On Tilt
As per the previous post, set up my great 3rd monitor. Got the best night’s sleep in weeks, maybe months. Got up this morning (my day this week off from the ICK! regular job), made coffee, fired up the Command Center, watched the pre-market action.
Then, insidiously and without warning, it happened. Made a trade. Small loss. Routine.
Market reversed… caught it, ha! Made another trade, took extra-large position because I was feeling smug. Market went up, but the stock went tick, tick, tick, down, down, down. Sold half the position at a loss. Back up a little, then down, down, down. Sold the other half.
Went On Tilt for the rest of the day. Click that link and read it. I’ve said professional trading is like professional poker. That link was me today. Fully On Tilt.
Now this evening as I’m mopping the blood up off the floor, I’m humbly going back to What I Know. Run an Advanced Analyzer scan on every stock that finished significantly up or down. Study daily, 30min, 15min, 10min, 5min, 3min, and 1min charts of each of those stocks. Take notes with a pen and paper. See if there’s anything new happening, or if I just wasn’t paying attention to my old notes. Where are they, anyway? Under a pile of bills and other papers on the desk or the bookshelf, somewhere. How long since I’ve actually looked at them? Yeah, I can recite them all, but how long since I actually read them?
I read Trader-X’s post this weekend, and thought, yeah, he’s so right. Well, hell.
Been trading a long time. Been here before. Let’s take a breath and collect our thoughts. Thanksgiving week’s a good time.
I’ve been neglecting the personal site since June. Think I’ll work on it a bit. Owe that to Da Girlz. Hits here will decline. Ad revenue’s bound to fall. 
Michelle B said,
November 21, 2006 @ 3:48 am
Will, great stuff as usual. Really appreciated the tilt link. When I start calling stocks I am trading POSs, I stop and deliberately and slowly say the symbol–works like a charm to cool the heat. Cursing is an expression of emotion, usually anger, and an angry trader is a losing one.
lloydphilip said,
November 21, 2006 @ 8:49 am
Will…as a young trader I’ve done what you did several times…but lately I’ve stopped doing that even though there’s a strong urge to do it on almost every position…now if I feel like I don’t have at least 4 hours or so to dedicate to a position, I refuse to enter new trades, sometimes, I just cut the position if it annoys me. It’s the only way I know how to handle it…it may not be the best thing for someone at your level…I just feel that the emptier my head is, the smarter I am…yes I’m truly trying to be as dumb as possible from 9:30 - 3:30…it’s the only way I can keep myself out of trouble…
You most probably didn’t do anything wrong…remember you were the one that said that setups sometimes fail…and the more you press anything in life the higher the chance of failure…don’t beat yourself up over it…think of all the times you did the same thing in the past and see how many times it’s worked…if it did 80% of the times…then worry…otherwise concentrate on the Turkey brining and roasting techniques…
estocastica said,
November 21, 2006 @ 9:30 am
I loved this post!
Will said,
November 21, 2006 @ 11:05 am
Thanks ya’ll. I go to the hospital (work) at noon today, and about to call it quits for the ‘puter. Have slowly and deliberately taken a couple of “boring” trades and made a few $$. Also did something I haven’t done in a while. Turned everything off except the computers, the lights and Diana Krall. Works wonders.