money. CONTROL YOURSELF. Everything will come, so long as you delay the gratification of it.