I can relate to everyone here - one th e WIN side and on the lose side. Yes TRV smart in this environment don't hold overnight. For me its was a tough call to do this. Back in AUg with a terrible market if you can recall I was able to make about $40,000 k I was averaging 10 k a week. I got over confident. I bought 114 CALLS of APPLE. For those of you that dont know options this is about equal to 14,000 shares. I think we all know what happened next. WHEN i SAY THE BOTTOM FELL OUT I MEAN THE BOTTOM FELL OUT. I took a 2 day lose of about $38,000. My system was working but i went outside of it. I made the 38,000 up in about 2 months and i was up about $16,000. I was happy I was made back the loss and had a profit of 16k. I decided change my system i didn't want to sit at the pc all day and trade in and out. so i decide to put all my money into something safe a "bell weather" as they say. I bought csco yhoo and a little eds (yhoo and eds more speculative buy) for longer term. I was now sitting on a bout 4 thousand shares of cisco and 1k of yhoo 1500 shares of eds. with stops in place.. Tues my csco was up 10 k - wed morning my 10 k was gone and i lost another 10k of my own $$ yhoo and eds did the same to me. My system changed i went to a buy and hold and got raped pretty bad. BTW I did have stops in place. My account took a really nice scud to it last week. I'm back to were i was on august..... So there again wHAT system works? well Im sure csco yhoo eds will hit all time highs again, im still holding some shares but lighted up a lot. I have been in the market 14 years I have never seen a market take 1200 swings every two weeks. like they say hind site is 20/20 the only way to make money is really go long and short at the same tiime buy the underling stock the also buy the PUT . I did follow this in the past but just not this week.. again I had to much faith in the "BELL WEATHER CSCO)
Like you, I almost failed in trading about 10 yrs ago. As a novice, I bought Iomega near the top, and lost a ton as it crashed back down to earth. I took some time off, but never gave up. Today, I am far wealthier than back then. I have no one to report to but myself. All thanks to trading. Day trading is like street fighting. My advice: Keep your chin up. Here's a motivational video for you -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLO1YIWQuXE
AUD/USD ... i was overleveraged, 200:1 actually. But i was leveraged at that for 24 hours and it kept going up. that was the reason it shot up to 30k. But then it had to fall 40 pips to take me negative 45k. And i was there when it was happening, so at zero, i was pissed i lost 35k, hoping it would turn around, i held on, but then, it just kept going. Lesson learned: never do high leverage for long duration. High leverage should be for news break, in and out. lesson learned 2: (something i knew but i chose to ignore) Get out while you can.
Yes, it had happened to me this year. I had to be greedy and approve my ameritrade account for options. I know MOS was ready to shoot up in July. I went all in Aug 40 calls and thats when the stock goes down to $35. If I had just chosen to go in Sept, thats when MOS made its run from $40 to $65.
I meant to post this in another thread; very pertinent to the latest price action, bottom line when volatility spikes reduce position size. http://traderfeed.blogspot.com/2007/11/stock-market-volatility-and-position.html
Yeah that level of leverage is beyond dangerous. Especially with many currency pairs like the Aussie making 1.5% or greater daily moves. Last time I traded Aussie I was leveraged 40:1, which is already a bit overly high in my opinion. It worked very well that time, but risk of ruin is through the roof with such leverage.