Question: What’s a trader to do when a less than stellar year is followed by an even worse beginning of the new year?  Answer: Keep the faith and continue to trade like nothing is different.  Last year my trading performance was fair at best (returns were at the 40th percentile of a 10-year distribution). My hope that this year would be better was soon challenged as the first six trades of 2010 resulted in a 6.5% portfolio loss. But I keep plugging away. That’s all I can do. The “magic” of trading is in the law of large numbers…lots of trades over many periods are needed for a system’s results to approach the mean. Truth is this year could be another poor performing one. I won’t know until the end of the year. This could be the truly bad year at the 10th percentile or less.  Over the long run my system will hopefully still be valid, but I won’t know for quite a while. So, I keep trading…and yes, hoping, but still realize that what happens will happen…that’s the joy/frustration of trading.