Well, this is embarrassing…

I thought we were past this.

So, I blew the first $100k evaluation.

That’s not the problem, I don’t expect to pass 100% of the evaluations I take. They’re difficult, they’re designed to be difficult. But I broke some of my rules along the way, and that’s unacceptable.

What happened?

I was on holiday last week. Nothing special, 6 nights away at the beach, just a nice break and change of scenery for me and the family. I suppose the mistake began with my timing; I started a $100k evaluation the week before I went on holiday – WHO DOES THAT?

Realistically, I should have skipped trading while I was away. I was already up $3k on the account, $5k left to go. I could’ve skipped the week, came back and had another 2 weeks to finish Phase 1. But I didn’t.

I’ve been on such a good run recently that maybe I got overconfident, and it bit me in the ass. Hard.

So here’s a list of mistakes I made:

Trading on my phone

Trading while distracted

Taking short term positions in situations where I might not be able to follow the price action properly

Not having my usual routines in place before trading

Not setting a stop loss (ugh!)

This was a recipe for disaster. What the hell was I thinking?

This is embarrassing to write, but this is what this blog is for. Full accountability. Beat myself up a little, remind myself what I’m doing this for (my family, NOT excitement, NOT the enjoyment of trading. Money) and move on.

On to the next one. Remember the inchworm, the easiest path to improvement is fixing the mistakes. 

Maybe I’ll write an article about the Inchworm Concept as some cathartic self-therapy.