On my first attempt to secure funding using one of these companies - I had the dashboard up on one monitor and my trading platform up on the other. Meaning, I wanted to see how each trade I took was affecting my real-time balance and goals for the competition. Of course, you have to be aware of daily draw-down limitations and how close you are to that, but staring at each impact was a bit much. See if this sounds familiar:
When you first start, you might take a couple of losses. You figure these are due to jitters given the pressure of having rules given to you in the competition. After a day or two you begin following your process and for the most part, your P/L climbs. Now you are on day 12 of the 15 days you are required to trade. You have made $2,400 of the $3,000 required. So, you have 3 more days to make $600. Since your average winning trade, per your system, is $500, this is not going to be difficult. Or so you think.
Day 13: You pull up the dashboard to remind yourself what you have left to accomplish to win this competition. You start to see your setup and pull the trigger. You get stopped out, almost immediately. Executed too early. So, you re-enter because obviously the area is still “holding”. Stopped out again. You look at the dashboard. You see that you took a few steps back with the two stop-outs. You internally say “one win will easily make up for those two losses and put me in the slight positive”. You no longer are looking at your higher time frame context, but are hypnotized by your small time frame execution chart, watching every micro move. You get in again. Stop out.
You get the point. The slippery slope has begun. And all you can think is “I was so close!”. This frustration is BIG. If you aren’t careful, the next day turns into a repeat of this day until you eventually hit the drawdown restriction.
