-$179. I deserved it. But the good thing is I have decided I will not change my method anymore, at least I think so. Let me see if I can do it in the following days, weeks, months and years.
A very sad day for all small traders. I blew up. It all happened so quickly. As my previous post showed, I lost $179 yesterday, so I got up early today to get the money back. I was too eager to trade. Saw the price dipped overnight into 95s, I started to regret that I covered at a loss yesterday. If I had held my short position until this morning, I would have made a profit. Saw this down trend forming before the pit opened, I jumped in: shorted one contract at around 96. I thought it would go to 95 or 94 thoday...... But the it didn't go down anymore, it went up. Knowing from yesterday's loss that if I held it, it might come down, I decided to hold my short position. It continued to go up, and reached the price where I shorted yesteday, around 96.60. I was thinking: that was weird. Maybe I should short another contract and it would go down. So I shorted one more contract. Well, the unthinkable happened: it continued to go up. I had no idea what happened, CNBC was talking about Greece might get a bailout. I thought it was just rumor. Besides, a guy on CNBC yesterday talked about selling the news. I thought of his words and decided to hold for big players who would sell the news, if the news came out. But, the unimaginable thing happened, the price went above 97. I kept thinking about selling the news. I watched CNBC closely for a Greece deal and the subsequent selling, but no deal. Then, the most unimaginable thing happened, the price went above 98. I was thinking: maybe the US attacked Syria or something. I checked frantically on the web for Syria news, nothing. Then suddenly, my computer screen had a pop up message from my broker, they would liquidate my position because I didn't have sufficient funds to cover the margin requirement. That was when I had a cold sweat. Seriously, I began to sweat! Then my broker liquidated one contract. I checked the balance, I lost over $1,000. I just froze, I watched the price go up to 99. I totally lost hope, and covered my last contract. As soon as I covered, the price went down to 98.30. I covered at the day high! Fuck! Then I checked my balance, I lost more than $2,700. Then even worse, I realized I didn't have enough money to initiate a new position. I was a few dollars short of the margin requirement ($1,928). That means I will not be able to trade anymore, unless I wire some more money into my account. End of my trading journey. Thanks for reading. emg, you win. Small traders just lose.
2 steps, you should consider this a blessing that you only lost few grand and not have had have a bigger account to blow. that being said, having a small account makes things harder. however in your case the primary problem was lack of trading plan and a statistically proven edge, in general lack of business like attitude. until you figure out and write out at least in a pseudo-code manner whether you are trading trend or sideways congestion, momentum breakouts or fading the trend, entry/exit setup, money management, position sizing etc...and then run it through some backtest...would not suggest trading again. wish you success! tihfa
chose the wrong day to resume trading. some smart trader on CL redux thread said: follow the trend and buy the breakout, so I bought at above 106, but it dropped into 105s. Some smart trader said I must use stop because last time I lost because I didn't use stop, so I stopped out. Then I shorted because some smart trader said I should go with the flow and be able to change as the market changes. But it went back up, again stopped me out. Then some smart trader said you should short at the resistance, so I shorted at the resistance, but it shot even higher, stopped me out again. Then I went long and it dropped, stopping me out one more time. In total, I lost $1,034.
this post and last long post - makes for a hilarious reading man Reminds me of my early days only difference was I never listened to smart traders, just went on blowing up unstopped. I will ask you to ask yourself a question : Do you think a proficient and successful trader (lets say profitable for last 5 yrs) would blow up, if he is trading account same size as yours and is limiting himself to QM ? Answer is : he won't. Ask yourself why ? Again, answer is because he knows how to trade and when to sit out and control his risk. You don't know either of these as of now, you will learn about them in due course of time. Most important advice I can give you is to stop trading and go back in history, look at charts for last 1-2 yrs 'bar - by - bar', and do paper trades on historical charts. See what trading method works, and what does not. See where adding a contract to your position works or does it lead to repeated blowups ? For example if you discover that in last 1 year, starting with a 5k account, using your current trading method, you would have blown up 7 times, then it means that you need to work on improving you as trader and becoming more choosy. Do you see what I am saying? In one line - don't go to war before you are trained as a marine - otherwise you will die. So, first train yourself. Btw, if you want to die actually, then it is a different matter altogether Only you can decide what you want to do with yourself.