Learning How To Lose Properly

By @tradersmarts

So what does a really bad week look like?

Most traders who are trying to sell you something (black box system, indicator, signal service, etc) will tout their winners shamelessly, but hide and shy away from acknowledging their losers. They will handpick strong performance periods or create some bogus simulated results to showcase their “great performance”.

Well, in the interest of keeping it real, we had our WORST WEEK this year two weeks ago and I thought you might like to see what THAT looks like. It was one of those days where no matter what you do nothing works. Only it didn't last just a day. Yeah, it happens to everyone, even the best traders. Drawdowns are something that we all must deal with but it's not the drawdown that matters, it's how we bounce back that counts.

We bounced back nicely this week. Still Listening to some traders it is easy to get the impression that they never lose?

THOUGHTS ON LOSING:

FACT: Great traders know how to lose well! Let's take an in-depth look at the spreadsheet from this week. While we had a GREAT week there was a LOT of losing taking place. Check out all this losing…

Out of the four instruments (Dow futures, US Dollar, Crude, and Gold we traded, we only made money on 1/4 of them. (We lost money on 75% of the instruments we traded) In the one instrument we made money on (CL) we took 27 trades.

Out of those 27 trades:

10 of the 27 trades were hard stops (37%)
10 of the 27 trades were 1 or 2 scales and then scratch or stop on balance (37%)
3 of the 27 trades were scratches (11%)
Only 4 out of 27 trades had targets hit on all for scales. (14.8%).

To say that another way: 85.2% of the trades we took, in the only instrument we made money on, didn't achieve their maximum objective.

Yet still we had a great week. If you want to become a great trader you NEED to learn how to lose properly. If you are ready to trade the futures side by side with Tony and allow his experience to help guide you then you have to act fast to take advanatage of the special deal offered by Wall St Daily Deal as it expires Sunday night at midnight.

Normally his 6 month subscription to these services is $1794 but until this Sunday at midnight you will be able to sign up for only $897! This represents a discount of 50%.

Below is a more in depth look at what you'll receive:

TS Premium: TraderSmarts Numbers & Contract Notes for ES YM 6E CL GC. Every day you receive the TraderSmarts Numbers & Contract Notes for all five instruments — Eminis (ES/YM), Euro (6E), Gold (GC) and Oil (CL). The Contract Notes give you three specific areas to consider executing high odds trades each day: the “Range”, “Highest Odds”, and “Extreme” as well as high probability trade targets. On certain days you will get a “Line in the Sand” TS # for bulls, bears, or both, depending on the context of the market. This is our flagship product and we think you will be impressed.

TS Trades: Real-Time Live Trade Alerts / Private Twitter Feed. The main focus of the Live Trade Alerts is intraday trading during the 5 – 8 AM PST (8 – 11 AM EST) time slot. This time period covers the European close, U.S. open and features some of the best volatility of the entire Globex session. We focus on Equity (YM/ES), Euro (6E), Oil (CL), and Gold (GC) during this time. We like to keep our risk tight and let our winners run.

Trade Spreadsheets from @TSTRADES:

May 20 – 25th, 2012
May 27 – June 1st, 2012
June 3 – 8th, 2012 - Didn't trade this week
June 10 – 15th, 2012
June 18 – 22nd, 2012

Have a great weekend! Trade smart and trade well!

Tony

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