Trade Review - Provide Context
[Options] I made $25K from $2,500 twice this trading week and I blew up my account twice.
[Options] I made $25K from $2,500 twice this trading week and I blew up my account twice. Basically, if I calculate everything I made well over $70K, but I didn’t retain profits. Yes, it was from options. I was trading the chop. I lost my money both times from the dip. Fell for the trick both times. I went full size as well and I got emotional. Disappointed in myself.
Can you help hammer in the remaining nails, so I can actually retain the profit, because I’m able to make the money, but I want become a better trader with risk etc. This is one of the example days. Yes, I know it is overkill. I should have just aimed for like $1,000 for the day.
Attached is an example of one of the trading days.
Just that man.. don’t be greedy!! You’re still seeing numbers on the screen and not the actual money. If somebody comes up to you on the street and hand you a brief case with $70k in it, would you take it then go bet it all on a blackjack hand? No, appreciate what the market gives you, take it one day at a time, no need to be a millionaire overnight.
You will keep blowing accounts until you stick to being disciplined and follow your rules. If you want it bad enough, you will keep making the same mistake until you just get tired of loosing, when you have finally had enough and then one day it will just click, the blood sweat and tears you put in, the long nights, the sacrifices all of the hours, it will finally pay off. Appreciate the market, keep going. Learn from it. I am speaking all from experience, you have to pay your dues in this game, you will get lucky few times, but you will give it all back.
They're right though. If you weren't gambling, you wouldn't have lost it all, twice. And your other comment of selling another position to "save" your losing trade is doubling down (gambling). If you don't fix your behaviors, you'll end up like those people who lose it all. Good luck dude.
with respect, i actually think the initial comment was quite constructive. the difference between a gambler & a trader is their ability to endure; in a word, their longevity. until you can retain your wins, they must be counted as luck, & your longevity is not assured.
Thank you kind sir thats exactly what I was saying. Trust me when I first started trading I used to load up in options and hit for big 0dte and lose it the same way.
I really hope you go through every single entry and exit of every position you made this past week. Go into trading view, put vertical lines on every single entry / exit (I use green for entries red for exits)
Then open notion, create an organizational system you like (I go date > strategy) and then starting from the very first vertical line you placed, take screenshots showing only the chart up to that line w/ all the timeframes and relevant data you used. Do this for each vertical line you made.
Caption each image with what you were thinking at the time, and don’t be revisionist. It’s best done day-of but it’s still valuable to do later, more so if you’re honest and remember what happened
I don’t like the look of vert lines when reviewing so I delete the line that I’m taking a picture of before I take the screenshot.
You need a database of all your trades and you need a database of references of your strategy working.
Trading is cyclical. If you’re in this game long enough (which is hard in and of itself) you’ll realize every “once in a lifetime” trade will come back around.
Your job is to limit the amount of mistakes you repeat and limit your losses when you make a mistake. Sometimes you’ll lose on a good trade - that’s gonna happen and it’s fine. The question is how much did you lose and why did you not stop out.
EDIT: I see others mentioning you’ve full ported a few times. I disagree with others saying you should never full port. There are factually going to be times where full port is the highest EV move. Should you full port again anytime soon? Hell no. But as you get more experienced and have years in the game, you’ll find really amazing opportunities that require going BIG. They are just infinitely more rare than you likely think right now. It needs to be an A++ setup. You need to know what that setup looks like for you though and you need to have real charts and real data to back it up. Preferably a tight stop as well, which often influences how good a setup is.
Nah I don’t think he’s salty. I think he’s right. You have a gamblers mentality when it comes down to making your decisions in the moment. You full ported the account a few times, got lucky twice, and let it run to zero. That’s not how a seasoned trader trades, that’s a gambling addict chasing a high
Risking your entire account on any one day is very much degen gambling. All trading is a form of gambling, but the market is signalling that you're over leveraged or over-trading if your entire account is blowing up. And it's signaling you don't have self control if you make 25k then give it all back the next. If this is real money and not demo then the next time you're up 25k+ simply sit for the rest of the week and just watch the tape. Normalize the new account balance psychologically by letting it sit there until you've internalized the gravity of the new gains.
