Frustration

Sean McLaughlin
February 16, 2023

As a trader, I’ve grown comfortable with losing.

Losing money is part of winning over the long run.

There is no winning without losing. Sounds crazy, but traders know this to be true.

We’ve all heard that losses are lessons. They are expensive lessons, but often the most valuable. Nothing valuable comes cheaply.

During the triage phase of dissecting what went wrong, we often have “a-ha!” moments that lead to new rules and new promises, and renewed confidence. “Next time,” we tell ourselves, “the outcome will be drastically different!”

This is all well and good.

Today, I currently find myself in a unique spot.

One of the strategies I tinker around with on the side had been cruising along fine to start the calendar year of 2023. Then, last week, it stopped working. The losses were small and insignificant at first. But each day, the swings got more and more violent and my losses were getting larger and larger. So large, in fact, that I had to pull the plug on the strategy yesterday, going completely into cash in this particular account.

But the incredibly frustrating part about this whole ordeal is that I don’t really know what went wrong. I don’t know how my losses became the size that they did, and I don’t know a) how I could have seen it coming, or b) how I could have hedged the position to prevent or minimize the losses.

I’m at a complete mental loss, which feels worse than the financial loss.

I’m trying as hard as I can to find the lesson that makes this whole experience worth it, providing valuable information as I press forward after making some adjustments. But I’m not there yet. Not a clue.

For the past four trading days, my head has been spinning around in circles, trying to find clues to uncover the hidden gold.

The frustration is real.

Welcome to my life as a trader.

Can you relate?

Trade 'em Well,

Sean McLaughlin
Chief Options Strategist
All Star Charts, Technical Analysis Research

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