A New Trading Challenge To Recapture The Old Trading Magic

October’s turned out to be a decisive month for my trading career, just not quite the way I had originally hoped.

Anyone who follows my daily trading recaps or regularly checks in on my Benzinga dispatches might know a bit of what I’m hinting at. Those who are not familiar with me or Warrior Trading only need to know that the fourth quarter of the year is usually the most profitable time of year for my particular trading strategy, but this year has been far more volatile.

The first week of the month started with a strong green streak, while the second week saw two sizable red days that knocked out most of that progress. The third week turned up four +$10,000 days and was one of my strongest streaks ever. But I then had another three huge red days that took out almost 80% of those gains.

And this see-saw of big wins followed by slightly smaller losses isn’t a recent pattern, it’s something I’ve noticed throughout 2019. For a while, I thought it was just the market, but more and more I’ve been forced to look at my own habits as a trader and try to find ways to minimize these drawdowns without sacrificing what’s made my strategy so successful.

The solution I came to was one I already toyed with a couple of months ago: resetting my account.

This time though, I’m not just shrinking my account by $40,000 or $50,000. I’m starting over, I’m going to re-do my small account challenge.

My goal in this new undertaking is two-fold. One, I believe that reducing the amount of capital I have will force me to be a better, smarter and more profitable trader. More importantly though, I feel like starting with just a few hundred dollars in my account will be more helpful to Warrior Trading students and anyone else who might use my trading journal as a resource.

Because, while posting $20,000 home run days is thrilling, it’s not helpful to anyone if they’re balanced out by a -$10,000 loss shortly after. It doesn’t help my trading account, I’d be in the same position if I had consistently met a $2,000 goal. It certainly doesn’t illustrate good risk management, I couldn't make those kinds of risk-heavy trades with $10,000 or less in my account like the majority of new traders.

I’m excited to start this journey and hopefully rediscover what makes trading such a rewarding career in the first place. For now, just stay tuned to the Warrior Trading Youtube channel and Facebook page for updates on how I’m going to tackle this new challenge.

Warrior Trading is a content partner of Benzinga.