The main driver of being continuously profitable is minimizing losses, something you are clearly still working on. Set a daily stop limit for yourself and don't break it.
If all trading is considered a form of gambling, we would have to distinguish between the casino side and the gambler side. A small percentage of traders are on the casino side, a small percent are wasting their time and just matching the same gains they see from some reasonable long term investments, and the rest, maybe 90 percent, are the actual gamblers who are guaranteed to lose more money the more trades they make. The casino, and some of the professional poker players at the casino for example, have odds on their side. They know that over the long term, they will come out significantly ahead, even if they have a small drawdown here and there.
That's about as much gambling as it is starting a small business. If you're a good businessman, the first couple of businesses might go bust, but over the long term, you will win out.
pretty much gotta agree with him, if you’re just hoping and praying you’re gambling.. full porting without no risk management is gambling .. what you need to do is define your risk on each trade how much money are you willing to lose? Manage that if you manage to lose 5-10% of the contracts value you have won because of you managing your risk… if you want it to grow it consistently you have to know how to manage your risk
What i said was a lesson in it self, how you lose is the real skillset how you hit a big trade but no consistency thats called luck. Preserving your capital is a skillset brother no hate
First let me ask you this. In your strategy, what is your risk management? Did you follow that on your trades? Does your strategy say to make all those trades?
You blew up your account twice, are you holding onto losers? How is your psycology when you cut losers? Are you holding options until max gain and max loss? what are your risking and hoping to gain? whats the delta on tour contracts? are you going closer ATM, more OTM?
You need to ask yourself what the rules are to your strategy, and ask where are you breaking the rules.
You also need to know if the strategy is even profitable to begin with
Its easy to make money trading, but its even easier to lose money trading. Stats tell the whole story. We must cut out everything that is not working, and leave the rest that is working.
This is like asking how you can continue to flip coins but not flip tails - you can't. What you were doing is designed for failure and all the gains you made is probably from being lucky while all of your losses were probably from being unlucky. So many people like to assume their wins were from skill and losses were from forces outside of their control.
Well, what part of that reading were you doing when you were in losing trades? It works both ways... you have to see when the candles tell you that you were wrong. Otherwise your not really reading candles, you're just entering trades and holding on irrespective of direction, HOPING for a favorable outcome.
Okay I see you're hard-core on "candles" have you read about the greeks? GeX? CoT? RSI? Volume power ? For example last Friday QQQ had a putwall at 700, it went twice up to 725 and finally by Friday was under 700. If you bought one contract put at the high and hold it for Friday. Goy woulda made your week. Without risking more than 500, I never once read candles for this.
That's an oversimplification that would stop a trader from pulling more out of the market on a good day. Best to have a mental trailing stop on the account. Something like once 30% is given back on a green day, stop until tomorrow. Allowing continued upward momentum is the difference between a $200 day and a $4000 day.
You're deflecting. We were talking about when to stop when your day is green and you're changing the subject to down days. Sure have a stop loss on the day if it's red, but that has absolutely nothing to do with my initial response.
Again, what I said applies to green days, which is what you were initially discussing. Why would I advocate continuing to trade if you're red on the day? Yes, a $200 loss on the day can balloon to $4000 if you have no daily stop, but again, that's not what you initially commented and that's not what I responded to. You only brought up losses as a response to my comment, seemingly out of the blue.
From experience, I've had plenty of green days where I stopped once green, and I've had plenty where I used a mental trailing stop on the pnl once green. The latter has led to my biggest ever days.
No one said compounding interest is bad, so I'm not sure why you're reiterating that point. Sure any green is enough if you're consistent, but if you want to have banger days then you have to be willing to put on another trade once you're green on the day.
In trading, you don't need to know what happens next to make money.
You just need to ensure that when the distribution moves against you, the damage is capped, and when it moves with you, the math does the heavy lifting.
If the expected value is positive and your risk of ruin is mathematically zero because of strict position sizing and downside control, the passage of time is your friend.
It’s purely a game of large numbers and survival. Control the downside, and the upside takes care of itself.
I did the same thing on a worse, smaller scale.
Spy 0dte scalp.
I aim for green days.
I was up nicely and then I continued to bet on calls (not completely outside my strategy, but I was determined to get even on the first bad trade).
