My Biggest Loss in More Than 4 Years... transcript

Well, this is certainly unexpected. I was not planning on having a huge red day today. This will be a red day recap. I'm down over $172,000 on the day. Yes. [music] Okay, first things first, let's pause the music. I'm not feeling so hot today. Um Look, I'm bummed out. This is this is pretty disappointing. Uh I'm reminded of the Talking Heads song um Once in a Lifetime that you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

And I am certainly asking myself that today. How did I get here? This is it feels unforgivable to lose that much money in one morning. $172,000. The amount that that money could buy. Uh I just last week wrote a check for $120,000 to four charities, Boston Children's Hospital, St. Jude's Children's Hospital, and two other nonprofits. And I would have so much preferred to write uh to have written another check for $172,000 and to have lost it here today.

Um Safe to say some mistakes were made this morning. I'm looking at my uh my thumbnail there. $172,000. Unbelievable. So, where do we begin? Uh well, I guess you guys know I do recaps every day uh whether it's a red day or a green day. And the green days are usually fairly straightforward and easy to talk about. And the red days happen, you know, it it is trading. You can't escape loss. Uh today we have a little bit of a unique opportunity in that this is the biggest loss I've had in more than 4 years.

So, this is the first time you've seen me in this state since 2021. And I remember that day it was February 4th, 2021. It's easy to remember because it's my birthday. That's the biggest red day I ever had. I lost $275,000. And that day um has a lot of similarities to today. In that mistakes were made. Uh so, you know, with trading we have a system, we have a strategy, and when we follow all of those rules, we're going to get relatively predictable results.

Now, if your strategy is a profitable and the predictable results will be profitability. If your strategy is not profitable, predictable results will be losing money. In my case, I've got a strategy that's well uh dialed in, very back tested, um it works when I follow the rules. In a hot market like what we've been in for these last well, really this whole year, it's easy to trade on the periphery of that strategy and to take a little bit of risk.

Uh that can work, but when the market cools off, you're going to get corrected and you're going to have to dial it back in. So, I think that I've been in a place where I've been a little complacent from the market being so forgiving. And that allowed me to break one very critical rule in today's trading session. I'll share that with you. Uh before I do, let's take a look back at February 2021. And you'll see here uh February 4th, it was a Thursday.

Uh $274,000 in the red. And this was the beginning of the month. Uh very much like today is the beginning of the month. And by the end of the month, I had not only recovered all of the loss. In fact, within 2 weeks, I actually finished the month in the green by $300,000. I would like to try to repeat that recovery here this month. But not necessarily to the penny, but to repeat the ability to recover the loss quickly.

So, what you're going to have the opportunity to watch today is not just the recap of the trades I took. I'll go over them, but it won't take long cuz I didn't take very many trades. What I really want to give you some insight into is how I mentally and emotionally cope and process what just happened. Because I think these are the very very moments that define what success can look at like as a trader. It is not how many times you get knocked off the horse, it's how many times you get back on.

There are other traders in the same exact moment who would give up. They'd say, that's it, I'm done, I can't possibly I can't even fathom how to begin recovering such a big loss. I I give up. And they leave. It'd be a big red day that knocks them out. And for me, big red days historically have been turning points for me. They've been an opportunity to go back to the drawing board, to look closely at the mistakes I've been making, and have an honest reflection, and come back with a new and improved variation of my strategy.

There may be an opportunity for that today. I don't know yet. Because what we're going to do in real time right now is I'm going to walk you through how I emotionally process this loss. Okay. So, let's begin um first with Let's begin with the live trading archive uh from this morning. So, if I pull up the live trading archive um let's see. You're going to see my trade here. Um and of course, I had um a series of trades.

So, I sat down this morning. Uh this is um this is where I sat down uh first thing this morning. It's about 7:00 a.m., 6:53. And when I had first uh pulled up the scans on my phone, these scans right here, I had noticed GLTO was the leading gapper. And that was when it was under 14, it was right here. And I thought, okay, I I this is looks interesting. Um I did not see news on it. And in fact, the stock has no news. Interesting.

It is a biotech stock. And yesterday, context, we had a bio biotech stock that made a phenomenal move. It was S uh SPRB. Unbelievably, this stock went from about $16 a share to 360 bucks. Holy moly, this is crazy. And it was a biotech stock. Now, it had news, uh which was a big differentiator. GLTO did not have news. But when I sat down this morning, uh this was the first stock that I traded. Oops, let me pull this back up.

