Having trouble again graciously accepting small losses.

Today I was in MGM, had entered with options at about 12.50 from a few days ago. As this selloff hapened late in the day, I kept thinking it was a fakeout for a rally into the close, like it has been for some time. However this time, it was an honest-to-goodness selloff. MGM started breaking the good setup and while it did not hit my very liberal stop of 11.99, it almost did, and so I sold it manually. I lost about 40% of the value of the call, across 4 calls, and it hurt, after a good week of disciplined trading. If I had just been able to accept a $1 gain, or a $13 loss, I could have sold those options a day or 2 ago. No, instead I held, wanting to prove that I "WAS RIGHT" and I was excited that hey this was MGM, and I was going to Vegas soon, and isn't it cool to be in a gambling stock, it's just like gambling. Truer than I wanted it to be!! After summarizing my trades for the week and my various accounts a little early, I looked at my performance. I broke out trades as either "Stewie" (from his service/alerts) and non-Stewie (my own, or from his chat room for members). I think the problem is that I am not good enough with setting stops to set them tight enough on my own trades. I make them very loose liberal, so that they don't get hit, and then guess what ... they get hit anyway, and I get depressed. So for now, I need to follow others on no only the exit, but pay attention to their exit strategy. Foremost, just trade the alerts, but if I absolutely have to make a trade from the chat room, find out what that person is using for a stop point. Because it is the liberal stops and letting the losers run that is killing me in my own trades. I did more analysis and summarized the following:

STEWIE + MY TRADES  IN 8K IRA: +2.9% SINCE DEC 11,2009
STEWIE ONLY TRADES  IN 8K IRA: +8.0% SINCE DEC 11,2009

STEWIE + OWN TRADES IN 2K ACCT: -12.3% SINCE DEC 30,2009
STEWIE ONLY TRADES  IN 2K ACCT: +01.0% SINCE DEC 30,2009
(TRYING TO GET BACK TO EVEN TO MANY TIMES ON MY OWN)

STEWIE ONLY TRADES IN 3K WIFE IRA: +2.8% SINCE MARCH 1
(I DON'T DO NON-STEWIE TRADES IN WIFE IRA-GOOD!)

BOTTOM LINE: I AM MY OWN WORST ENEMY.  MY OWN TRADES SUCK.

LOOKING CLOSER, IT IS NOT THAT I DON'T HAVE WINNERS,  ITS THAT WHEN I HAVE  LOSERS, I REFUSE TO TAKE A LOSS UNTIL THEY HIT A  VERY LIBERAL STOP OR REACH 2% of ACCOUNT SIZE. IT USED TO BE WORSE BUT EVEN WAITING TILL 2% is BAD!!! I NEED TO LEARN THAT *NOT* LOSING IS WINNING. IF YOU CAN'T STOP FROM THE ENEMY SCORING, IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY WEAPONS YOU HAVE ON OFFENSE. I NEED TO GRACIOUSLY ACCEPT SMALL LOSSES. THAT IS THE KEY. IN THE MEANTIME, FOLLOW THE ALERTS SO YOU KNOW BETTER WHAT IS A GOOD STOP LOSS.