Misery loves company I've always said. So lets all hear the dumbest thing you've ever done while trading. Amateurs and professionals alike do every day. Like the guy a couple months back who pressed the million sell key on INTC by accident. Or the guy who sold more shares than there were on the float last week. For me, it was offering 5000 shares on attain 27 cents out of the money on INTC. Made someones day, That's for sure. Oh well, at least I was still positive And of course nothing can ruin a great trade more than realizing you've punched in short instead of long. And nothing can make you look more stupid than screaming go go go Riiip! while holding it. (Geeze I am pretty stupid. Maybe this thread wasn't such a great idea after all?)
I quit a well paying Job to take up trading full time. In hindsight that is the dumbest thing I ever did in my whole life. I gave up a nice income working 9-5 and lost my entire savings and went into debt learning how to trade 24 hours a day 7 days a week, I have no health insurance, no 401K plan matched by my employer, no paid vacations. After 1.5 years of losing and eating through my savings, at least now I'm breaking even and have a few Job interviews lined up for 2006. I'm going to work fulltime and swing trade part-time
Short TZOO when the path of least resistance was up. Poor Bartel though... a paper billionaire that could not dump his shares nor buy puts. Imagine just watching a billion dollars go down the drain.
buying 100 contracts of the T-note on a VERY hockish FOMC statement...I just read it wrong...didn't turn out pretty...about -13k
There are sooo many... Buying the FTSE tracker in Mar 03 and selling a few weeks later, only to watch it rally for two and a half years. Buying £110 of the FTSE to close a short when I meant to buy £10. Stubbornly holding onto a day trade and taking a much larger loss than I should have done. Of course, the important thing is to learn from ones mistakes.