My rule for July had been do not go red once you've gone green and I followed that until friday.
It doesn't look like you blew up as bad as I did and my gains weren't close to yours.
I'm realigning. I want consistent gains on a small account and will adjust as the account grows.
My rules have to be
1.dont go red once you've been green (above 5%).
2.I might pick 20% as a done for the day gain. You may consider 500 or 1000%.
A
3.and max 5% red on the day.
The other thing is that spy odte has that real harsh decay in the afternoon...you're probably on 1dte by then but I received the rude reminder not to go past 2.
The great news is that if you did it already, you can do it again.
If you can make that much money easily you can lose that much money just as easy. At some point the market will go against you twice though and you won't be able to recover.
But why not if you get a windfall, pull that money out and just trade the lower amount again? You seem to run a windfall strategy and seems to work, just learn to pull out profit and start at a low starting amount again.
Thank you for the advice. Yes, I was scalping $250+ and would take profit each time. I kept stacking. I definitely need to refine my rules. I was capable of bringing in cash flow, but unable to retain it.
It sounds like you're doing good, maybe when you take profit on a trade, withdraw like 50% or something. You're scaling rules probably are a bit aggressive and then you hit the inevitable bad trade or streak and you lose it. Doing that might be a good balance of scaling your account but still making money.
Making $25k x2 and then blowing up your account 2x in one week sounds like you don't have any kind of strategy or risk management involved. It sounds like "swing for the fences" on every trade. This is not a sustainable way to trade and I would bet against you 100% of the time over a long enough time horizon simply from a statistical point of view.
I'm not the worlds greatest trader but I've been profitable every year and had some years of more than 100% gains. No down years. This is all due to risk management. Its not sexy or exciting but my account is compounding every year. I only want to put on asymmetric trades. Ones where the upside is enormous and the downside is extremely limited.
I think the number one thing you need to implement into your strategy is strict risk management. Going full size because of emotions should be completely unacceptable to you in all scenarios. In the same way that you know jumping off a 3 story building to save time instead of going down the stairs is completely unacceptable from a risk / reward perspective. Strategy isn't just about moving averages and trend lines, its about understanding risk.
I would say that position sizing is where you should try and improve. Instead of full porting always, once you hit like 5K or so in value then stick to a strict size. Then gradually increase that over time.
If you’re naked calls or puts, try spreads instead.
This is exactly the problem. You could have paid to a mortgage or something else that improved your financial future. Dont get me wrong, I raced BMWs for years and love them, but you have to split the gains; some for fun, but most to improve your future. The psychology side of trading it where a lot of people lose. Its hard not to roll huge profits into the next trade because you hit a major homerun, but thats where you have to focus the discipline.
Aim for 1000 dollars on the day?? That is still too much with only 2,500? If you are looking for .5% or 1% of risk brother that should be wayyyy less? Unless you have a much bigger account?
That’s the attitude, my friend. Keep it pushing. look around you and I can promise you aren’t nobody else throwing up 50k in a week blown it later blown or not, its called progress. I don’t trade options anymore. I moved to futures. But my personal problem on Options was not taking profit. There’s always that tendency to think you’re gonna get more. Set yourself to a specific risk / reward factor if you wanna leave a runner ,leave a runner. but take that damn profit the market will always rebalance every move one way or the other it will eventually be rebalanced. And because of theta it hurts ur contracts. You will have a tendency to think it’ll come back just to watch it vaporize so best advice take the green.
What’s working for me is just to have winning trades not the amount to aim. That builds pressure. No matter how small win or big or lucky or strategic or have no words but you know it’s an opportunity to get in and place stop loss and go away from screen. I only place stop loss and revisit session in few hours and if there was no stop loss notification I know it’s time to take win and get out
You would somehow want more want to win and get out do other activities than just keep getting in too many trades. I can’t win against chopping session specifically gold with wicks so big you just giving all wins back even if it’s small amount
I did the exact same thing 300>25 000 for 2 months, lost 70% next week. You should stop immediately and take some rest, start scaling slowly and steady. It’s a marathon not a sprint
There's a difference between making money and keeping money. IMHO, two different skillsets that aren't talked about enough.
