This story is entirely different from the others. It doesn't have the hero that you'll want to see in the mirror every morning after reading it. There are no motivational lines about risk management or a successful position. This story is about man's inner struggle with his own born demons. The market is generous, but sometimes it acts like a scoundrel, leaving scars on our lives. But I don't want to impose the pessimistic mood of this article in any way. I simply look at life in a realistic way, and in this story I see only hope that does not fade away. The way to success is different for everyone and this is just an offshoot of it.

author remains anonymous. all grammar and spelling has been left unedited

Before we get to the point, let's get to know each other a little bit. What's your motivations for trading and how you saw this industry before you got into it?

Most of my motives were based on the idea of separating my personal life from the money-making process. There are activities I love besides trading and I just wanted to keep doing them without worrying about how much money it would give me. In addition to this, I have noticed that the world is not built the way the books have been telling us, at least in my case. The more you grow up the more you notice that the only person that can take care of you is nobody but yourself, not the government or friends. In the end, we are all left with our own problems and situations to solve, blaming someone else is just childish. The idea of being able to depend financially only on yourself fascinated me. Moreover, we live in a pretty peculiar period of time, the economical and geopolitical situation is pretty underwhelming, I think that having a skill that may provide you with all the funds you need for life by just having an internet connection is a must today.

When I discovered trading I understood one thing - it is not as easy and dreamlike as it is advertised. Most of the advertisements of ‘’easy happiness recipes’’ are made just to attract not the most intelligent people, I just did not know why they needed it in the first place. Well, after finding out what liquidity is and how markets actually work it became pretty obvious. I was preparing for the long-term run which included both time and money investments, it was not about getting huge sums overnight for me.

How long have you known about prop-companies and how did you feel when you saw that you can "easily" get for managing thousands of dollars as described on their resources?

I found out about prop companies about 10 months ago. As I have mentioned higher, I did not believe in the idea of easy money. It was more about the confirmation of my skill and clarity of the goal I was placing. Knowing the fact that consistency and discipline may be rewarded just added some motivation, because at the very beginning when I was trading crypto only, I had no idea how it would become possible to take fewer trades with such a small deposit. And here comes the prop companies, the idea of getting the possibility of trading less but getting more.

How long have you been trying to get financing? How many attempts have you made and what counts have you tried to work with?

I have been trying to get it for more than 6 months, I did have some breaks, so all in all it would be something like 5 months. I have tried 7 times, and most of the challenges I tried to accomplish were 50 000 or 20 000.

Did all of those 7 times lead to failure, or did any of them manage to break even?

To sum up I have already bought 3 challenges and had 1 restart on each of them before buying it again. Right now I am passing the 7th one.

Have you ever wondered "why others can but I cannot"?

I actually didn’t. The only thing that bothers me is why exactly I am having these problems. I am approaching this in a little bit different way. I do know profitable traders personally so I do know that it is possible. Having this knowledge relieves me a bit as I know that my goal is more than achievable and I do have confirmation of it in my life. So if someone could do it means that I am capable of doing it as well.

Describe your journal during past setbacks. How many trades were closed on a stop order? And those that were on profit, were they a fluke or a technically correct decision to enter the market?

Usually, I was getting -7% before slowly turning them in 0 or lower. My win rate was mostly below 40%. I think that it is pretty obvious that I had 60%+ on backtests, it is pretty usual. Those that were profitable were technically right and executed flawlessly.

The thing I have noticed is that I was trying to change my trading strategy too much, I was doing it every 3 weeks. That is the main problem, the moment it started working I was noticing some other entries and tried to implement them as well. The result, as you may have noticed from this article, turned out to be pretty horrible.

The saddest thing is that I have found the strategy nobody was using and got a 75% win rate, and the moment I made backtests of it and started trading, it simply stopped working, I guess it was a seasonal occasion.

