In about 2 months I have lost about $940. I am fully aware that some have lost much more than me. However, it is alot to me. I work for min. wage. Before I started trading live I was paper trading and did extremely well. Originally my plan was to trade spreads on Nadex but i was unable to produce a bank statement to open an account so i took my business to forex.com. Looking back that was probably a good thing because the spreads offer even more potential exposure than spot FX. When I started trading live most of my trades went against me. At least 70 percent of my trades went in the red. I was confused because I was doing so well in paper trading. It is obvious to me now that the fact I was trading with real money put in an emotional factor that my paper trading had not prepared me for. One time I holding a short position over the weekend in the USD/JPY. I was wrong and it gapped up at the Sunday open and I was down about $70. When I got home from work and I saw this I yelled the f word, which caused my dad to ask my mom what the problem is. A few days earlier I had told her I was losing money and she told him. Upon hearing this he came downstairs and told me to stop throwing my money away and that he's going to stop supporting me if I keep doing what I'm doing (I'm 18). At this point I was down about $300 which he did not know about. With tax season coming I have no idea how I'm going to explain to him why I'm writing off almost $1000 in capital losses. One big thing that made me not really think about risk management is the lack of horror stories online. Everyone wants to talk about how they turned $5000 into $50,000 in one year trading the ES or whatever, but no one wants to talk about how they lost everything they have. The main reason I am posting this is to stop other people from going down the same path I did. Trading, especially leveraged trading, can ruin your life quickly.
If over half of your life savings is $940, and you say that yelling the "f word caused your mom and dad" to have input? Well...You want a horror story to scare you straight? I lost $15K in one day doing something stupid when I was new. I have gained that back and am in profit by utilizing prudent risk management. It has taken time though, in learning myself, and learning the markets. If over half of your life savings is 900 bux? Do some more study and keep things in perspective. Seriously. Yes, says the person who lost $900. We know this.
Geez, not to mention...You are 18 YO? Enjoy some of those fun youthful years! Don't bury yourself in this trading crap for a while, just enjoy these times you have now to be free, because they won't come again! Go wild when ye be young, because when you get older it is harder to go wild. Get cranky and start trading after you have had some fun! The shitness of trading will still be there for you, as you have already experienced. Ow.
8.0/10. You had me until you started talking about writing off capital losses on your taxes. Good effort though.
I know, right? Think of the drugs and alcohol you could have bought with $900...on top of that you'd have a story you want to tell people. As a college buddy of mine used to say, a bad hangover lasts a day or two; a great drinking story lasts a lifetime.
More bad news for you. You won't get to write off $1000 in capital losses. Instead on your taxes you will note that you had the $1000 loss, but the write off will be in future years, against capital gains (assuming you ever get any). My advice is to stop trading, and instead of using many hours studying trading, learn to write code. Then you can start writing trading algorithms. If after that you are still losing money trading, you can use the coding skills to get a job that pays way more than minimum wage.