And and the morning started poorly from the very beginning. So, I'm going to let's see. So, this is right around 7:00 a.m. So, we have um actually I got to back this up. Go forward on this. Okay, so this is that trade. So, I took a trade in the small account. We're going to skip over that. I'll do my small account recap. There is a silver lining today, which is that I'm green in the small account, uh but it the amount is feels completely irrelevant compared to what I've lost in my main account.

Uh so, we're going to jump forward. We're going to jump past ZN B. I did end up trading this, but we're going to skip past that. We're going to look at GLTO. So, as you can see, GLTO has just squeezed um yet again from about 1750 all the way to $27.50. I would say that I have a little bit of FOMO on it, fear of missing out, a little bit of frustration. Um and so, as it's consolidating right here, I'm watching it for this retest of 30.

And as it comes up to this level, I end up adding right there at 2927. Now, in this archive, you can see how much I'm up per share. So, I'm in at $29.27. And you can see right here it dips back down. And I within an instant, I'm down $2 a share. Look at this rejection. And so, I end up taking the loss, and I'm red $20,000 on my first trade. And to be honest, my feeling at that moment is like anger, frustration. It feels like this is so typical.

Yesterday, we had these huge moves. I kind of undercapitalized on it. Today, I sit down and I catch this nasty rejection on my very first trade. This is triggering. Now, on that very first trade, um I bought, let's see, uh the total position size was it looks like just under 10,000 shares. And I ended up losing about $2 a share average. That's a that's a pretty bad loss. And so, I'm frustrated. I'm annoyed. Uh and 10,000 shares is a relatively large position on a higher priced stock.

Uh So, I end up um having that first trade, and then I have a trade on um CISS right here. I buy this for the break through VWAP. I'm looking for that squeeze higher. And it ends up that although it pops up a little bit higher, it doesn't end up holding up very well. It rejects fairly violently. I only made 2,000 bucks on it. Now, the problem with this is I would say this is another bad trade. It was not a good trade.

It I bought the break of VWAP, it broke and then completely rejected. And look at that high volume red candle. So, now I'm two trades in, and I basically would say I have two bad trades. And I'm not exactly seeing the writing on the wall in this moment. I should uh but in this moment, I've become already emotionally compromised by the fact that I'm down $18,000 on those first two trades. I'm feeling frustrated. Now, for the last 2 weeks, I've been uh primarily focusing on trading in my small account.

And so, although I've gotten some trades in the big account, the small account has definitely um lagged behind or the big account has lagged behind. And the problem with that is I'm feeling a little bit of um need to overcompensate and to make up for uh you know, for this this loss or this sort of loss of opportunity of not getting as many trades as I should. So, it's like I missed a lot of trades and then finally I sit down and now I'm red 18,000 on my first two two trades.

Like this is ridiculous. Then next thing you know, we've got ZNB which pops up which surprises me that it ends up moving as as well as it does. Um I take a loss in the small account on it, $53. And I end up losing 13,000 in my main account. I try to trade it on the squeeze, it ends up reject rejecting and now I'm down 31,000 on the day. So, at this point here, it would probably have been a good idea for me to put the small account on the shelf and just say, nope, I'm not going to trade it.

I'm leaving it alone. Why didn't I do that? Well, this is the reality with being in a state of emotional hijack. When you're in emotional hijack, you've got so much emotion that you just you almost get tunnel vision. It's easy and clear as day to see it as I'm looking at it now that this is idiotic. In fact, it's embarrassing to even show it. Uh but in the moment, it felt like it made sense. So, here GLTO curls back up and as it starts to pull away, I punch it uh right about here for the break through 32.

And what I look at on this is that it's going to pull away and I'm thinking about SPRB from yesterday and the way that squeezed from about $35 a share to $50 a share. And so, I end up punching it and I'm about to punch it in just a moment. Just jump forward. Must have waited for it to pull back or something. Um Yeah, I haven't taken that trade on it yet. So, okay, so I guess I waited for it to pull back and then oh, I got a small winner on ZNB which is fine.

But um I'll just go skip over that for a second cuz that one's I don't know if that's as relevant. Um So, the winner on ZNB, it curls back up. I end up making $5,000 on it. You know, okay, maybe that is relevant. You know, I had a little winner there. Maybe that gave me a little bit of like, okay, you're now you know what you're doing and then GLTO I flipped to this. I see it squeezing up and I'm like, okay, it's game time.

