Blowing it open, to the negative side

I got a bit disillusioned, obviously, with the system I was using. I could tell that it was not anywhere near flexible enough to effectively trade a market. Now I've gone completely to the other side and started just looking at the situation with the chart, and doing an impromptu trade from what I think I see. The problem is, I quit observing what is actually going on in my head or the chart and just putting something on. Doesn't work too well. Today I put on about 7 trades, I think, and lost 4, and the other 3 were just small gains. I kept doing the same thing over and over again. Going against the trend in the market, which can be okay, but you need to REALLY look at what's going on. I kept putting on a trade, losing, and then doing the same thing again. I did that like 4 times in a row before finally saying to myself, "I think I better go write in the blog before I go through my entire account.

Now I know everyone says, "you need to establish rules in your trading and STICK TO THEM!" What I think has to happen first is you need to become a good observer, not only of the markets, but of yourself. Otherwise, you'll never realize you are breaking your rules. You just go about your business and start getting madder and madder and not understand why, and when that happens, you get even worse at what you are doing.

Today I was establishing rules in my mind as I was trading, and breaking them almost within the same minute. I have a few hard and fast rules that did definitely save me - one of which is my max stop loss amount. I know I can't change that, because it is tied to the amount in my account. It let me make quite a few mistakes, and still have a substantial amount left to make more mistakes another day (or not!) By the way, that's the only way you learn, you know. Of course, if you have too many lessons in one day, there's no way you're going to remember them all.