I started trading in 2011, not long before the summer crash. Up to that point I’d been trading stocks on earnings and had also bought a few as long-term holds. I hadn’t yet studied Technical Analysis so I knew nothing about charts or indicators. Interestingly, I hadn’t been doing badly – my P&L was slightly positive, in fact – so I was feeling fairly confident. But when the markets started to sell off and then swung around in wide price ranges for weeks after that, I had no idea what to do. I wondered if the markets were always like that. And I wondered if maybe I was in over my head.

But I was determined enough (and naïve enough, thank goodness) to think that if others had figured this thing out then certainly I could too. So I sought out coaches and mentors in the industry who could teach me what they knew. I studied Technical Analysis and options and emerged in early 2012 ready to make my bones.

Unfortunately, the worst thing that could possibly happen to an inexperienced trader happened to me: I started making a bunch of money with my covered call strategy in AAPL. I mean, I couldn’t not make money with that strategy for about a week or so. I thought I was a genius and that the education I’d paid for had been all I’d needed to make my fortune and quit my job.

But then, of course, reality set in. I thought AAPL would just keep going up so I doubled up at the top and stopped selling calls. I simply didn’t have a plan so I started winging it. When AAPL finally pulled back I stayed in my long position thinking the market must be wrong and that I would end up being right and that AAPL would bounce. That’s always a big mistake. The losses started piling up so I freaked out and sold at the worst possible time – right before the bounce – choking down a loss and giving back a lot more than the $15,000 in gains I’d bragged to my friends about just days before.

That was a hard lesson but I’m glad I learned it. And that might have pushed me out of the markets had I not figured at the time that I’d learned enough about options strategies to switch to something else and just make it all back. So I started selling bullish put spreads in stocks based on technical patterns. 

I was doing fairly well at this for a while. I even had a rough draft of a trade plan in my head. But when the market pulled back and started pushing my positions into max loss territory I didn’t want to get out so I ended up taking bigger losses than I’d planned for. My profit targets had been too high and I hadn’t actually been ready to accept my max loss. In other words, I didn’t establish a realistic point where taking profits would have made sense in the prevailing market environment (like maybe 50% to 75% of premium collected per position) and I talked myself out of my stop losses. 

This was really the first time that I seriously wondered whether or not I should continue trading. I wondered if I had the mental capacity for it, to tell you the truth. I wondered if I was smart enough. This was the first time I really had to rally myself back into the game. Luckily, I’d acquired a foundation in Technical Analysis and thought I could use it to just switch to something else again. When it comes to rallying, you never quite know what it’s going to be. It usually ends up being different every time and many times something you never expected that would end up keeping you in the game.

So I completely switched over to swing trading in stocks and struggled through the rest of 2012 trying to find trading plans that would work all the time in every market environment – in other words, I was looking for the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, this doesn’t exist, so my resolve got weaker and weaker. At the beginning of 2013 I started dabbling in options again, still looking for the Holy Grail. And my resolve got even weaker.

Finally in the Spring of 2013 I seriously began to consider quitting the game. I told my friend that I didn’t think I was going to figure out this trading thing. And I was gearing up for trading no more.

I left my trading desk and forced myself away from the markets. Little did I know that this would end up being the most crucial rallying I’d done up to that point and exactly what I needed. Even though I stayed away from my keyboard I continued to think about trading and realized that I did actually enjoy it and wanted to succeed. And I figured I’d put in way too much work to stop now. 

So I decided to slow down a bit. I browsed through my journal notes from previous courses I’d taken in an effort to see if I could make sense of concepts that had eluded me before. I re-read books, re-watched videos and reviewed notes on strategies that had appealed to me more than others. I took some time to let things sink in a little more.

Suddenly I found myself back at my desk ready to trade again, on the lookout for new and intriguing approaches and ended up stumbling upon a trader who would become a friend and mentor. I discovered Andrew Falde, who at the time was offering strategy ideas and products in options among other things in his online community. If I hadn’t kept myself in the game by hitting the refresh button I never would have found the teacher and mentor who ended up making all the difference.

Andrew taught me automated trading, which led to my first consistently profitable strategy: shorting an exchange-traded note in volatility (VXX) based on signals generated by the custom script. This is what continued to rally me back into the game over the next several years. Whenever I ran into walls with my options and swing trading strategies I could always fall back on my consistently profitable automated strategy in short volatility. It provided a hugely important psychological safety net and the belief that if I could develop one profitable strategy then I could surely develop another one or even multiple ones, preferably in options and swing trading. And I eventually accomplished that.

That was probably the most important rallying I’ve done in my trading career, but it certainly wasn’t the last time I had to rebound, regroup and summon my inner strength. The process of rallying has evolved over time and at a certain point staying in the game became easier as well as inevitable. At a certain point I knew I wasn’t going to quit. I’d come far enough and had experienced enough success that it seemed unthinkable to give up after that.

Early in my trading career there were really two kinds of rallying that I engaged in: ongoing and critical. The ongoing rallying that I would do was on a weekly – sometimes daily – basis and involved just trying not to be too hard on myself for mistakes or for things I didn’t yet understand. To some degree it was simply maintenance, like when I’d get tired on a Friday after a long week of trading so I’d take Saturday to play a sport or spend extra time with my family to get my mind off trading. This would provide me with a quick reboot so I’d be ready to go back to work on Monday.

Sometimes the ongoing rallying I’d have to do was a bit more urgent, like when I’d start to get really frustrated with my underperformance. I’d reach out to a friend or mentor to have a conversation about my strategy or I’d read a book about trading, watch trading videos or chat with other traders in a web site community. This was a way to reach out and not feel so alone in my endeavor, and to keep my mind focused on learning instead of beating myself up for poor results.

And then there was the do-or-die rallying I’d have to do, like in the Spring of 2013 right before I met Andrew Falde. These were the times when I really had to look myself in the eye and ask myself if I had it in me to keep going. My ability to rally eventually led to my first profitable strategy, and that helped me continue moving forward after that.

When I struggle or second guess my decisions now I always step back and focus on gaining the proper perspective. What actually caused my strategy to take a loss? Was it a mistake I made in execution? Is my strategy not appropriate for the current market environment? Was it just the result of a timing issue that was simply out of my control – in other words, did the markets move against me at exactly the wrong time? Or was it just a random loss in a market environment that is actually appropriate for my particular strategy? These are the kinds of questions I ask myself on a regular basis to make sure any decisions I make are sound and not clouded by emotion. 

Whatever it is you have to do to rally yourself back in the game, just do it. Learning to trade profitably was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done but also one of the most rewarding. In my opinion, it’s definitely worth it in the end.

So don’t give up. Believe me, if I can figure it out so can you.