Gross PnL: +$5006.
Net PnL: +$4367.
Preparation: 6/10
Patience: 5/10
Risk-Reward: 1/10
Discipline: 1/10
Flexibility: 3/10
Greed: 2/10
Over-trading: 2/10
1/10 psych rating. With comments: Actually feel okay, very humbled (but not tilted) by not taking stop. But have to respect that I was down $15k earlier so unlikely to trade very well going forward.
So basically today turned out to be a day that I was worried about - when I thought about forcing this week to be taken easy. At the peak I was down about $15000 on RGSE as a result of not taking a stop when I was down roughly $5000.
I believe I got something quite valuable from this experience though. The fact that I didn't take the stop is irrelevant, and I will have moments of stubbornness again throughout my trading career (as much as I'd like to think I won't). Therefore the biggest contributor to blowup potential (aside from stubbornness) is position size. I have always thought that when I had big size on, I would be able to control risk via stops but this isn't always the case.
This is obvious; but two things point to it being the best way to ensure no more account decimating blow-ups are ever taken:
(1) News occurs midday, if ever in a position that's way too big there is an instant blow-up.
(2) Relying on only stops to control risk is risky - one lapse of judgement; say because something moved within 1-2 minutes and "I'll give it time to see what happens". This is what happened today. Having more size also contributes to this problem (harder to hit out a 10k loss than a 3k one).
Other thing that is pretty important to realise is that I already trade quite big size for my account without trying to go above that. Going forward am thinking this should be increased proportionately. Will still do the 2x max size for niche setups - but again that's small compared to today. As last Friday as an example (+$12k), with my current sizes that would have been a $4k-$6k day - which is already plenty. Then as my account increases it would become more.
Another note: Size today was pre-emptive, so it wasn't a spontaneous decision at the moment. Again, simply can't rely on avoiding blowups solely by hitting stop-losses. This is the big takeaway from today.
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