Why your monthly goal has nothing to do with profitability

You are powerless over the markets, regardless if you have 30 years of experience or only 30 days. Focus on your process, because you can't control the outcome. I believe you need to have positive intention about your trading as "intentions equal results." Your intention is closely related to your attitude and your attitude affects your judgment, judgment affects your behavior, and behavior predicts where you end up in life. You can't work backwards from losing money in one month and determine that you are not a good trader. You may have had bad luck or the markets might not be amenable to your trading rules. You may come to understand that your process needs tweaking to better suit the markets or your emotional makeup. That's what backtesting is for. If your results from trading in one month are "in model" then all you can do is study the variance between what orders your system generated and what orders you entered. The same can be said about winning months and good trading.