What are the biggest hassles or challenges you experienced with trading? And if you had the chance, what you hope you've learned before it happening and how you'll do things differently? For myself, overlooked risk management rules and overcommitted on trading strategies that don't have an edge were the biggest mistakes I've made. I wish I did take them seriously and practice with a smaller amount to confirm their performance with the least amount of drawdown as possible.
Losing quite a sum of money during the oil collapse earlier this year. There was nothing I could've done different. I traded seasonal spreads so my risk was fairly limited but I still lost a good chunk of change. I'm glad I followed my trading rules, only risked capital I could lose, and didn't bet the house on a "sure thing". I survived and am nearly breakeven again. You never know with markets. You just hope you're out when it doesn't go your way.
No positive expectancy but didn't know. Losing much. After researching the concept of measuring profitable trading system, stumbled upon positive expectancy. Built a trading system with positive expectancy but not robust. After 2 years being profitable, the trading system started to loss. Lucky that I was researching about robustness and stopped running the trading system because I was honest with myself about the trading system's robustness. If every trader start with learning positive expectancy concept, many will not trade at all because building a robust and profitable trading system is hard. But it will save our hard-earned money.
THE biggest problem ALL traders face, even the best, is how/where/when to take profits. (assuming of course your game-plan is solid). I belive the reason is there's no proper answer(s) to that question. Whereas there are definite answers to the question of when to buy (assuming long). Sure, sometimes we get it spot on but over a collection of trades, most traders will mess up on profit taking to a certain degree. The way to combat this problem I think is ACCEPTANCE. Accept that there are no answers to the question (this is the most important point). Accept you'll mess up far more than you get it right. Accept that this is the game we play. The more we accept acceptance the better traders we become. And like everything in this game, far easy to say than do...
Risk management is actually the easiest problem to fix and also requires the least skill/thinking. Trade size of anywhere between 10 basis points and 100 and you'll be fine. But all the best risk management ain't going to be worth jack if your game-plan isn't solid.
Smashing keyboards and screens in a rage is a win win scenario. 1. You can't lose any more money revenge trading when screens and keyboards are scattered around the room in small pieces. 2. It is thereaputic. The only downside is feeling like a tit needing next day delivery of new peripherals. From your phone.