Well if you don't mind me saying ... ...and having a roughie understanding of where your at in your trading journey specgoldbug (2 years or so in ?) ,
... that if your "looking for kicks" from your trading then your mind set is possibly not quite in the right space for sustained success (its a phase most people have early on but you must work through it a shake it off as soon as you can). Adrenaline junky's make a habit of taking positions they should never have entered, its often a haphazard and random approach ... poorly thought through and impulsive decisions with sometimes low probability of success and inevitably they make big gains and big losses more on dumb luck or anti-luck or good trading acumen. Positions are taken on impulse for the challenge and/or for the thrill of it rather than taking a position where probability is massively in your favour and a good $ result is highly likely. So I suspect you will need to put a clamp on you your emotions, add some measure of discipline and become more emotionless about it your trading. Strict rules for trading will enable/assist you to do this.
For me almost 100% emotionless for me these day, almost ! ... Never lose any sleep on bigger holds or higher risk positions anymore, dips below my mental stops don't bother me either .. I have confidence in and back my own research and know that probability is in my favour or my processes will save me ....but this said I still make mistakes and take hits... For example, several of my pilots into Vanadium recently have been stopped out and gave me a sting ...but the stings were small as positions were pilots only (smaller initial trades)... So I got the timing wrong on the upcoming Vanadium run (ultimately the run in vandium is inevitable in my mind ) for the 2nd time in two years. But no big drama ...maybe I'll get it right on the 3rd try ? When I do get it right it will be big$$!.... Some of my biggest profits have come from stocks or sectors where I have been stopped out early 4 or 5 times...via bad timing before the main rally gets underway ... and that rally, when it comes, enables me to recover all losses from stop outs and make it more than worthwhile bagging loses from stops many time over .
Not all dogs um... terds ultimately turn into diamonds , btw. Some just continue to smell bad at infinitum. I came across a Forrestfield HC post recently where he said he had been holding a unnamed shell company for 18mths and it still showed little hope of any kind of redemption. Forrest is one of the top researchers & traders here at the STT !! So if it can happen to him it can happen to any one. So its important to step back from your trading every now and then and evaluate your trades and take a helicopter view ... ie should I have entered there, was it a good or bad exit, should have I invested at all ... what was the problem with this trade... ETC ETC
When you say you have "made and lost small fortunes" it says to me you may not have your trading rules completely nutted out yet ... there should seldom be a big loss for example ... if there are big losses your rules are fundamentally flawed in some way. So mental discipline or procedure is lacking somewhere. All can be fixed easily by reworking rules and "hardening" your mental attitude to flailing trades early. But failure to revisit your processed will ultimately manifest itself at best in portfolio non performance or at worst catastrophic failure of your trading and interrupt the harmony in you greater life outside of trading.
So be ruthless in setting rules to trade with and even more ruthless in following them ...review them often and fine tune them if they are not working or not working well.
Cheers FH
