Corey, Your post says a great deal about your strength of character and confidence in yourself and your market approach. Thanks for sharing this with us. Your insights are a great asset and hopefully we all can absorb those into our own approaches and use them to benefit our own trading. I hope that time between thinking of Thursday gets long to almost never -- quickly.
Wow that blows. My condolences, but you'll make it back and more. I've had a few large hits to the PnL. In my experience, it takes me at least a week to recover mentally and get back in the groove.
There is obviously comfort in knowing it was an administrative error and not a trading edge deterioration. Although yeah, its still a ton of cash. It stings I can imagine.
Lescor, Thanks for this thread. Your insights in general principles of RTM trading and psychology of trading have been great. Upon reading your last post, I thought of a way to perhaps prevent the error that happened. Some prop firms have Soft Buying Power vs. Actual Buying Power. Soft Buying Power is the amount of buying power you can use for sending out orders, and Actual Buying Power is the amount of buying power that will be used to fill orders. For example, you could have $10M soft buying power (send out $10M worth of orders) and $2M actual buying power(Get filled a maximum of $2M in buying power). So if an operator error occurred, you could be filled on no more than $2M in orders. You would still be hurt, but not as bad as if you were filled all $10M. I don't know if you are already using this, and not familiar with Echo software to know if they have this option. I used to trade with Dimension's Blackwood software and know they have this option. It's not the best trading platform, but they have this option. I'm sure you'll be fine, when the money tap opens again. Achinnes
Lescor, Sorry to hear about the mishap. Hang in there. As I am sure you know, operator error is part of the business. It happens to me at least once a year and I just chalk it up to a business expense/cost of doing business.
Brain fart or internal trader-self desperately asking for something?. When is the last time you took a vacation?. None of my business. I know. Every time I ignore my trader-self, he soon reminds me who is boss.
As a "rule of thumb", would it be safe to say that most high volatility traders biased toward short intraday positions, while lower volatility traders are inclined to enter long intraday positions?... With that premise in mind, other than market fundamentals, I don't know of a way to project the VIX... Walt
What if this had happened back in Oct. '08? Your system sounds very sophisticated by the sheer volume you are trading. Maybe that is why I remain a small lot trader, there is not enough ice water running in my veins and the emotional hangover is just too hard on me.
down almost -90K, I understand that this is one of your record negative weeks. as i recall, you had a day like that in 2008, but at that time it was the market that caused it not the operator. also in 2008 you could have a couple of good days and get it all back. so this one is a tougher one. also, physiologically, an operator error is probably harder to handle than a market dependent event. good to see you handle it well, you are a firefighter after all!
Yes he is mentally tough, net through end of March 200,000 and lost almost half of that in 1 day. I am sure he will make it back in no time. Great thread as it shows what traders go through.