The worst thing you or a friend has done in the markets.

[TheForexGuy]

I thought I would start this thread up as a confession type thing where we can all admit what stupid mistakes we've made in our trading careers before and just thought why the f*** did I do that.

I'll start off with a couple of mine.

In my early days I used to be bad for trying to tighten up my stop loss too much and I entered a rejection candle signal that stopped me out about 4 times, but I just kept re entering. It would have been a profitable trade otherwise but I thought I was a hero and could tighten my stop up to 10 pips or so. Looking back on this I know this was classic revenge trading and it cost me big at the time.

I have heard stories of millionaire traders doing stupid things and being reduced to night packing in the stores.

Let us know of anything bad you've done before or any horror stories you've heard of.

 

[grindfx]

My confession:
- In 2009, after the total collapse of the markets (during which I made a killing by the way), I decided to reinvest "long" in what a I thought was the trading opportunity of a lifetime --> WTI (crude oil) was around 30 USD.

I put all my capital in a "call warrant" with an expiration date 2 weeks later with a strike price of 33 (if below this value in the next 2 weeks, my warrant would be worthless). I actually bought the warrant at the lowest price you could get, but the price did not reach the strike price target on time and I lost it all...I could not sleep for almost 2 weeks and probably lost around "5 years" of "hardcore" savings...

Since this time, I promised myself to respect proper money management and not "fall in love" with a trade.
A costly lesson, but at least it's a lesson I will remember for the rest of my life.

 

[TheForexGuy]

Sorry to hear that grind,

Going all in on the hardest market trade, that's pretty ballsy. I bet you were probably feeling over confident at the time just after your big win. Sometimes you need to make these mistakes to learn but sorry to hear it cost you years of savings.

 

[grindfx]

Don't be sorry, it's probably the most important teaching I received in my life. I guess "real" education comes with a high price tag...

 

[lingsbord]

I was tentatively trading with a colleague from the US. We'd been friends for a while and he was trying to build a trading business. He had a nice set up with a decent AUM and I was watching him, issuing a few recommendations etc when we were both long Cable at the point when it collapsed a few years ago. I mean it went big!

I was stopped out hard for a 90-pip loss but he kept adding more longs as the price collapsed. I'd taken a hit but this guy took it personally in some classic revenge trading (he was ex-military so probably thought his balls were the size of space hoppers). When the dust had settled I was nursing a 2.5% hit, the worst in several years for me on a single day, but my stateside buddy was staring into a 45% hole.

Haven't heard from him in a while.......

 

[TheForexGuy]

Me and Scotch knew a few guys who thought they were brilliant, they were trading at random one of them focused on trading news releases. One day one of them found the EA megadroid, the biggest scam known to man. They got sucked in by all the marketing hype on the sales way ' oh look it's got a 99.9% win ratio!'.

So they rounded up each of all of their life saving and pooled it together, the total came to $20,000. They threw it all into an account and let megadroid get to work, the first week they lost money so in frustration one of the guys 'tweaked' the default settings of megadroid.

After they made the modifications the next weeks trading went pretty bad, then out of further desperation they told the robot to up the risk.

We didn't hear from them again, we heard rumors that one of them was stuck in Egypt with no money to get home and one other guy became a used car salesman.

Me and Scotch did call them idiots when they first started talking about it, but they were just so fixated on the greedy promises that megadroid claimed to make they went all nasty on us. Aww well.

 

[vasude]

another robot fapturbo it was killed many account its price tag is $500 ,they promised you will get golden egg,now they dont have money but egg from store

 

[blackpele]

Now that I look back, in 2011 I funded a $2K PAMM account with a so called 'guru' that I knew not even a week, lol.
However the biggest mistake was to follow another so called 'guru' from one of the Forex education sites out there from 2010 till mid 2011. It wasn't the money, but sth far more important, 18 months out of my trading career,i.e. 'time' the most highly valuable currency.

 

[rindom]

Was in a specific stock for a short time a little over 2 years ago and I completely missed they would be reporting earnings the day after.
I never keep any stocks, when I trade them, over earnings releases but completely missed this one and I ended up taking a hit of 15% of my trading capital....auch.

 

[vasude]

my ex-collgue (girl) doesnt learned lesson,this time she opened short trade in eurusd in a $1000 account for 0.5 lots ,that night fed came and destroyed whole account ,greed has hunted her.

p.s., husband will give kicks in her back.

 

[TheForexGuy]

Some people cannot get control of their emotions hey, this has probably done her mental damage.

That's classic revenge trading Vas, she wanted to get her revenge on the market after being steamrolled by using no stop loss on gold. You should tell her to join the war room.

 

[coachfx]

Last year, took a small live trade in aud/usd short based on market sentiment and what analysts were saying(I had no idea about price action at the time!). No stop loss!!! Anyway, a few days later I check the trade and price has moved against me. So - with my head buried in the sand I said, well this is an opportunity to add to my position at a better price. I did. Price moved against me some more. So I added a stop loss. A few days later and price is a few pips from my stop loss and I said .... nope, it can't go up much further, i'll remove the stop loss and let it come down. Price went straight up some more. Finally price spiked up in 24hr period and I lost 50% of my account. That was the trigger to learn price action....and I haven't looked back since.

