Mistakes... Yesterday I played primarily short for an options expiration Monday. Doh!!! Holiday. Heloo!!!! It was Tuesday. Guess what. Post-op ex after an intervening holiday are actually bullish. The difference is instead of losing money I made money ---only less. Mistakes. Nah nobody makes em.
Set your exit price before (or when) you enter the trade. If it goes higher (on a long) than your exit so be it. You'd have made a profit that was your target when you entered the trade. Same for shorts ... if it goes lower than where you covered it's no big deal. I've seen lots of guys who see a stock moving up (on a long) and they then get greedy and say "I'll wait until it hits a top and pauses" ... well, by the time that occurs it's obvious to everyone and the stock may be pulling back slightly from the high and then the trader tries to rationalize by saying "Well, I'll sell when it hits that (previous) high again" ... which oftentimes never happens that day. One can't go broke taking profits.
Pros never make the BIG mistakes... They just sometimes trade sub-optimally. Also pros understand the CORRECT market fundamentals... As opposed to ** widely held erroneous beliefs **... And therefore operate within a very sound framework.
I figure they make a lot of the same mistakes, probably less often. But more importantly, when they are right, they make a lot more relative to the losers.
Actually... imo, it's the opposite. Pros are EXTREMELY good at limiting their losses. Anybody can play a winning position well... It's managing a bad situation that differentiates Pros from the rest. In poker... The WORST hand is the ** second best ** hand at the table. A top pro will limit the damage... While an inexperienced player will get taken to the cleaners. If you want to improve your trading... Spend a lot of time analyzing your big losers... Which is psychologically very hard to do.
A stupid mistake i made was instead of closing my position i added more not knowing and went to buy lunch When i cam back i was like WTF ( Who has been trading my account )
Trading is such and "individual sport" that it's hard to distinguish between "newbie" and "pro" mistakes in my opinion. I have people who have made good money for years, and then drop a half $million being stubborn (one of the biggest mistakes, obviously). And, I have new guys that keep track of the major errors so they don't repeat them. You just try to show the way, hopefully they will follow. Don
Just to add to what HoundDogOne said about poker. When learning to play competitive chess, one of the first things you are told is that you learn more from one defeat than from a thousand victories.
Like forgetting it's a fed day and takin' a piss at 1:57pm without stops only to return and the market moved 1%. OOOpps
=================== Qusix; Could be as you imply , be right a high % of the time. But as Daryl Guppy said ,dont confuse a high probability; with infallibility.