The Slippery Slope

I only had time to trade 3 races on Sunday all of which brought small profits. Monday saw me erase double the profit I had chalked up on Sunday, so the slow but sure downward slide continues for the moment.

Losing is never a great experience, but this is a learning curve and at times like this I think back to the stories of many incredible traders who lost their entire bank many times before ultimately getting on to a winning path. Michael Marcus is one of those traders. He started with $1000 and lost it all in the space of 3 days. His next stake was $500, again lost in a a short period of time. He then started again with $3000, trading it up to $30,000. At that point he borrowed to add a further $20,000 to his bank, and quickly lost $42,000 of that $50,000, and eventually all of the remaining $8,000 as well. He summed up in his own words the period that followed that "It was the same old cycle of borrowing money and consistently losing it". Ultimately Michael Marcus became a phenomenally successful trader, growing a stake of $30,000 (plus a further $100,000 added a few years later) into $80 million over the course of 10 years, and that was with the fund managers withdrawing 30% of the fund every year for expenses!