Now, let's back this up. It looks like I had GLTO on my side chart and I jumped in it at $32.35 and I bought about 15,000 shares. That's a pretty big position. So, GLTO I pull it up on my main chart and right here it's at 54 sorry, 34.75. So, I'm up almost $3 a share. I'm up about $35,000 unrealized P&L. And I don't sell it. So, actually in this moment right here, I was green on the day by 10,000 bucks and I did not sell.

Why not? I thought it was going higher. And so, what I did instead is I added up here for the break of 35. And so, my cost basis goes up to 34 right there and I've now added and I've got 40,000 shares. It's a big position. So, I've got a 40,000 share position and look at this thing knife. Look at how in an instant in an instant. Look at how fast this happens. Right here, I'm up $35,000 and I then think this is going to break 35 and go straight to 38 and 40 just like SPRB did yesterday.

I'm in the driver's seat. I've got a big cushion on the stock. Here we go. And then all of a sudden right there, I'm down a dollar a share. I'm down $2.50 a share. I'm down 80 grand. So, my P&L I'm looking at it and I'm down now. I'm down $3 a share. I'm down 350. And then it breaks 30 and I'm starting to sell and look at that number getting bigger and bigger. Hm. Wow. >> [sighs] >> I don't like watching that. $195,000 in the red.

Now, you know from the thumbnail I finished the day at minus 172. Um Boy, that was a tough trade. So, you know, I kind of had it coming. I had already lost $20,000 on this thing one time because it knifed on me and dropped $3 a share. Right here. Right right back here at 30. It did the same thing. Once a stock does that once, it'll do it again. Once it gives you one big jackknife, one big false breakout, it'll do it again.

And it did it again. And I should have seen I should have known that was going to happen. Um And to add insult to injury, it does end up rallying all the way back up to $35 a share. Should I have held? And the answer is no. I should not have held. If I had held, well, let's look at the chart. Let's back this up and let's look at the chart. If I had held this GLTO, first of all, it was up on no news, which doesn't mean it couldn't have gone to $50 a share.

It certainly could have. That's That wasn't the mistake I made. It was a B quality setup, but I'm okay trading B quality setups in a hot market and I'm sure there's other people that made good money on this. That wasn't the mistake. We'll talk about the mistake I made in a moment. But let's look for a moment at some of these other candles. Let's look at this candle for a moment. This candle where it we dropped from 34 down to about $25 a share.

We lost almost 10 points in one candle. That would have been a $400,000 loss. So, in the moment when it's dropping like it did right here. This is the candle that I lost on. You don't know how much it's going to keep going down. All you know is that you're in at 34 and you're down $5 a share and it's still dropping. And if this thing keeps going, if you don't cut it, I mean, what are you going to do? Just keep holding it forever?

You can't. You cannot. You have to cut your loss. So, I cut my loss. It rallies back up and then knifes down again. Then it, you know, sort of sells off a little bit more at the open. I was like, nope, I'm not taking any more trades on it. Continues to chop around halting up, halting down. It hasn't and it it's not to say that it might not give an opportunity for some traders later as SPRB did. But there's not been any good opportunity really on it.

It's been very very difficult to trade. So, my my mistake today was that if you recall, share size. So, when it comes to position management, quarter size until green one quarter of goal. Let's say G. So, for me, in my case, what that should mean is that I am trading with, you know, roughly 10,000 shares, okay, until I'm up at least five grand, which is a quarter of my daily goal, which is $20,000. Unfortunately, I took that 10,000 share position on the first trade and how much did I lose?

Minus 20 grand. All right. Well, I happened to do it on a $30 a share stock. Probably shouldn't have taken 10,000 shares. Went in a little too heavy on that first trade and was immediately from this point forward emotionally compromised. That's my face. So, now on trade two, I'm taking let's see on ZN What was it? ZNB? I don't remember how many shares I bought, but I think it was 90,000. So, now I'm starting to take Maybe it was 50,000.

Doesn't matter. I took a bigger position than on trade trade two. So, now trade two, even bigger position. And that was the one where I lost minus 8,000. Right? So, I had a loser. And then I had a trade on CISS and I lost Actually, I made 2,000 on that. And then I had another trade. And then I come back in with 40,000 share position. So, what I'm doing is I'm increasing my risk as I'm going deeper red. And this is this is the classic mistake.

