I made every mistake in the book and broke all the rules I promised myself I’d stick to. Classic “story of my life” stuff. I tend to take things too lightly, thinking I already know what I’m doing, and then I throw discipline out the window and act like a total rookie.

This week was filled with overtrading, FOMO, revenge trading, chasing, bagholding, and ignoring risk/reward. Basically, if there was a mistake to make—I made it. My emotions completely took over. By Friday, my confidence was shot, and I had to face the hard truth: I still have so much to learn.

To make matters worse, I just finished uploading all of my trades into Profit.ly—and honestly, it was painful to see. The stats look ugly, and I feel embarrassed putting it all out there. I made so many trades that it was impossible to add detailed comments on each one. At this point, I was just relieved to get everything logged.

I’m just getting back into the Challenge, and I need to give myself the time to properly study, absorb the patterns, and apply the rules. Instead, I’ve been rushing, acting like this game is easy—and the market punished me for it. The good news is, I do recognize my mistakes, and I know what’s possible if I actually stay disciplined. My motivation is still strong, even if my confidence took a hit.

The reality is: this is a painful learning process. I completely underestimated how hard it is to control emotions while trading. That alone is a huge challenge. But I know that if I stay patient, trade meticulously, and follow the rules consistently, profits will come over time.

And it’s not all bad—this week I also had some beautiful trades. On top of that, I got my very first shout-out from Tim Sykes in one of his videos and on X. That felt amazing and showed me that I’m not completely on the wrong path. Even better, I made my very first overnight trade ever—and it was successful, which is exactly the trade Tim highlighted. On top of that, I also hit my first three-digit profit, which felt like an important milestone.

What’s funny is that this weekend I’ve been rewatching DVDs and webinars, and they’re literally pointing out the exact mistakes I’ve been making. In Jack Kellogg’s August 8th webinar and in Tim’s Spikeability DVD, they talked about the same issues I struggled with. It’s both painful and reassuring—it means I know exactly what I need to fix, and if I stay disciplined, things will turn around.

For now, I’ve given myself a trading time-out. I need to buckle down, study hard, and focus on doing this the right way. I know it’s going to take time, but I also know one thing for sure: I will never give up.