"It seems the account balance is not real money, just a change of numbers." Is this paper trading ? Or real money. If the latter, stop IMMEDIATELY.
Funny you should say that. That's how I felt about my losses when I first started trading in 2008. Fortunately I wasn't using any margin or leverage, just stocks and ETF's.
Got killed by a short position in crude oil. Lost $8500. I went in a short position last night, noticing the gradual drop after 5pm (CT), I was in profit. I went to bed thinking the price would drop further in the morning. I didn't use stop, somebody told me he didn't use stop and he made over 300k last year, he has a thread on ET. I was thinking: if he didn't use stop, maybe that was the right way to trade, because stop means losing money when stop gets hit. Anyway, woke up early in the morning, found my position was in trouble. Oil miraculously went up. The next thing I did was natural: I added more contracts into the short position. It went up more. Man, that was painful. I didn't close at the first peak. After the first peak, the price came down, I was thinking: now it's time to go down, because there is no reason for oil to go up, except some market manipulators. Just when I was looking at my loss shrinking, the price went up again. This time it went above the previous peak, and continued to move up...... I remember I read somewhere: market can remain irrational until you run out of money. I couldn't take it anymore, I panicked, and covered with a big loss: $8500.
"Got killed by a short position in crude oil. Lost $8500." Can I ask what your intital planned risk was when you entered the trade ? I would guess it wasn't $8.5k. "I was thinking: now it's time to go down, because there is no reason for oil to go up, except some market manipulators." You do realise that this group you label as 'market manipulators' includes people who are short a rising market, like yourself ? They are experiencing pain, and some of them are experiencing enough pain to make them close their shorts, ie buy at the market. I'm not trying to be smart here, but as someone said... .... the markets move because they have to....
After a number of small losses in crude oil, I nailed a winner shorting cl at 96.10 this morning. But a guru told me to hold it. He said the drop would be bigger, like at least 2 dollars. So I shut down the computer and went away, dreaming of 94 tomorrow. But I couldn't help taking a peek at the price at Yahoo finance page toward the close. To my horror, my winner has turned into a loser. Cumulative losses of last week+today: $2,500. Warning: Guru may be misleading you, intentionally!
Post the same sentence in another thread, it will be deleted by the moderator. But not in my thread. I wonder why the moderator is not doing his job for so long.
With renewed motivation after a weekend of rest, I came back this Monday monring to tackle the market. I noticed in the past few trading days that big sellers would start selling at the pit open time (8:00am CT), so I want to catch the selling wave, like surfing in the ocean. This morning, I got up early, at around 7:30am CT. I waited for the big sellers to start selling at 8:00am CT. Just like previous trading days, these big sellers started selling at 8:00am CT. so I jumped in with a few (3) short contracts at 8:01am CT, at 96.20. It looked like going below 96 and heading for 95, 94, 93..... But it didn't. It gradually went up, I set up a 50 cent stop and got stopped out, lost around 1,500 dollars. I rechecked the price toward the close, the price actually came down to below 96 at one point. If I had held my short position, I would have made money. Maybe I shouldn't use stop. Without a doubt, it is the stop that lost my money today. Without stop, I would have made money.
"Maybe I shouldn't use stop. Without a doubt, it is the stop that lost my money today. Without stop, I would have made money." Or maybe your entry was poor, and your stop limited your loss, preserving your capital so that you can trade another day.