So, this is this is and it's what's so embarrassing is that I literally talked about this yesterday. I talked about that first big loss, how you get emotionally compromised, it leads you to increase your quantity of trades and increase your share size and then what happens? You lose more money. So, now you lose even more money times two. And then it just it spirals. So, the problem is you're red on your first trade and you feel like the only way I can make this back is by increasing size.

So, you take bigger position, you're red on your second trade. Only way to make that back and then next thing you know, you're like this. This is emotionally compromised trading. And you know, this is the element of trading that is so difficult. Because when we step back for just a moment, um when we look at this year in total, so, I'll just do um you know, year-to-date here. When we look at the year, we'll see that I've taken thousands and thousands of trades. 3,033 trades as it shows right now.

So, 3,033 trades so far and here's the frustrating thing. One trade. One single momentary lapse of judgment. And all of a sudden I'm down $188,000 on that stock. Just like that. It's That's that's what's so hard about being a trader. You could be right 3,032 times in a row or not in a row, but you know what I mean. And then it's that one that just gets you really really badly. And that's what happened to me today. So, now let's talk about sort of how I how I recover.

How I reel and how I, you know, cope with this loss. So, back to the real-time archive. So, I take this huge loss. And you know, I cut the loss. I mean, that's one thing I'm good at is I cut the loss. I rip the band-aid off as much as it hurts, I rip it off. I don't keep holding, I don't keep hoping, I just rip it off. So, I rip the band-aid off. So, now I'm down 188 $196,000 on the day. And I'm asking myself, where do we go from here?

Um Clearly, I'm down way below my max loss. I really shouldn't take any more trades. And so, I don't for quite a while. I sit patiently, um just waiting, you know, watching other stocks are hitting the scanner and thinking, you know, I'm just not sure if there's going to be anything that I can trust. Um See where this is in the video. Um So, I end up I kind of switching my focus a little bit to the small account. I trade in the small account.

I got a couple trades there. Ended up making $166.48 on ZNB, which was, you know, decent. And then we had um ULY. We had several stocks that squeezed up today. So, as this one squeezes up, I was watching it. And it made this fantastic move from $4 up to 6 to 7 to 8. It's the right price stock. You know, these higher price stocks, you look at that loss on February 4th, 2021. It was a $30 stock again, right? So, these lower price stocks tend to be better for me.

So, this ends up squeezing higher, it dips down. And I let it pull back and I buy the first candle to make a new high right down here. This is a good setup. And I end up making $23,000 on it. I would take that trade every day of the week. That was a good trade. It was a good setup. And it was my first step back in the right direction. Should I have taken that trade already being down past max loss? No, probably not. Just for the, you know, kind of principle of it.

But it was a good setup and I suppose a couple trades in the small account had cleared the slate a little bit. And I'd already begun um this process of sort of accepting um the loss. And so, let's talk about that. Accepting the loss. So, I'm not happy about it. Uh I wish it hadn't happened. But wishing it hadn't happened isn't going to change anything. Being upset about it isn't going to change anything either. The only thing I can really do is get back on the horse.

That's the only thing I can do is start digging my way out. I've lost more than this in one day before and I recovered from it. I will recover from this as well. The path to recovery is chipping away one trade at a time on stocks that are back within the core of the strategy. They meet all five pillars that are really good setups. In fact, the same type of stocks I've been trading during the small account challenge. During the small account challenge, it's been kind of interesting cuz I've although tried at times to trade in both accounts, as you can see here, dispersed attention can be tricky.

And what it's often meant is that the best setups I trade in my small account because that's where I can't afford any risk. I can't afford to make mistakes. And the riskier setups have been in the bigger account. And although some of them have worked, some of them, of course, like today, have not worked. So, the way one of the first things I do when trying to cope with a loss is I try to build context around it and put it in perspective.

So, for instance, looking at my P&L over the last 90 days. Now, I know some of you guys are going to say, Ross, this is easy for you to do cuz over the last 90 days you're up 4 million bucks. Fair enough. And you're right. Looking at it over the last 90 days, being down today $170,000 is not a big deal. And you shouldn't feel bad for me. I don't want you to feel bad for me because I'm very fortunate, I feel great, very grateful.

Uh not everyone can be able to put it in context like this. If you look at your last 90 days and it looks like this, and then here you had another minus, you know, $17,000 loss, even if it's only, you know, a tenth of what I lost. This is not going to instill a lot of confidence about what to do differently, you know, uh in this area. So, how do you how do you recover? You're not clearly you're clearly not making money.

