The Truth About Day Trading Stocks: A Cautionary Tale About Hard Challenges and What It Takes To Succeed

CHAPTER 5

Taking Breaks

 

 

 

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve taken a break from day trading, I could buy you and me a lot of drinks. In my early days in the profession, I timed-out when I ran out of money. I needed time off to save up more money for starting all over, reinvesting.

That pattern is typical.

That pattern is pathetic.

Depending on the state of my finances, my breaks were for differing segments of time. The result of those time-outs, however, was always exactly the same: I kept going back into the arena and getting beaten up again.

I wasn’t yet aware that taking a break is supposed to be for attitude adjustment. It’s also for improvement of strategies. It’s not supposed to be about sadly attempting to find more funds to throw in.

I felt like a compulsive gambler, and in many ways, I was. But gradually, during the course of each time-out, I learned something new. Those downtimes were causing some soul searching. I was slowly recognizing my shortcomings.

That was when I actually wrote my first book. It was one year after my first day of trading. It was after I sold my first house. Some major losses I’d suffered, which occurred in the 2000 recession, had forced me to relinquish my beautiful California home. That house, you’ll recall, was the property my fiancée and I purchased just prior to my first day trading seminar in Irvine.

That sacrifice, as you can imagine, was one of the roughest points in the saga of my day trading journey.

That first writing project was ...