Trading Ultimatum

It hasn't been long since "I quit"... a week...
The market can make you go crazy. I either have the worst luck in the world or I'm really stupid. (I would like to think I'm just not very lucky).
I was short TF last all last week for a swing trade, large size for the account, and I covered my short near the highs on Thursday, via the max pain method, ie "I've given up shorting this market because it melts up everyday on NO VOLUME and there is no telling when it will ever stop". Call me the ULTIMATE FADE INDICATOR,,, where is Neemo when you need him? (j/k)
Needless to say we gap down largely the next week and proceed to sell off on Libya news. I shake my head in disbelief as I had pretty much covered my short at the TOP on TF, and I would have made 20+k if I held my short over the weekend into this week, instead I lost 7k on the account. Regardless, the market could have rocketed higher and I could have taken a bigger loss because I wasn't trading signals or a plan. I let a BAD SCALP TRADE turn into a swing and I had let LOGICAL REASONING and BIAS affect my trading and I held the short. I over leveraged myself and I let the loss snowball until I hit my max pain. History repeating itself.
All the guys in the trading room know my problem; inability to accept a loss or a losing day. I really thrive on being green everyday I trade. My method to trade will deviate from the norm in order to get back to green if I turn Red on the day, ie use increased leverage or fade an obvious trend.

"HPT would be a great trader if he just stuck to using his signals and stops." This is what is commonly heard from traders in the room. As is the case for many traders. We MOVE OUR STOPS. We cheat ourselves. We go against the plan. We accept unknown risk for the potential to make it back to BREAKEVEN.

The Sunk Cost fallacy, there is no escaping it.You pay for a movie and sit down to watch it and after 5min, you realize its going to be a waste of your time, but you already paid for the movie. SO what do you do? Do you sit threw the movie or do you get up and leave to spend your time doing something you enjoy more? Most people would say they would just leave. But what if the price of the movie ticket was $100 dollars or $1000 dollars, then the scenario changes dramatically, and that is exactly the challenge that traders face on a daily basis when they enter the market and don't have a defined stop loss.
If you don't have a defined stop loss you might waste 2 hours of your life watching the worst movie of your life or in a traders situation, lose thousands of dollars as I have done numerous times from moving stops.
If I were able to take away 3-4 of my worst days from trading each year, my P/L curve would look dramatically different, and I'm sure that's the case for many traders as well. What did I do wrong on these days (ie trading against the trend on FRIDAY?).What is it that makes me want to short everyday when the market is clearly trending up?(It is not logical for the market to go up everyday) Why do I average down on losers? (To get back to breakeven) Why do I trade a range bound market and one that is very difficult when I could be trading something that is more volatile and easier to scalp?(I don't know? Why aren't you trading CL more?)
I hate having to announce that I'm not very profitable trading after 6 years of trading. You would think a guy with a trading website would be making the big dollars and know what he's doing. But I am human and still make mistakes. Lame excuse I know. History repeats itself and I'm no exception. Enough with the gloom and doom talk, and on to HPT 2.0,, the new improved trader the has a new outlook and plan and will likely fail again, but is promising he will do everything he can to avoid blow up days.

The Trading Plan-
Trade my Signals-
Max size 2 cars- (but when do u choose 1 or 2 cars? Good question,If I were trading stock index futures the answer would be when internals are heavily weighted one way- ie 1500+ advancing or -1500 declining stocks)
Trading Contract- NQ, QM, (possibly go back to TF and CL/COIL)
Stop loss- 8 ticks for now- will vary on market volatility
Time stop- 2 minutes ,cut it if its not Breakeven or green after 2 minutes, you may miss some trades, but it will save you in the long run from seeing a trade wiggle and hit your stop.
Risk Managers- YES- I've got friends that will call and tell me to Stop trading if I am not trading well.
(If anyone is in need of a risk manager, or wants a trading buddy because they have problems taking stops, please email me and maybe I can help-
highprobabilitytrading AT Gmail.com

Max stop loss per day- $500
Starting Profit Goal per day- $200
Profit goal per week- $1000

HPT biggest problem- Adding to losers-
Answer to problem- Bracketed stops that can't be moved NO MATTER WHAT- via 3rd party software.
I would like to get back in to doing a daily blog of my results and dedicate more time to this blog and my trading.
One bad day is not the end of the world for a trader, but it definitely starts to wear you down when you do it several times a year and you don't fix yourself when you clearly know what the problem is and how to fix it. My goal is to fix myself and accept every stop as a scalper. Time will tell whether I will fail again and go insane or finally fix myself and stick to a system that works and make good money. I hate making this post public, but I think it will be helpful to me and my goal of sticking to the plan. I know people will read this and see history repeating itself. That's fine. You are all probably right. I have nothing to prove to anyone,I only have to keep my promise with myself which is the most important and the hardest. Trading may be the biggest waste of my life, but I've never stuck to my stops, so I've been sabotaging myself all these years. If I can keep my discipline this time and get some help from 3rd party apps and Friends/Risk managers, I might be able to succeed. Time will tell. It only seems fair and logical to make an Ultimatum so I don't keep making posts like this and keep coming back after quitting.

The ULTIMATUM-
I will give myself 1 MONTH (4 weeks of trading) to trade in order to determine if I can trade and stick the stops. If I'm not profitable at least $1000 at the end of the month, I will quit trading Forever. I will share my results on the blog when I start trading again, likely in the beginning of March.

HPT