So, what I would say to this trader is trade in the sim. Do not put real money on the line. But for a trader that showed me a P&L like this, where they've been making money. And, you know, again, all being relative. Maybe this is $40,000 of profit. Maybe it's 400,000. Doesn't really matter the number. If you see an equity curve like this, and then at the end of it, a big flush like that, a big drop, you know, where you give back a bunch of profit.

I would basically say, you're Clearly, you know what you're doing more often than not. So, I would always try to understand what went wrong on this particular trade. And I think on this particular trade today, I just got emotionally compromised on that first trade, which is a big loss right out of the gates. And that happens. It just happens. I wish there was a way to avoid it 100% of the time. I don't know that there is.

So, I think I have to kind of just accept that this is um this is part of the deal with being a trader. And today I got the the short end of that stick. And another day it it'll work out differently, but this is just, you know, how the cookie crumbled today. So, what should I do? So, I So, you know, the first step is is developing context. Now, as I develop context around it, I start to feel a lot better about it. You know, when when I'm just looking at being down, you know, minus 172,000, oops, 172,000 dollars in one day, that just feels terrible, right?

When you're this zoomed in. But when you pull back and see that this is, you know, this is the big picture, this is easier to stomach. And so, I think that giving yourself context is the first step. So, where is this trade and does context help uh sort of put the trade into perspective where it makes the loss easier to stomach. And if it is, then you're probably in a place where um your trading has been pretty good and you can tolerate this type of loss and you will recover from it.

So, now we have a different question. So, let's say um I'm I'm basically back in my equity to where I was, you know, X days ago, X weeks ago. When I hit that point there, you know, let's just say it was for the sake of argument, uh well, I guess it was it would have been 3.8 million. Right? So, in the last 90 days. So, when I was at 3.8 million at that point, I was feeling like I was on top of the world. I was feeling great, you know, great confidence, everything was going well.

Now I'm at 3.8. I'm at the same exact number. But I feel terrible. I'm not satisfied with it. All of a sudden I'm feeling a sense of great loss. Now, if I keep myself focused on what I've lost, if I keep myself thinking about how this was enough to have bought, you know, a fleet of Hondas or a fleet of, you know, whatever, uh then I'm just going to be focused on making back that money. And if I'm focusing on making back that money, then I'm trading from a place of scarcity and I'm trading from a place of desperation.

And I'm going to continue to be trading with compromised judgment. On the other hand, if I can change my perspective a little bit. And there's a couple ways that I do this. One way is by saying, well, I lost 2 weeks of time and I'm reset back to right here, basically. I got a reset. Okay. So, in other words, this just kind of canceled out. All the progress I made the last week is canceled out and that's where I sit. So, I'm going to reset back to here.

And what was I doing that was working so well here? Focusing on, you know, A+ quality stocks, you know, share size, time of day. And I'm going to focus on just picking back up pretty much right where I left off, throttling myself back a little bit with smaller size just for a few few days, few sessions, start to build some progress, and then move back up. That's one way to think about it. Another way to think about it is, how much have I made since my last big red day?

And I guess I'd say my last big red day was back here on um August 1st. So, if we go back and we run a report from August 2nd until um you know, today, whatever. We run that report and then what I would say is that I made um 1.1 million minus the 170 I lost today. So, I made about $950,000 on this last hot streak from the first green day including this red day. Which means cool. Tomorrow can be day one of my new streak.

Day one. I'm starting over. So, I'm going to just close the chapter. It doesn't matter that today is, you know, October 7th and now I've got to try to uh can I finish the week green? Can I finish the month green? Sometimes that doesn't help to put that in your head. What if I just leave that out entirely? And instead say, that chapter is closed and that streak ended and now I get to start a new streak. And let's see how many days I can have between me and uh and the last red day, right?

Put as much space between me as possible. Have a nice streak. And the only way that I'm going to do that is by focusing once again on discipline. Now, yet another way to look at it is that I look at my P&L and I look at the 170 that I gave back minus 172. And I say to myself, okay, that's my high water mark. So, the distance there until I have made back half of it, which, you know, in this case is like $85,000 approximately.

