mastermind - I know you went though some tough times, but you've been a champ about it and openly discussing it, many would not.

it's not fun man, but we all go through it. I know Steve and I certainly have had to learn the hard education in the past. Honestly with trading, it's almost a right of passage, you have to get your ass kicked and sometimes a few times before you finally start changing up how you do things.  

that's why brand new traders - the worst that can happen is they do very well right from the beginning and build their account way up - they are then vulnerable to losing most of it because they never went through the hard lessons, and now when they do it will be on a large account - better to have gone through it early on when their account was small when they first started

for me one thing I had to do was cut down the amount of positions I was doing: I'd build positions and eventually have 30 and 40 stocks I'm trying to manage. That's just asking for trouble and when the markets start to really move against you, you can't manage it. That said, I'm referring to manual trading - I have systems automated on probably 30 instruments in Tradestation but they are automated so I don't have to go in there and manage - and a system is running them so they already have the discipline and stops, so it's fine if they are automated.

The other thing is to place more money into trades and patterns that are exceptional, that you have high confidence in.  So if you are placing 10K into standard patterns and trades, but you happen to see a textbook perfect ideal pattern (coil, flag etc) that looks like supermodel or so good that you would include it in a book  on technical analysis - go heavier into that trade.