Thank you sir, so true, especially for compounding returns. Investors generally understand this, traders generally don't.
Troll thread really. Nobody will share this calling this money life saving etc. But for somebody it should be really useful to start asking questions like do I really take appropriate risk, how to measure risk etc. After 100 years of trading its still extremely hard to measure risk because we are used to think only about good things and lower the significance of bad things (cases)
This is a good lesson learned, and cheaply so. Please keep it with you, as it's more worth than gold. Even if it may seem to be alot of money to you now, you'd do better to investigate better opportunities that have more stable pay. It's not really recommended to trade for a living, although many fantasize about that, it's a business you need to build brick-by-brick over the longer haul. Best bet is getting to know successful traders (tough). Learning it all from scratch, even using all available resources, might take 7-10 years minimum, and may not be enough to support your living expenses (no guarantees). Stories you hear are mainly two things: 1) Most people only talk about their lucky breaks, not their losses offsetting their lucky wins into the red. This keeps the insanity ("the dream") going. Society is like that on all levels and on the path to self-destruction if we don't change course now. 2) Some people get the positive fat-tail of the distribution, but may not even be particularly skilled, just doing the right decisions at the right time and having the fortitude to see it through.
QUOTE="bozzo, post, member: "] Introducing myself to ET, just want everyone to know as a first and only time poster I'm a loser, I have lost about $940 trading, I was hoping to get rich quick. I am fully aware that some have lost much more however, it is alot to me. I work for min. wage at Mcdonalds flipping burgers. Before I started trading live I was paper trading and did extremely well dont we all? Originally my plan was to trade spreads but i was unable to produce a bank statement to open an account as I have no money so I took my business (if you can call it that) elsewhere. 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 Maccas 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. But anyway, I know far more about trading than dad, he's clueless, no point discussing anything with him. One big thing that made me not really think about risk management is the lack of horror stories online. The reason for the lack of horror stories is because I don't read or study. Even though I'm posting on ET, the reason I'm on ET is to post, not to read. 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 and at my age with the losing I think I'm well enough experienced to give others some advice. Anyhow thanks for wasting your time reading this and replying, I'm cacking my pants with laughter because of all the mugs who come here. Yep I'm a loser and so are you, the only difference is I'm not afraid to tell the world. See ya later, I'll be back again soon with a new user name and new BS hardluck story.
Haha @themickey deep down you really love this kinda stuff At least it allows the discerning ET fanatics a go at pretending to be: Outraged, sympathetic, spiritual guides, psychologists, technical advisory experts....you name it bro even the algo guys jumped on this one
What!?! "Over-leveraging and bucket shop reasons" aren't enough? Jeeesh! Well then, I'll add the fact that while foreign exchange *should* operate (in a fiat currency world) on the tides of underlying fundamentals, it instead operates on the waves and turbulence of black swans and black swans and black swans and b.......... The forex trading market is set up such that those who weather the black swans with their size, also have instantaneous response-times to the fundamentals. In the rest of financial trading, size is a hindrance: it is a world of a narrow strait, through which pass ponderous supertankers and nimble speedboats and aggressive yachts -- what some may lack in size or heft, they generally make up for in agility. But the oceans are the same for them. In foreign exchange, the nimbleness and agility of the speedboats and yachts is still less than the wave height of the roilsome foams over which they mostly sail. They are doomed. From the start. The anti-grav' supertankers? They don't care a whit, they just muscle forward, looking/caring only for the fundamentals (the tides) that will smooth out their passage over time. So yeah, over-leveraging invites the speedboats to embark into 20' seas. Stupid. Bucket shops facilitate. Obscene. And Putin and Trump and Kim, and the S'aud princes and the South American coca-kings and plutocrats world-wide, brew the next idiot swan into existence, and we all scratch our chin and mouth, "Didn't see that comin'!" and thank [The Mudshark in Your Mythology] that we weren't in 4X...........