So, $85,000 roughly. Once I've made back $85,000, I can be more aggressive. But until I have made back $85,000, half of the loss, I have to be in trader rehab. Oh, boy. There it is. We didn't want to hear it and I don't want to go, but maybe I need to. Trader rehab is when you put the guardrails back on. You really rein it in. Now, the idea of trader rehab um is something that I've uh talked about for a long time and in my um book here, How to Day Trade the Plain Truth, I talk about uh the guardrails for trader rehab and the guardrails for trading in general.

The idea of trader rehab is that typically I'll put myself there if I've had a sustained drawdown period where I haven't had just one red day, but I've had two in a row that are big, three in a row, four in a row. Like really big. And where I feel like I need to stop the bleeding like immediately. And where I feel like I can't totally trust myself to make good decisions. So, I got to put the training wheels back on. I put on these guardrails.

I put them on my account. I call my broker. I say, "Hey, here's my new max share size. Here's my new max P&L, max max red day." And they'll put all those restrictions on my account. If I trade outside of them, my account is locked. I can't trade anymore. So, as long as I stay within side that within them, I'm okay. So, do I put my And so, two things. So, do I put myself into trader rehab after today? It's one question.

Second is if you want to learn more about trader rehab, it's an entire class that I teach for Warrior Pro members. So, make sure you guys check that out. For those of you guys who are already members or if it's something you've been thinking about, it's something you could consider. So, that curriculum, the Warrior Pro course and the Warrior um the trader rehab class in particular is taught uh both by me and I have two um uh trading psychologists that help me in that section of the class and give their insight from all their years of working with other traders.

So, it's really fascinating. So, now back to that question, should I put myself into trader rehab? So, typically there are a few different conditions that would warrant it. One would be sustained losing stretch and you can't trust yourself and you feel like you need intervention. And the second would be if you've had a loss that's just so big, you're invariably going to be compromised. That it'll be impossible to come in tomorrow and not be thinking about how much you just lost.

And in that regard, I am going to need at least a modified period of reining it in. I can't come in tomorrow trading with 50,000 shares. I can't trade with 90,000 shares. If it works, it's fine. But if it doesn't, the downside is that I go on a day two of spiraling. Day two of compromised judgment. And then suddenly that turns into three days, four days. I've got to stop the bleeding. So, that means for me, the way I'm going to look at it, is that yes, the cup is more than half full.

I am in a fantastic position. But for the next few trading sessions, until I have made back about half of this loss, I need to rein it in because what I don't want to have happen is that I think of this as, all right, today's day one of the new chapter and then I get too excited and I end up starting, you know, tomorrow with another big loss. And then I'm like, uh so the that chapter actually begins today. And then, right?

So, for me, I need to rein it in. Now, if the loss was smaller, you know, 17,000, 27,000, even 50,000, I might not feel that I need to make as much of an adjustment. But because this loss is larger, I need to stop the bleeding immediately. So, for me, number one is context in terms of coping with the loss, putting in context. Number two is planning. Oops. So, making a plan is really important for me. When I do the planning stage, that's when I'm thinking about what is the path to recovery look like for me.

And that is what usually gets me excited because now I know, in a way, I've already made back all the losses. Think about it like this. Over the next 3 weeks, there's a greater than 90% chance that as long as I follow the rules of my strategy, I will make back all of this money. So, if I'm going to make it back in in 3 weeks over the, you know, the next few weeks, then in a way, that that money is almost in my like accounts receivable.

I know that's coming. All I have to do is show up every day and follow the rules. If I can show up and follow the rules, then I feel like the money is already there. And that's kind of an interesting perspective. It's almost like all of the money that I could possibly want to make is in the market. I just have to go get it. But there's a rule. You won't get it if you don't have discipline. And so, I've got to have the discipline to follow my guardrails, to focus on the five pillars of stock selection, and to not overstay my welcome.

So, if I can come in from 7:00 a.m. to 9:30, 10:00 a.m., come in, get green, and get out, then over the next 10, 15, 20 days, trading days, sure, I might have some days where there's not a lot. But I'll have some days where I get some really nice profit. In fact, it was only a week ago that I had a $100,000 green day. So, you know, all of a sudden, while tomorrow I'm going to come in and I'm going to focus on just hitting a few base hits.

A base hit is $3,000, $4,000, $5,000. If I can hit three of those, four of those, a $15,000, a day, boom. That's solid. That's another little dent. All right, I'm digging myself out. Lock it up. Don't overstay my welcome. Do it again the next day. Another $15,000. Do it again the next day. 10 days in a row like that, it's 150 grand. Right? So, now I know these are big numbers because I trade with larger size. The numbers are relative.

