Last Tuesday I went to place an order to BUY 10 OEX calls. The market was 3.80 and I was happy to have a hard stop of $3,800.00 and I usually take half my profits at the 50% return level and let the rest run on a signal like this one. Earlier in the week I was moving some funds around from my options account to a futures account and my options account fell under 25k so IB reclassified the account as non daytrader status. So when I went to place the order it was rejected and it took me 2 days to get it all sorted out and the account working again and I never took the trade. Needless to say those oex options are now trading at $29.00. Much has been written and talked about this business but I can not tell you how many times in 20 years of trading these kinds of stupid things have happened to me. I don't care what anyone else says this is the HARDEST business in the world. Feel free to share your STUPID mistakes and frustrating stories. It may make you feel better.
place a stop at your original fill price (the last price) when the stock is bid higher than the last. you think you are putting in a stop lower than the bid (you are) but unfortunately it is also immediately executable (the last) duh.......:eek: :eek: :eek:
Bot 2000 AET at 83 ..sold at 85 the day it was getting crushed... Said let's see where these lawsuits go before I take any stand... at around 92 ..I said no chasing... 108 today....F*&*^^%K !
Typically entering a wrong limit price for orders. As an exemple, NQ around 1500. Entering a buy limit order @ 1598 rather than 1498.....
My stupid mistakes tend to be super aggressive trading when I am significantly up for the day. I used to throw away profits because of my "playing with the house's money" mentality. Thankfully I don't go down that road much anymore. I am also embarrassed to say that I have forgotten to roll over to a new contract on the third Thursday of the expiration month. I was trading off the continuous contract on my charts, but didn't roll over to the new contract on my order entry system. Done that a couple of times.
I had a bad start again today and was down over $200 by 10:00. I am not sure why I traded so carelessly. All my morning trades are done recklessly without any planning. I lost most of my money trying to catch bottoms on stocks. I forgot to wait for setups like the double bottoms or triple bottoms. I did not use the tape to confirm my trades. As a result of my poor trading I missed out on many great opportunities. I was also trading scared while I am down, a thing that still plagues me till this day. I find it hard to trade with confidence and a clear head. The brief turning point came when I took a brief 5 minutes break and cleared my mind of trading. I came back and started hitting some better trades going with smaller size. By 11:49 I was able to cut my loss down to $50 or less. From 11:50 ¡V 12:47 my sloppy trading came back with a vengeance and I encountered multiple losses bringing me back to a $200 loss again. Thoughts were going on in my mind. I asked myself questions like why did I make these stupid trades, how come I missed all these stocks with such easy moves, can I make a comeback today? My answer was to trade with discipline and find good setups. Then I got some good trades that turned my day around. All the profitable trades were initiated because I saw some setups like triple bottoms and breakout from ranges. I ended the day up +$160. I got to remember to be discipline and have patience.
Jeez, that's a lot of people there on the upper end of the scale. I make more than one mistake a week still. I would bet those that claim to make less, are either those that are swing traders or take only 2-3 trades per day (maybe), or bullshitting, or aren't honest with themselves, or aren't aware of the scope of errors that can actually be committed. What do you people do? You all just "occassionally notice" yourself making an error here and there? What a waste of precious errors, I say. Nothing is a greater master than your mistakes, and the more you make, the more you learn. But in order to do that (recognize them), you have to monitor yourself honestly and highly observantly. As for myself, I have an "errors committed / rules violated" sheet which I print out every day before the market opens. It's got 29 error with common errors, and while in the beginning it took a lot of self-monitoring to become aware of all of them the moment they were committed, it's now become completely routine - and whenever I commit some sort of error, I immediately put a cross on the right side of the appropriate error field. At the end of the day, I look at any errors if applicable, and enter them into a spreadsheet which updates and analyzes my "error statistics", tracks the progress, and identifies weak spots and emerging error trends (charts). During different markets, different "error patterns" tend to evolve, and by visualizing and focusing on counteracting the most prominent errors, I can gradually cut down on unnecessary folly and consistently improve performance. By the way, I have attached a version of that error sheet for you to look at and edit at your own will - But if you use it in any way, please contribute to improving the sheet in any way you can, and to this thread - cheers! S
Great work, Scientist. I have sent that to every trader I know, and I will keep it beside me and make a check mark along with the name of stock for each time I make one of those errors. That way I can see if certain type of error happens mostly with a single symbol.
This is the single most valuable thing I've seen on this forum. Thanks for sharing it with the rest of us. Most of everything on your list has occurred to me as I have made mistakes. But I haven't bothered to write it down. I feel I have the 'Psychological Errors / Reasons' pretty much down. But I am not trading size yet and taking little risk. I am sure that when I master 'Trade Management Errors' I will be on my way....