The most important lesson I learned from day trading

In 2021, due to a strange situation I found myself pulled into this vortex that included interacting with a group of day traders. During that time I was fascinated and almost by accident learned some day trading techniques. I was no where near as obsessed as I would need to be to be a professional. Every now and then however, I'll open the platform and make some "coffee money". I enjoy it. And I enjoy hanging out and listening to day traders. They are very interesting in many ways. I had a lot of laughs and good times with them. 

I was reflecting upon my time there today. The most heart wrenching and meaningful lesson I learned wasn't necessarily about entry, target, exit and stop loss areas. Support, resistance, the patterns with proven edge. All of those things are useful to know as well as many other tricks of the trade. However, what really hit me hard and still does, and always will is that you can pick an amazing pattern, you can do everything right, and there will be times when your trade will stop out and not work anyway. I think that is the most difficult lesson both in trading and the expanded experience of life. When you did absolutely nothing wrong but because we share this world with billions of other people. We share the market with millions of other people. They are all making decisions for their own reasons and priorities. There are just too many variables to take in at one time and therefore we just can't predict or factor them all in. We can only do our best in that particular moment. Be able to properly process, grieve what we wish would have been, and let go. Set up for the next opportunity. Some are harder to walk away from than others. But walking away and setting up for the next opportunity is part of the game. May the next trade or opportunity be so wonderful that the hurt of loss is soothed and the joy overcomes the pain. 

The important thing is not to get too far up into your head about it. For me, I find my brain is constantly looking to fill in the gap of unknown information. What could I have done better, what did I miss? And that is good to do. But it is not good to overdo. Because many times whether it is market forces, society, or unknown desires of those who you interact with that are kept from you on purpose. These realities exist. And so we do the best we can and we move on. 

Over an entire lifetime (of course there are always outliers but for the most part) things will work themselves out. Cycles will come and cycles will go. Enjoy the good ones, and learn from the challenging ones. 

Until next time...