For you, we we might be talking about being down, you know, 17,000 and focusing on, you know, $1,500 days or something something like that. But it's the concept that carries through. So, it's just adjusting your focus, adjusting your perspective, and, you know, adjusting your expectations. So, I've got to adjust my expectations. And there will be some opportunity cost associated with this. I lost the money today and now tomorrow, because I'm going to have to be more conservative, I may undercapitalize on opportunities in the market.

And that is the sad consequence of the poor decisions from today. I don't have anyone to blame but myself. I got too aggressive at the wrong time. I didn't follow my rules when it comes to increasing share size. I increased share size in spite of everything telling me I should be decreasing share size. I did that because I was frustrated. I was emotional. The first loss set me off. And you know, it's unfortunate that that happened and I wish I could say as a result of what I'm, you know, as a result of these changes I'm going to implement, this will never happen again.

But that's not true because it will happen again. Because as traders using a discretionary trading strategy, this is part of the deal. This is just the way it is. So, this is right now, in this moment today, the absolute hardest part of being a trader. It's not hard when you're up $200,000 in one day. It's not hard when you're up $167,000 in one day. No one's complaining about that. It's hard when you have five days in a row where you feel like you're underperforming.

It's hard when you have, you know, two relatively big red days back-to-back as I did back here. A $58,000 red day, yikes. A $45,000 red day, That's tough. And then going into a period of 2 weeks, 3 weeks that's very slow, that is tough. Having a day like today, this is tough. So, your ability to to to get back on the horse here is what's going to define you. Being a trader requires a tremendous level of resilience. It really does.

It's you will get kicked in the teeth again and again and again. It's about getting back up. Bloody, beaten, bruised, it doesn't make sense in some ways, and I understand why some people would say, "I'm just going to give up. I'm done. I can't possibly do this again." And yet for me, getting knocked down is maybe I don't want to say never. I think in the moment sometimes I I you know recoil and I'm like, "Ah, I can't possibly." But within a few moments of gaining contacts and doing some planning, I am ready to get back on the horse.

And in fact, I'm excited to get back on the horse. In a way, even when I lose, I'm sort of inspired by how much money can be made or lost in the market. And losing $188,000 that quickly, then that makes me think I could have made that much money that quickly. If maybe I'd been on the other side of the trade or I'd been positioned a little bit differently. And maybe there will be an opportunity this year where I'll actually be able to see that happen.

And I'll take a position, and next thing you know, it'll be up $4 a share, and I'm up 160, 180, $200,000 in one trade. Who knows? It can happen. Just as quickly as I lost it, you could make it. So, that inspires me. And I think that that's a really cool thing about trading. Even after having traded as long as I've traded, I'm still I'm still inspired to try to get better, and I still see opportunity to get better. And so, that's where this is a career where even though I've been doing it for so long, I'm not bored with it.

Why? It's a perfect match between um skill and and challenge. You know, if you have a job that um is really really difficult, you're just going to be overwhelmed. You'll be like, "I can't do this. I can't possibly do this." If you have a job that's too easy, you're understimulated. You know, you're bored. And you're just waiting for the day to be over. You're waiting for the weekend. You're waiting to retire. And certainly not like that with trading.

Every day I come in and I'm stimulated. Because every day it's an opportunity to try to solve the puzzle and do a little bit better. There is no such thing as perfection. So, listen. Here it is. The biggest red day recap in 4 years. You've been able to watch me process and I think come to terms with the loss where even right now, I feel better than I did at the beginning of the recap. Just having talked through it. And so, I would encourage you to do the same thing the next time you have a big red day.

Context. Get context around it and make a game plan. And set some guide guardrails on your account. Use Trader Rehab. So, when you start to make that, you know, next leg up and you're recovering, you're doing it in a safe environment. Cuz the last thing you want to have happen is big red day and then second red day in a row, third red day in a row. That's when it gets bigger. So, you got to stop the bleeding right away.

So, tomorrow I'll be streaming as always 7:00 a.m. and I'll be reined in trading with smaller size, being a little more conservative as I work to rebuild this loss. So, I hope you guys to re you know, to recover loss. To rebuild the account. So, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. As always, if you did, you can hit the thumbs up, subscribe to channel. And hey, you know what I say, trading is risky. Easy come, easy go.

So, manage your risk by practicing in a simulator before putting real money on the line.