My Greatest Trading Problem and How I Overcame It
Introduction
Simon Pullen has been trading and living off the income it provides longer than any other 6-figure trader we know (16 years and counting).
A while back he shared a story which he dubbed: My Greatest Trading Problem and How I Overcame It
From Simon
Dear Trading Cafe Community,
I just thought I would share a serious challenge that I faced about 13 years ago and how I ultimately overcame it:
I was about 4 years into my trading career and consistently (moderately) profitable, but struggling to move to the next level. I was full-time and we relied on my trading income to pay the bills.
The problem was that in most months I wasn't drawing enough money from the markets to pay these bills. My savings were diminishing and I was literally fighting with myself to wrestle profits out of my trades.
I was trading 4 different strategies at the time and each was profitable, but not enough. Every time one strategy had a couple of losers I would lose a little faith in that one and concentrate on the other 3, only to see the same thing happen with one of these strategies.
I would then bring the original strategy back and shelve the latest one that had a couple of losing trades. I repeated this process time and time again!
In truth I hadn't mastered any of the strategies and would rather look for a new indicator that would make them work better than truly analyse and understand the methods inside and out.
My head was a mess. I wasn't achieving what I had set out to do and money was becoming an issue.
I probably wasn't the best person to be around at that time - frustrated and irritable.
Fortunately, I kept a detailed trading log. One fateful day I was anaysing the data held within the log and saw something that changed everything for me.
Even though I periodically shelved each of the strategies when they had a bad run, I still documented the results of the 'trades' that would have happened even if I didn't actually take them.
My analysis revealed that one of my strategies was considerably better than the other 3, particularly if I let it go to full profit target - rather than cut the trade short for some arbitrary reason (something that I regularly did out of fear).
When I delved deeper, it was not only slightly better than the others - but a lot better - however, only if I followed all of my own rules all of the time.
Without knowing it I had what I had been looking for all my trading career - a strategy that had a high probability win rate (70+%) and a better than 1:1 Risk to Reward ratio. I had actually found the 'holy grail' and didn't need to go looking for it anymore.
This was a massive moment in my trading career - one of those true 'light bulb' moments. The data was really good and I vowed from that day forward I would trade just that one strategy until I truly mastered it.
Good things quickly started to happen - I felt lighter in my head, more confident and relaxed. Very different from where I was before. Soon I was making more money each month than we needed (mentally this was huge).
I became a better person to be around, more engaged and an altogether happier individual. I was starting to live my dream!
It does not really matter what the strategy was, what matters is that I decided to truly master it. However, what is significant is that I still trade the strategy today as my core method of drawing profits out of the market each month - the Head & Shoulders pattern strategy!
I suspect this might resonate with a few of you and I can only wholeheartedly recommend that you dedicate yourself to truly mastering one strategy rather than being OK at many.
It is important that the strategy you choose is one that 'suits' your way of trading and time availability - you will probably need to experience several before you find the best fit, but once you have found it - MASTER IT!
Closing Note
P.S. If you are enjoying The Trading Cafe and all our content, then please consider getting our book: Six Figures From Scratch.
It’s about the astonishing science behind everyday men in our community and how they got to 6-figure accounts from nothing. It includes their strategies, 65 chart patterns you can trade, 47 indicators you can use to confirm your trading decisions, and a bunch more.