Lesson learned from my mistake...don't piss in the wind on smaller timeframes.

 

[dafttrader]

Luckily I have never had a massive loss on my account but I have managed to a fair amount of stupid things for small losses that rack up.

1. I like to occasional revenge trade when my conviction over a pair is too strong to see sense, DNB will probably confirm my GBP conviction at the moment (hopefully this one will work out)

2. Letting other people sway your judgement.. I'm completely over this now and am quite happy to trade in the same direction or opposite direction to anybody and everybody. But in the past I certainly pulled out of a few profitable trades because I was 'talked' out of it.

I don't think I have ever lost more that maybe 3% of my account on any one trade but a close friend of mine dropped £18'000 in one trade on EUR/USD a couple of years ago.

 

[squalodon]

Listening to other people's opinions.

They have their own styles and their own train of thoughts.. and it is all just biased.

When i first started trading i earned 8% profit in my first week. then i lost 6% the next week.

After that i had a friend (still doing demo) who kept raving about straddle order trades and how he has earned.. 200% in his account via demo trade in just under a week.

I was so convinced that it would work and i followed his style.. I traded straddle orders in the market.. and to my surprise.. my 1st two trades made me lose 15% of my equity in two tries.. i chalked that up to "wrong execution"

Then came my big trade.. I put a buy stop and sell stop order about 10pips above and below the price at the time for USDJPY. the price was 99.95.. and it was waiting to breakout... i put trail stop orders of 3pips on each pending order.. and then suddenly the news released.. and my order of sell at 99.85 was push through not at 99.70 or 99.80.. It got through only at 99.325 that was some huge slippage!!!! i lost 45% of my equity that day...

Never again will i listen to anyone else..

After that huge slippage i complained to my broker.. and they gave me the profits of the trade back (recomputing the trade as if there was no slippage).. so from a huge loss.. they gave me a huge gain yey!

But after that is when i started looking for more stable systems.. Since i realized it turned out to be more like gambling than trading

which lead me here.

 

[TheForexGuy]

Thanks for sharing,

I have been slipped over stop losses during heavy news with other brokers, it's very annoying. It happens a lot with brokers who don't have good liquidity.

Did you check in with your friend, how did the straddle system go for him, I am sure it washed him out as well.

 

[squalodon]

Thanks for sharing,

I have been slipped over stop losses during heavy news with other brokers, it's very annoying. It happens a lot with brokers who don't have good liquidity.

Did you check in with your friend, how did the straddle system go for him, I am sure it washed him out as well.

Yeah it did not work out for him that well... Hahaha i tried warning him though since he was doing it demo and i did it live..

Then he traded live and get slippage during straddle orders.. So right after he traded straddle again.. Slipped again.. And some losses after.. The problem with his plan though was he was risking about 10-20% of his capital at a time.. I was trading around 5% per straddle order.. I only tried three.. But what i learned was straddling was like gambling.. Really it was

I was sort of blessed or lucky to have instinctively lessen my trading size after the huge win (the slippage refund).. He however kept at it..

After some time he stopped trading straddle and started analyzing charts.. And i want to stress this so that other people can learn from my friend's mistake.. He still kept risking a large part of his equity. From 10-20% a trade to 7.5% a trade... I told him to trade small but he didn't listen.


So he got margin called... I told myself that i was lucky that i saw it happen through him.. From there i realized that money management was the key to survival..

And trading systems was the key to profitability.

I keep telling newbie traders that i met that.. But since they have had possitive experience via demo.. They kept saying they could do it.. LoL..

Honestly if that slippage refund wasn't recomputed.. I would have cried myself to sleep... LOL

I hope the other guys can learn from me and my friend's mistake..

Ever since then i learned to keep an open mind.. But to test any opinion via demo first before trading live.. And to always be skeptical on what other people say.. Because end of the day it's your money you can't blame anyone else.

 

[priceaction001]

I am a noob. I was introduced to Forex in November of 2013, so I don't have a worst thing done in the market just yet. I have an ALMOST worst thing I have done BEFORE even getting into the market.

I started researching Forex trading methods and fell in love with the Price Action method. I started looking for the best mentor and the most concise info/training. Before I found Forex Guy, I was seriously looking at a guy from the UK trading 15 minute time frames offering 3 months of one on one mentoring for $6000.00 U.S. Dollars. He sounded so confident in his abilities trading and his ability to teach his method. He had some of the traits that are common tell-tail signs of a scam artist. He would post the profit loss sheets of his new students always in great profit. One day I clicked on one of the profit loss sheets of one of his students; and say for example it said on the url: profit/loss8. When I changed it to profit/loss7 and hit refresh, It showed a word document form of the profit loss sheet ready to be altered. What a scam. I almost lost $6000.00. I wont name him but his services are still available.

Now consider the price I paid to learn, get concise reliable info here and being part of a growing Price Action community, is amazing!

So from time to time, If I go on a crazy rant saying "Thank you Forex Guy!" you know why.

 

[squalodon]

wow hahaha thank you for sharing priceaction001

 

[TheForexGuy]

Thanks for sharing your story priceaction001, I see this all the time over the interne. These scammers will generally have a very short life span in the industry as they quickly get named and shamed.