Dipping my toes

Unless you trade the following won't sound like success but believe me that's exactly the way I view it. At the very least it's progress.

I've been back in a few weeks now. I've not made money but I'm making progress. I'll explain;

I funded my account 3 weeks ago with £1500, traded for a week and took £1500 back.

A couple of weeks ago I funded £2000, traded for a week and took £1500 back.

Last week I traded with £2000. At one stage I was £1100 in profit. I continued to trade and finally broke even at £2000.

How is that progress?

In the past I would have lost £1500, £2000 & £2000. A total of £5500. Okay so I'm £500 down but that represents huge progress.

You don't go from losing thousands to winning thousands one day to the next, not consistently anyway. The last few weeks have shown me that I am getting closer. I'm using much healthier trading sizes, no more than £5 per point and this allows me to survive a fluctuation of 100 points or more and not margin out. Believe me when I say that trading relative to the size of your account in more important than a stop loss.

I would have made money but I made a couple of poor (not fatal) decisions.

Firstly I should have stopped trading when I was £1000 in profit. That was my mental target and without fail I should have banked it at that point.

The second error was surviving a drop of 50 points on the DAX, watching it climb into a moderate 10 point profit then bring a stop loss up too tight. I margined out for a £20 loss when had I shown a little patience just 2 hours later I would have ridden the 150 point climb (I was long) at £3 a point. That one trade would have realised £450 profit.

Again although I really could do with the money I still believe it's more important to view my trading in an overall picture which is me learning to control my emotions.

My target for next week is the following;

I have a pot of £2000 and as soon as I make £1000 profit I will bank the money. At £5 a point that equates to 200 points.

I shall update daily next week.