Regular defeats are the most damaging weapon on every trader's mind. Describe your worst period recently. How has that period affected your life outside of trading and what marks has it left on you?

I would say that the last 2 months were the most challenging. Seeing that all your actions lead you to failure makes you doubt yourself and question if you are even good enough or worthy at all. Suicide thoughts have started emerging more frequently and the scariest thing is that these thoughts are not perceived as something scary but something usual. If we are talking about life outside of trading, I would say that it has simply disappeared. I have a feeling that I have just lost balance in my life, it’s only gym and trading now. If you asked me what has happened in my life during the last few months I doubt that I would be able to tell you anything. I feel strong apathy toward people I used to love hanging out with, it has become much harder for me to relax and just have a good time. You could say that my emotional state is very volatile, sometimes I may be hyperactive and goofy, and the next moment I am simply emotionally dead. I do rarely meet with some friends of mine, but to be honest with you, I have a feeling that I am doing this just in order to make an illusion for everyone, including myself, that I am fine.

Did the moment you had suicidal thoughts frighten you? Did you talk to your family or a specialist about it?

Well, the fact that I stopped perceiving it as something scary did. It has become something like plan b in my head. I don’t want to disturb my relatives with this, but yes, I have talked to a psychologist about it and it helped, it really did.

Most of us do have these thoughts, let us be real. But still, the one who chooses which thoughts to listen to and which to ignore is always us. Life is a system of choices and you are the one who makes them. You should start by understanding how exactly to choose thoughts.

How do you feel when the market closes your trade on a stop order and after a while you saw that the market gave you a new and more clean opportunity that most of your peers took?

The most intriguing thing is that when I get stop-loss I simply feel nothing. I thought that maybe it has become a new habit of mine. We usually feel strong emotions toward something we are not used to, new experiences always amuse us, but you get nothing emotionally from teeth brushing, for example. This is something that stop-loss has become for me and it is messed up.

When I see that someone has taken another possibility later which was cleaner I still feel happy for others’ success and try not to compare my trading to theirs. I just try to understand the technical arguments of their trade, and that’s it.

Describe the concept of your trading. Morning, you open the terminal…

It is peculiar, the moment I got this question I understood that I simply do not have any principles. For the last few months, I have been changing those principles so often that writing here that I have some would be a lie. I used to have rituals in the morning that included getting up early, doing some physical routine, and preparing breakfast in order to set my mind in the active state, only after this I would start trading. And it helped a lot. Now it is simply gone. I used to have a trading strategy but I have watched so much information on how to make it better and compared it so much that I am simply using everything right now. No system. At all. Just a lot of information that has become a huge mess. It is like having all the pieces of one huge puzzle you need for solving without being able to actually do so.

Right now I am working on sticking to HTF (12н-4н-1н) points of interest and only focusing on price behavior in those places. I am mostly watching price action only right now.

When did you realize that your so-called "work routine" had turned to chaos?

The moment my life routine has interrupted. I have noticed the importance of your approach to any simple thing. For example, if you are thinking that you might ignore keeping your house clean and still have order in life - you are wrong. Your brain basically remembers your approach to one particular thing and replicates it in other spheres of life. So the moment I noticed that my discipline got worse, my wake-up time started differing every day, and the moment I started ignoring some physical activities - this was the moment when I understood that something is definitely wrong.

I am not sure if it works the same for everyone, but I suppose that by having order and discipline in any activity you do you are making your brain function the same way everywhere, which results in you being top-notch no matter what you do, however, it does work in reverse as well. I had this “perfect” period and I am 100% sure that I have messed up something.

How often do you compare yourself to other traders? Is this a good quality?

I would like to emphasize on this topic a little bit, it is good that you asked as writing it down may help me reflect on this and realize my mistakes. You may say that I had three stages of trading.

1. I was only trading by myself using only my own vision without looking at anyone else. This was a good part, my trading was perfect those days and the number of trades I was taking per month was close to 10-14. All of them were using a 1:3 risk-reward ratio, nothing crazy. But out of 14 trades, there were 12 profitable. My win rate was good and it was stable.

