Adhd, Ocd, Gambling mindset,greedy, Get ready to Lose Your Acct!


#1

[COLOR="#0000CD"]Ok Gang, Tell me im not the only one here?[/color] Hopefully this wont sound like im rambling on, I know there must be a few folks here who have struggled with adhd, ocd and or have played the sports betting / ponies gig. Id like to share my exp in this area and welcome as much feedback as possible. I started out of the womb with adhd so bad my folks had me on all kinds of meds, back then it was riddlin, anyway i was a very hyper kid with a high Iq and very short attention span, So in my late teens/20`s I learned how to hustle pool and gamble, this was a serious addiction and even harder to overcome for me after the internet came about and you could wager online, My point is I took alot of this mentality into trading futures. I started in 98 with a book called How To Become a Real-Time Commodity Futures Trader - From Home : Living the Ultimate Entrepreneurial Dream, HAHA, yes and paid $2500 for the keltner channel software on a floppy disk for super charts! So off to the races it was with $3500 in a acct to trade the emini a few soybeans cattle etc. Did fair until the adhd kicked in and emotions flew, Then borrowed another 5k thinking I could trade with the big dogs on the SnP 500. NOT! lost it all in 3 hrs, got drunk took the xwifes advice and quit, back to work and sports betting.

Needless to say I would probably be retired by 50 from the $ wasted, so finally I quit it all in 2011 and began my hunt for a new tradingsystem, still not dealing with the adhd and emotional aspect of trading, more $ lost and wasted looking for some holy grail as they say. I stumbled across this site last year and thought it looked cheesy and saw the word binary which immediately turned me off since I saw all those binary scammers out there (you know the old clickbank sites?) anyway I went back and tried to use the system i had some luck with but as usual I failed. I got an email about nadex and was lead here somehow and jumped right in taking the elite mvp course 3 times and watched a ton of videos, decided to fund my amp acct with $500 and trade the ym/nq ($300 margins) since binarys scared me. First of all if your reading this PLEASE do not try to trade futures with less than 1k, more like 5k. or a slow cheap computer! After missing alot of mvp entries I decided to get aggressive and jumped in only to see an immediate reversal and could not set a stop for lack of funds, when I tried to close the trade the dom started flashing, oh well there went my last $300 down the drain. Embarrassing to even post this but maybe im not alone and frankly i don’t care at this point.

So I took the last 2 weeks to analyze things and decided to go with nadex spreads and binarys, I have a 100 acct and a demo and I used the scanner to find a us500 spread for $7 that paid $425 at exp. also a japan225 @ $5 which paid $295 just b4 exp. Now Im pumped up and ready to jump in for real only to realize that HEY wait a minute I have Adhd so Id better devise a plan or Im doomed to fail again.

  1. Use the scanner and stop plugin.
  2. Only trade after going over the charts, boom/mvp etc
  3. Double check and confirm my entry/exit stratagy.
  4. DO NOT stare at the $ amount, pay attention to the trade and where the market is trying to go (especially for futures).
  5. Don`t over trade, Im not gambling here.
  6. When in doubt trade demo and go back over the training’s and videos.
  7. Yes my lucky # If I cant afford to lose it then don`t trade it.

Write things down too, adhd says oh Ill remember it but we dont

I hope this helps someone besides me as it felt good to finally post this. Now I commute by train/bus 4 hrs a day to work and back so Im using my tab while traveling to study boomerang and demo trade nadex mobile. At night Im able to see alot of good expiry trades and being on pst helps too.

Ok well I hope this helps someone and please leave feedback.

One last thing. My goal the last several years has been to become a successful futures trader and Do it for a living/retirement. If you cannot get it done with Apex and the brilliant mind of Darrell to help you then you probably should thow in the towel now because I have been around the block and there is NO other place that exists like this website for wannabe or skilled traders! Carpe diem James


#2

I have ADD. Its not a disadvantage though. The ability to hyperfocus and multitask at the same time is a super power in the trading world.


#3

Speculation thank you for kudos :slight_smile:

Good point GTM a weakness can be a strength. I have a friend with ADD and he is razor sharp at focusing on one thing at a time but he nails it.

This can be a weakness if you can’t back up and see whats going on around you on the charts and miss the upcoming trade.

On the risk side yes you should start with a bare bare a bare minimum on futures of 3k though i have seen traders do it with only $500 and succeed but this is rare…3k is doing something like momentum scalps not apex entries. If not much higher. As you know on Elite i teach the 5%/6 rule. Not easy for everyone I know but it is the goal to have proper risk management to be able to make it long enough to survie and get it down (check the steward section capital management to learn more about this).

$100 is not enough for Nadex save up some more and get it a bit larger. Never pick a spread because you like the risk/reward. And take all the trades and be consistent or sure enough you will pick to cheap a spread that has a massive breakeven distance or you will pick that one losing trade of the day… ugh hate it when that happens :slight_smile: Hence the rules 5%/6. Mirco FX may be a better choice with the account size. Then increase it up to where you can get to that point. Its not a requirement but ohhh you can’t imagine how much it helps.