Trading Forex Can't Be a Part-Time Job

Trading forex takes a lot of commitment and unfortunately in May I lacked it.  I paid for this dearly with my worst month in a long time, losing 10% of my equity.  While this is disappointing, it's understandable.   On the surface, I didn't step outside of my trading or money management plan yet what I did was plain reckless.  I traded sporadically throughout the month, watching the market and opening positions some days and ignoring the market altogether other days.  Trading strategies are meant to be followed.  While trading sporadically could have just as easily put me up 10% instead of down, the point is that if you have confidence in your strategy, each and every signal should be acted upon.  In doing so, a balance can be obtained.  On the days that I ignored the market, I could have possibly profited by opening a position.  I only opened 8 positions this month compared to my average of about 20-22.  Typically I'll open a position each and every day but look at the dates of my last 7 losses:

May 7, May 13, May 14, May 15, May 16, May 27 

There are huge gaps here where trades could have been profitable.  I would have most likely had losses also but there is no balance here and that's the problem. 

So the bottom line is that trading forex cannot be a part-time job.  I've treated it as such this month and it hurt me.   The great thing is that I don't have to go back to the drawing board or work hard to find out what's wrong.  In June, the solution is to follow the market each and every day and follow my trading plan.  

So this ought to be a lesson to all of you traders.  Remain consistent or face the consequences of losing a majority of the profit you made the previous 4 months.  Out of the 80 or so trades I made between January and April, seven inconsistently spaced trading days in May wiped out most of my profit.