I don't believe you to be too smart, the way you handle yourself in this situation shows that. You jumped into the futures market without really understanding what your options are in limit up/down scenarios, you panic and freak out, you don't heed the advice others gave you, the market slaps you left and right and you pile up even more mistakes, you clearly over trade size-wise. That sounds like the behavior of a pretty dumb person to me. You should have immediately looked for the hedge in other calendars and fucking STAYED IN THE HEDGE. You got in and then liquidated the hedge because it moved a little against you. How stupid is that?
Just because someone panicked in a new instruments doesn't mean they are not smart. They are just inexperienced in that. I have pretty solid education credentials. Don't need to flaunt it here. But I realized higher educational credentials don't always translate to better trading. Look at LTCM with their Nobel Laureate board members. A few months ago, I met with one of the Nobel Laureate winner from LTCM at an alumni club dinner. *hint: If you know anything about LTCM then you will know where my alma maters are* Anyhow, one of the alumni asked this Nobel Laurate asked why does he assume government debt will never be defaulted? He paused a bit remember the Russian gov't debt fiasco. Then surprisingly he answered that he thought it was once in a century kind of event. Gov't debt is good as it gets. I guess even HE didn't learn from his LTCM fiasco. And he is as smart and educated as they come. I'm no where near his caliber. But from a pure credentials and academic perspective, he's as high as they go.. My problem along with many academics is we have certain assumptions. I assumed that HE would let me out as needed. Continuous time finance ala LTCM. haha. LTCM assumed that Russian gov't bonds will never default. One has to be careful what one assumes
I've said this on previous ocassions, who uses 'trader' in their nic, other than an amateur. Who trades futures and doesn't think about limit up or limit down? What a clown!
A smart person does realize he or she is inexperienced, and yields and first educates him or herself. A smart person does not jump into a new product in way too much size that person can emotionally handle. Good luck to you, hopefully you take this as a valuable lesson. Liquidating your hedge was incredibly stupid. Am out of here, can't be bothered by someone who refuses to see his own idiocy.
I have a wise old mentor told me to fail early and fail fast so you get educated by making the small mistakes. And don't make the big mistakes later on. All mistakes are the same, just on different scales. The big challenges to the OP is how he will handle this mistakes. A small mistake can easily escalate to a big mistake. I've seen this scenario before.
Yep. It was a stupid mistake. I'm a pure TA/PA trader. I should actually pay attention to the news. In the past, I always considered news as noise. It's still noisy. Hopefully, with the wider band tomorrow, it will be tradable and I just bite the bullet and get out. Might go long. I calculate the potential loss up to $5K in worse case scenario if it hits the 4.5 cents limit tomorrow. With my trading stats of $1K+/day , that will set me back 5 days. Upsetting. But i will have the rest of the month to recover. Assuming it can trade within that band... *fingers crossed* =========================================== "CME October lean hog futures settled up the daily 3-cent limit at 66.525 cents per pound. Daily limits for Wednesday will expand to 4.5 cents per pound, the CME Group said." https://business.financialpost.com/...hog-futures-jump-as-chinese-pork-prices-climb
Trader99, don't sweat Groot and Mickey, they're just hacking on you. Take what they say to heart about new instruments though, and take what I have mentioned over and over again to you...Since you know NG so well, and make your bread-and-butter with it, just stick with it and try nothing else! Once you build up a huge bankroll with NG, then next year's late spring will be the time to spread your wings on other instruments, when NG starts to go stale again (historically).
Yeah. I should have focused on NG today. I should work hard on steadily scale up my daily profits in NG so I can eventually reach $4k-$5K/day. Then I'll be set and gradually add other instruments into play.
It is fun trying other instruments, it really is. But if I had a bread-and-butter, I would milk it for all it is worth as long as a I could. My mistake was I changed my bread-and-butter of the weird CL hedge thing to equities, and then the shit hit the fan. I have been slow to adapt. The market conditions have been changing at a pace faster than I could adapt to. And since about a year ago, it has all gone ballistic with the trade war and the Fed. You got your sure-shot with NG. STICK WITH THAT.
I see you like the above post. Are you finally going to heed some of the advice given to you here? Not just by me, but by others? Remember, flat is a position. Mostly.