Winning 80% of the time does not mean you will make money. This valuable lesson comes to us thanks to the blunt honesty and transparency of today’s guest, “ZenTrader”. His highs and lows as a trader provide many situations that I’m confident many of you listeners will be able to relate to. While “talking wins” is certainly the more exciting topic and marketing point, today’s discussion revolves around the importance of risk management… a much less attractive topic, but one of the utmost importance.
Notes:
Zen decided to take his tax return for the year and put it to work in the market. He was lured into the large gains penny stocks are known for making and decided to find some traders to follow.
After finding initial success, he attempted to day trade and even with an 80% win rate, his losses were much larger than his wins and that is when he decided he needed to delve deeper into technical analysis.
Zen found himself in a vicious circle of puppet trading others successfully and then taking losses when trading on his own. He would alternate between those two types of trading for some time before deciding to get educated.
After listening to a recommendation to check out options, Zen spent time practicing and perfecting his methods to find what strategy works best for him.
Quotes:
“At one point I was looking at 24,000 from 2,000. I thought to myself, I don’t want 24,000 , I want 200,000.” tweet this quote
“I would purchase at what I thought was a support then promptly watched it fall through. I then decided to stop trading blindly.” tweet this quote
“I had a few successful trades and I didn’t need an education. I didn’t need anyone to tell me what to do. I was a trader.” tweet this quote
“Just using risk vs. reward and buying stuff when it makes sense seems to be working out a lot better for me.” tweet this quote
“You can’t learn how to be disciplined. You can’t learn how not to be emotional. You have to train yourself to do that.” tweet this quote