By: Steve Levay
Before I get into my first blog post, I want to introduce myself and my trading pal/buddy/teammate/comrade Mike Lee. If you are a member of T3Live.com you probably know us already, but we wanted to start writing on the blog as well so hopefully we can help more people achieve success. Mike and I, in addition to being close friends, share a similar short-term trading style that is centered on consistency and money management, and we communicate closely during the trading day. In our blog segments, “Market Memoirs with Steve Levay and Mike Lee”, we want to not only share stories and analysis of trades and trade ideas, we want to engage our readers and create an active discussion of ideas. Please, if you feel compelled, comment on our posts and ask as many questions as possible. We look forward to sharing our insights and ideas, and hopefully this can become something valuable for you guys. On to my post:
I came in this morning and prepared to go through my daily routine, identifying which stocks I am going to be looking at today. I do the same thing day after day, week after week, and month after month. But today it feels a little different. I am currently in the worst slump of my 10 year career. The question I pose to myself every day is, how can I get out of it? It’s not that I am down a lot, because I’m not. It’s that I’m down, period. It’s something I am not used to. My whole trading persona is synonymous with consistency, so being down is something I find very hard to deal with. But, alas, it happens. I know that. Everyone goes through difficult stretches. My job is to persevere through the hard times, limit my losses while I’m off my game and get back to making money. I try to focus on the here and now.
Today I know my job is to make money, whether it be $100 or $1,000. It only takes one green day to get your confidence back, and one green day leads to two green days, etc. The beauty of this job is that we NEVER know what will happen any given day, or any given second for that matter. Every day is a new day, and today I am mentally starting at zero. It doesn’t matter in my mind where I’m at on the month, because I know come September 30, I will have made money. That’s the way I think, so that’s the way I trade. The difference between me and most other traders out there is that I know I am not bigger than the market, but I know I can beat this market month after month. That is the key to a traders mentality. KNOWING you can do something vs. HOPING you can.