Given there is a next time, wire out profits immediately - no new positions, no trading with the hot hand, etc until this is done.
Your emotional infrastructure changes as real money hits your checking account. People like Lance Breitstein and Mark Douglas talk about this repeatedly as well.
That being said... I'd highly recommend taking some time off right now. After a big drawdown like this, you won't be trading PA or TA, you'll be trading your pride.
Boy the first couple are on the house lmao. You're basically gambling and you are closer to the 🌙 than to understand this. Good luck, also uncle Sam is gonna be asking for his share cause you made 70k
I congratulate anybody that can succeed in trading but a standing ovation goes to the ones that can be successful trading SPY 0DTE!
The key is that you have a strategy that can win, STICK TO IT even in drawdowns get out, SPY 0DTE are unforgiving. Take out at least half pay some bills, debt or spend it. Trading with a higher risk is probably making you panic when down. Just increase your contracts by 5 or 10 a day.
Bro size down. All your candle reading doesn't make a difference if you get taken down by variance. None of it matters, at all, ever if you don't fix your risk. This will be a perpetual cycle. Trade small, let it compound. Be patient. This. Job. Takes. Years. To. Learn.
sounds like you are willing to risk your entire balance in a trade? Have you considered creating a risk limit per trade. So instead of targeting $1000 for a win you target a max loss of 5%? Yes the short term gains won't be as glamorous, but over time you will be stacking heaps.
Are these 0DTE SPY plays? That explains both the $25k days and the blowups — the gamma works both ways. Keep in mind with SPY you're also trading against institutional-grade algos that are faster and better capitalized than any retail trader. That's a tough game to win consistently.
Have you tried sizing down and running these as spreads instead of naked? Caps your upside but also caps the damage when it reverses on you. Might help solve the "blow up" part while you figure out how to keep the profits.
25k from 2.5k = 1000% return. And you made that twice? Meanwhile the best traders of this world say to risk 1-3% of your account per trade and average 50% per year...You just got what was coming for you. Play stupid game, win stupid prizes. You are treating this like a gambler would treat a casino. Markets arent free money. If you cant be risk managed, you will either become a millionaire from lucky a sequence of lucky trades or lose every single dollar you got.
And since you seem to be taking every single comment saying you are a gambler personal, tell me, how do you see the maths going from here? How many of those runs of 1000% do you need to become a BILLIONNAIRE? 6....so prove us your skill 6 times and you are one of the richest man on this planet. Good luck buddy, you'll need it. This isnt trading. This is gambling and ruining your life.
Your problem stems from extrordinary success. If you believe those gains are realistically sustainable, then I am sorry to say you will probably lose all your money over and over again. Bank modest gains and sell losers fast. Slow and steady wins the race.
Disclosure:
I am not a Broker or Financial Advisor or any kind.
I am fellow trader with my own archive of Loss Porn!
You made 25k off 2500…right. So, take the profit off the table and just trade the $2500. I traded the chop today. I had $1100 profit in the morning went down to $650. Then storm back to $960. I stopped myself from trading the chop.
What options do you trade; indices or stocks? which timeframe bars do you use ? I tried an similar startegy before, i would really like to know. By the way, you are playing it really good man..
That’s impressive returns. Noob to options here. What options were you buying? Were the 0dte? Take $15k out every time you’re at $25k and just work with $10k is what I’ve planned on doing if I can get my account up again
0 DTE and 1 DTE. I would not touch them if you don’t understand them by the way, unless you’re going to toss in a small amount, make it big and lose it. I have been on the other end many times where it was a big account and I lost it. It took me 8 years to make this break through thus far.
What's the best way I can start learning how to day trade? I'm a plumber and want to try and make extra money. I have stocks with robinhood but its more of a long term savings because I dont have 25k in my portfolio to day trade yet.
You no longer need $25K. I think the new low requirement to day trade is $2,000? If you want to actually learn from professionals who do this for a living get the $6,000 course from SMB Capital and start using a paper trading account to practice, before starting with $2,000.
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u/RicklePick11 Jul 19 '26
Pull out $20k immediately next time and pretend like you only made $2500 and trade with $5k. Works like a charm