Debugging

It has been pretty much business as usual for me since I last posted. Last week was not great at all, although I was able to trade Silver successfully and end up positive on the week. That's one small victory I will take, but I am still overall negative on the month.

The first two days of this week have also been negative for me, so it looks like I could end up the month negative -- the first time in several months. Of course, this means no paycheck and some potentially pretty hard times for the next few weeks. I also can't help but look ahead to the upcoming holiday season and realize that it is going to be much different for me and my wife this year. This really makes me sad, but I realize I put us in this situation chasing my dreams. I have to feel blessed to have someone like my wife who is still supportive of what I am doing. In fact, she is probably more supportive of me right now than I am of myself. She still believes I can do this. Unfortunately, I am still having serious doubts.

I guess it doesn't help my situation either that small emergencies have been popping up recently which have cost us some serious cash. Our refrigerator went out the other day. Not only did it cost $300 to fix it, but we lost all of our food in the freezer and most in the refrigerator. That was probably another $200 - $300 to replace. We had to take Kim's car in for maintenance. That was almost $600. The electrical system in my car is starting to go haywire. I don't have windshield wipers and the seat belt sign constantly beeps when the car is started. The estimate to get that repaired is almost $1000. Not to mention, I still haven't replaced my side mirror which I broke a couple of months ago. It is starting to fall off and is going to have to be fixed soon. The estimate for that was about $350. Well, at least I have my health right? Maybe so, but I need to go the doctor and get some things checked out. I just haven't felt the same the last couple of weeks.

I know ... here I go again ... "Dave the Downer" (wah, wah, waaaaah). With each day that goes by, I truly envy those people who are optimistic. It is a mindset that I wish I could just experience for one day. I wake up each morning and go into work, and really think "OK, today is going to be different". But it never takes very long for reality to set in. Today, I lost 7 trades in row from the very beginning, and psychologically I was out of it. I was afraid to trade for the rest of the day because I literally think that everything I do is going to be wrong. My win percentage the last two weeks has still been in the 30% range which is pathetic. So, what can I do?

The best analogy I can use for how I am feeling and what I am doing these days is that I am in a constant state of debugging. I remember when I used to program and there would be a bug in the code I was writing. Some bugs were easy to find and others were real doozies. For the doozies, I would spend hours going over the code, inject stops in the debugger, and pull my hair out trying to fix the problem. Eventually, I would find it and fix it, and the program would work as I wanted it to. But it really was a painful process coming to that point. With trading, it feels as if I have been debugging the same code, the same problem for the last seven months and I can't figure out what the problem is. With programming, at some point, you can let other people look at your code and they might be able to help you out. I have had other people look at my trades, and they say "Well, it looks like you had a good entry and the right idea, it just didn't work out." Why is it then I just happen to pick all the right trades that never work out? I go home at night and reveiw charts and try to find a strategy that will work for me. I come to work the next day and try to execute the strategy, but what seemed so good in back testing the night before just doesn't work the next day. I am trying different things ... I am trying to debug the program ... but every morning is the same thing .... CORE DUMP. When will my program work?

Speaking of programs, one bit of good news. The IT staff at work actually granted me permission to write my own tickers for stock conditions. I have mentioned these in previous posts, but basically these will allow me to see stocks which meet certain entry criteria which I program. I am looking real forward to this because I have been requesting some tickers for a couple of weeks now and they have never been built. At least now, I will be able to take this matter into my own hands.

So, that is what I am off to do now. I am getting ready to VPN into the work network and start coding my tickers. I hope, at least, the debugging of these will be kept to minimum.