The End?

After 5 losing days in a row, all my confidence is gone, all my discipline is gone, i have no clue whats going on in the markets or in my head, and am just spewing money away. I dont know what happened as the first half of the month was decent, I was on for my best month ever. I did have a deal with someone that if I got over a certain amount, I would raise my stakes. Guess what was the highest I reached, before this 5 day losing streak? yup, the exact amount I needed to make before raising stakes. It could just be coincidence, or it could be evidence of self destructive behaviour. Whatever, my confidence is all shot to pieces, and theres no way I can trade properly like this.
I may drop back to min stakes for a while, but I dont know if I have the determination in me for more months of hard slog. Comments on this blog have advised me to give up, and it is something I am seriously considering. I will update the blog on the outcome

Tuesday

I wasnt able to trade this afternoon, so as soon I got back in, I sat in front of my PC and got ready to trade the evening markets. I guess I wasnt prepared and in the right mindset, because after the first two markets where I had small losses, for some reason I wasnt able to accept a 3rd losing position in a row. I placed a trade which went against me, and then looked to leverage my price by putting in another trade. This is something I hardly ever do, if at all, so I really dont know why I started doing it now. The price moved further away so I tried to leverage the price again. The market didnt recover as I thought it might so I ended up with a pretty big loss, about 27 ticks.
I dont know what I was thinking , I am usually okay at accepting losses. it didnt affect me too much, I knew it was a really stupid mistake, and kew the feelings and actions that had caused it. I traded some more of the evening races before I had to go out again, and made most of the loss back.
It made me laugh to look back and see that if I had just taken the smallish loss on the first losing position, I would have been in profit for the evening. I guess even with all the practice, all the knowledge of emotions and how they affect you, I am still going to make stupid mistakes like this now and again.

Im still here!

Thanks to everyone who left comments on my last post. A couple of people seem to think I am giving up, but I am still here. I havent updated the blog for a couple of weeks as I havent had much to say, and have been considering some of the questions that were raised in my last post. I am still trading as much as I can, am in profit most of the time, and am gradually erasing the errors that cost me so much( I hope).
On saturday the bomber was out and throwing his money into the market again. Last time I was trading when he was around, it cost me £78, so this time I was much more careful, only backed first, didnt leave any lays lying around, and tried to profit from him. It didnt work out so well, was break even most of the day, so I stopped early.
I am now trying to pay more attention to market conditions, and changing my strategy accordingly, instead of going in and hoping that the way I trade will work. Early in the week, for example, I find trading difficult and stressful, as there is not much money about, a lot of spoofing going on, and so have started looking for lower risk opportunities on these days, since, if I get it wrong, it is very difficult to get out again with just a small loss.
I am still considering the future, and how best to progress from where I am now. I do have doubts sometimes about whether I can really make it work, but for now am determined to keep trying and keep improving.

Under the Spotlight

I have been thinking about why i seem to find accepting losses difficult, and why my results are never as good as I think they should be. I have realised that I am quite critical of myself. For example, today someone stopped me and asked for directions. I didnt really do a good job of explaining, and after they had left I had lots of negative thoughts going through my head. "You're useless", " I bet he thought you were a right twat", "You cant even explain simple directions" etc etc. I think this happens with most of my activities of daily life. Every thought and action is under an intense scrutiny, and they hardly ever measure up to expectation. Failing, or not being good enough ( or not as good as someone else), is not an option for me. But failing, not being good enough, making mistakes, doing stupid things, are going to be a part of everyones every day life, so this leaves me in a cycle of striving and trying, failing, feeling awful, worrying about not succeeding, and then trying again. So each loss, each failure is a reinforcement of "Youre not good enough", and the feelings associated with that. Of course, its going to be hard to do actions that have a chance of "failing", and if a loss in trading is seen as failure then I am not going to be keen to put myself in situations where I end up feeling like crap.
I have a good idea where all these feelings came from, but how do I go about getting a better attitude, other than years of therapy? I was looking at some websites for sports psychology, and one of them had 5 statements that rang true with me (link)

• You Feel That Whatever You Do Is Never Good Enough - A Perfectionist Streak
• You Make The Wrong Decisions - Especially Under Pressure
• You Experience Fear Of Failure - Or Fear Of Success
• You Lack Belief In Yourself -Even Though You Have The Talent
• You Dwell On Your Mistakes - And Then Make More Of Them

The website does remind me of certain e-books trying to sell betting systems, but the 5 statements are definitely things I need to work on. How much is good enough? Would I be satisfied with £50 a day? £100 a day? Would I finally feel a sense of worth if I was earning more than AH? I should focus on the positive things, that I have been in profit for 9 of the last 10 months( and the 1 losing month was a very small amount), which is more than a lot of traders achieve. I can obviously trade, maybe I should just relax a bit and enjoy the ride.