2. I started looking at other people trading styles and comparing them to mine, my trading day was starting not from my analysis, but from checking out others. This is when it started to get messy as I have absolutely stopped following my own vision. Sometimes I saw some people taking high-risk-reward trades ( something like 1:10/20) and started thinking I should do the same. The number of trades increased drastically and I started taking more than 25 trades per month trying to catch any possible price movement. My win rate started to go down.

1. I have noticed the presence of the second stage and now I am trying to exclude it by strict rules. I started to understand the graph again, I have a feeling that it starts getting a little bit better. The only thing that bothers me is the fact that I have started to be afraid of taking a trade when I actually need to. Previous losses have left a strong emotional association and I am currently working on it. I am trying to concentrate on HTF price movements and only after understanding it I would let myself go to LTF. It is 1:3 risk-reward only. I would like to return to that state I had at the beginning of my trading path. I guess I am not able to tell you my win rate now as I am concentrating on changing my trading style right now and I simply do not have enough data to make any conclusion.

I guess it becomes pretty obvious after reading this that comparing your trading to anyone else will simply lead you to a dead end. I would suggest you exclude even the possibility of the second stage occurring. Seeing other traders’ execution and even understanding it will only help you in implementing some of those technical parts in your strategy, but it will not place you in their state of mind, which is extremely important. Maybe that person had made backtest of 100 positions and now is ready to execute calmly. This person also may know all the nuances thanks to these backtests, but you don’t. Behind every result you see is always so much more information than you can even imagine. You just have to understand that your trading is yours and nobody’s else.

Your path to healing. I know there is no panacea in this case, but everything is not always black. What contributes, or can contribute, to make your trading "healthier"?

I do not think that I am in a position of someone who would be able to share some healing working methods as I do not have results yet, but as I have mentioned, I am currently trying to start listening only to myself again. And, of course, I should make a system as there is no sense in trading without it, what plan should I stick to if I simply don’t have one?

However, I may say that having some activities outside of trading helps. If most part of your life is trading and you do not succeed in it you will feel miserable as there is nothing good going on. But having some other things in your life would remind you that you are actually doing fine and it is just another part of your life. I am not sure how, but I think I need to start doing something except trading, though it is pretty difficult emotionally for me right now.

Also, the gym helps a lot. During physical activities, you release accumulated cortisol and it relieves stress a lot.

If you had the opportunity to go back to the very beginning when you first started trading, would you fence yourself off from it or would you leave things as they are?

Without hesitation, I would still choose to trade. You see, when I started trading I already knew that it was going to be pretty challenging, but isn’t achieving new skills always about overcoming these challenges? I remember when I was learning English in my childhood since 5 years old and trust me, I hated every second of it. But I am really grateful to my parents for pushing me really hard through it. The fact that I am capable of expressing my thoughts using the international language is a blessing, there were several moments in my life that were possible only thanks to my knowledge of English. I remember learning how to make music, it was really challenging, but I had so many beautiful moments and people occurring in my life just because of me having this skill. Did I like studying and having a lot of additional activities when I was younger? No. But the knowledge and experience I got have made me someone who is able to communicate with some people I personally consider to be super smart and interesting. In addition to this, trading is the activity I started learning all by myself and the feeling of craving for knowledge is fascinating.

There is always a price we are paying, it could be money, it could be emotions, or efforts and it is always time. I am grateful for every single skill I am having nowadays and they have helped me a lot during my life span. By learning something new and overcoming these challenges today you are doing your future self a huge favor.

I do acknowledge the fact that I am trying to overcome quite a challenge right now and the only difference between earlier challenges and the one I am having right now is only that I am all by myself right now. I am grateful to this life for the fact that I do understand this, and moreover, I am super grateful to myself for making this decision to start trading.