The Pity Party

Hi Everyone,

So as a struggling newbie...I thought it would be a change of pace to start a pity party. Here's a place to post your frustrations, bad days, stupid rules you violated, vents, etc. A place to poke fun at yourself. Please don't take anything said here personal and don't take yourself too seriously! Hopefully, we can all get a good laugh on bad days.

Here is my first one...


Every time I take a bad trade Im going to put a little blue tally right on my forehead..that way every time I look in the mirror all I see are my mistakes...Hopefully, my entire face isn't blue when I leave the house

 

Blue?

 

Uhhh, where can I get a costume like that for Halloween? Awesome.

 

I'm not looking for pity, but though it would be fun to share this really dumb trade from my past. To get the ball rolling on stories in this thread. So many here try to sound so knowledgeable and seem to enjoy looking down their noses at noobs. These are the worst kind of posters who conveniently forget their own past experiences. If you've ever traded Coffee will get a laugh over this one. This was my 3rd trade in my $5K start up account. [The worst trade I've ever made].

I started following Coffee in the spring of 94. I "noticed" the tendency for prices to open lower on Mondays following Friday closes. (No clue about weather patterns, freeze season, fund actions, etc). I decided I could outsmart the market by selling near the close on Friday with the idea of buying on open on Monday morning. Of course on Monday morning my first action was to execute an offsetting buy order. Problem was some significant bullish weather occurred over the weekend. Mondays open was a bloody gap against me (30% acct draw down). I almost threw up when I saw the open. My immediate instinct was to flip position, but the best I could execute was an offsetting buy.

Lessons:
1. Lack of Market Knowledge can be fatal - Don't trade patterns without understanding the motivation of core trade commercial participants. Friday longs were essentially taking out weather insurance during freeze season and folding it on Mondays. This kind of bet works only if you can control the weather in Brazil

2. Over trading can be fatal - Trade risks was too high for my account size (I was clueless about money management).

What I did:

A. I put my trading on hold and spent almost 2 years buying market books and reading about markets and trading.

B. I learned the basics of money management and risk assessment. The idea of qualifying which markets to trade based on risk exposures for my account size.

Comments:
It's hard to keep a straight face and tell this story now. It was my wake up to the fact that trading can't be a hobby. Serious folks with serious money on the line all the time. You have to step up to match this effort or the pro's will own your account in short order.

 

I should have known better !!!

My first "seminar" in 1985 for futures trading was in New York City, flew all the way there, stayed overnite in a hotel, and next morning went to lower level (basement) of another hotel, joined by 20-25 other saps, waited twenty minutes drinking coffee and eating donuts, and exchanging war stories of our trading, in runs some guy with his huge deep cleavage gal, says he is sorry they are late cause of late plane, she collects $1,000 certified checks, he runs a projector.... half hour later, janitor is screaming at us for being in his "office".......

and ROFL, we are so dumb, we can't remember a damn thing of what he looked when we filed report to the police.

 

That's classic! I'll bet you could describe the cleavage though

 

That's when you all line up in a circle and start kicking the guy in front of you in the butt!

 

Too funny

 

Between Handles story (a classic) and the Coffee guy who wanted to throw up ( I can relate to this) my biggest disaster was in my first wave ( early 20’s) of trading:

I had an account of 200k and doing very well that year -i.e taking too large risks…was heavily short coming in the next day-everything opened limit down! I was in heaven up 50,000 + the fact I was going to pick up my new dream car that afternoon.

I had to go to the bank to sign some car loan papers that would pull me away for an hour-towards the end of the trading session too.

Stupid/dumb/moronic me leaves the office and places NO STOPS. I come back to work an hour later and my colleagues had that sick look towards me and said “ did u hear what happened- look at the screen?”

To my horror, everything turned around to limit up… a strong unconfirmed rumor hit the floor that Reagan had been shot!

I went from +50 to -50k ( a 100k swing) and just wanted to die! But I composed myself took the loss-bought the car anyway and just believed I will make it back one day ( I did 6 months later).
But I did learn to respect risk from that very costly mistake .

Its amazing to me, now that im an old goat, how naive but Optimistic u are when your young…

 

Many years ago, trusting in a broker who had their own synthetic profit target-stop loss code (OCOs) for markets that did not offer OCOs. A rapid $9000 (loss) education in the meaning of "Not Held", as used by a broker to explain how programming logic differs from market reality...