6 months of 2026 are already gone and I feel like I’ve wasted a good chunk of it. Need some direction.

I’m free for about a month right now. Right now my days look like: wake up, check trades, watch series, repeat. I do intraday trading on the side, but I’ve been in a losing phase, and I’ve noticed my entire mood for the day depends on whether I’m in profit or loss. That’s a problem in itself, but it’s also making me realize I’m not using this free time for anything that actually builds me up.

I don’t want to look back at the end of this year and realize I spent another 6 months just watching series and stressing over green or red candles.

So I wanted to ask people here directly:

If you had a genuinely free month, what skill would you actually spend it learning? Something practical, not just “learn to code” as a buzzword, but something that actually paid off for you personally.

Any podcasts or channels that actually added value to how you think, not just entertainment dressed up as self-improvement?

For those who’ve traded before, how did you stop your mood from being tied to daily P&L? Did you find something else to focus your energy on instead?

Not looking for generic “just be productive” advice. Looking for specific things that actually worked for you, even small ones.

  • IronBird@lemmy.world
    1·
    15 hours ago

    first rule of gambling trading is to not risk $ you can’t stand to lose, don’t know how much capital you got in the game/what type of trading you partake in…but if it’s stressing you out then there is clearly something wrong with your risk management side of things

    red days shouldnt matter at all, either it’s a buying oppurtunity on a longer swing/longterm pos you’ve done proper DD on or it’s short-term gamble you should have a stop-loss set for incase your wrong about the setup.

    either way there should be zero emotion involved…as for the rest of your post, overall to me it sounds like your dopamine receptors are fried from constant gambling (going through something similar myself actually, biotech is like the blacktar heroin of this industry…with how insane the returns are on a W it’s hard to keep emotions in check)

    to quote Livermore from over a century ago…

    the desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses on Wallstreet even among professionals, who feel like they must take home some money every day as though they were working for regular wages

    the entire point to figuring the casino out is to free yourself up from needing to work a job, obviously watching/worrying about charts all day isnt fulfilling. volunteer your time to something impactful locally, work on a passion project etc. live life, if you’ve figured out a (backtested) edge to the market you have beaten the first fucked up level that is capitilism