I know trading strategies have been discussed here before, but I feel a bit philosophical right now and for those interested, read further. I've been trading on the side (I have a day job) for the past year and a half or so with mixed results. The reason why I never consistently made money was because I did not have a trading strategy in place and was led mostly by my emotions. The two emotions `greed' and `fear' ruled the way I made my trading decisions. 19 Nov. this year I lost about 90% of my portfolio ($^%& BIL!!) because of this and breaking almost every trading rule in the book (averaging down, not exercising stop losses, etc.). So I was down in the dumps and almost decided to give up trading completely although I liked the thrill of it so much. Ok, here comes the happy ending.don't cut your wrists just yet. I dusted off some of the technical analysis books in the cupboard from the TA courses I attended through Standard Bank (Yonothan Rom presented it). I literally went back to the drawing board and put a system together that I hoped would work. The 20th of November I started trading again with the few bucks I had left and stuck to the trading system 100%. I did not let emotions guide my decisions at all. Since the 20th until today (exactly 1 month) I made back all my money and then some. Out of the 10 trades, 9 were winners (the one loser was because the system was too sensitive at the time.) I made 355% profit to be exact!! This is not to brag or boast about the achievement, I'm sure there was a lot of luck involved as well. The important point I want to make is if you're stuck in a rut, go back to the drawing board and check where you went wrong. Simon P-B once told me how he write down all his trades (and reasons for the trade) on a piece of paper and throw it in a box. When things starts going wrong, he goes back to box and read through the trades that worked for him to remind him of his strategy. This was my thought for the day. Like they say."use it, don't use it".