PartyGaming - how NOT to start your trading career !

Guys,

I am a newbie trader and here is here my free advise to every novice on how NOT to trade


I started out in late august 2006 with a balance of 15000 GBP and opened up a share trading account with Barclays -

I did not know what are CFDs , futures,options gilts - nothing.All i knew was that there are millions of traders out there who make a living out of trading and the thought was that if they can surely i can too !

I had not heard of technical analysis and did not(still dont) know what is a P/E ratio

I did not know what is a STOP order !

I had never heard of a trading system or a risk reward ratio

I had heard though that you will minimise the risk if you had a diversified portfolio.

With this enviable trading knowledge i put in 12000 quid in various stocks.I bought three stocks - PartyGaming,OXUS Gold and JUMPIt - the latter two as they were 27p and 6 p each and i had seen that they were at these stocks were falling on the day i placed the order.

Not surprisingly i heard some bad news soon after i bought the stock - the whole legislation thing about online gaming in US,legal troubles for gold mining in central asia etc...and the stocks plumetted the next day(except for PartyGaming)

Come October 2 and the whole market was abuzz with the slaughtering of online gaming stocks.i switched on bloomberg tv and almost got a heart attack to see PartyGaming stock go down 53 % !!

The other two had gone down as well despite the FTSE 100 being near to its all time highs.

I obviously panicked and decided to sell the stocks at the prevailing market price...

Cost me a total loss of 6700 pounds !!!

Add salt to the wounds,come October 3 and the PartyGaming stock was higher and the other two had jumped up too

If only i had heard of the support/resistance theory ...

My point -

NEVER invest in live market unless you have done your research

NEVER place an order without a stop loss !!

Dont panic when you see a trade going against you even if you dont know technical analysis.For example instead of selling all my stock when they were plumetting i should have placed a stop order - this way JUST in case the price went up i would have been able to reduce my loss

Dont go by charts and technical analysis alone !!! Keep your eyes and ears open about what is happening in the market/industry.For example before putting my money in PartyGaming if i had done some research i would have found out about problems with the online gambling industry..

Research,ReSEARCH,RESEARCH and RESEARCH before investing in live markets !!

And now can someone please point me to a training course...

Cheers
Karan

Karan, a brave post. It sounds very familiar. There's enough good information & discussion on this site for several months of searching, reading, re-reading etc., if you can sort the good from the bad. Good luck.

karan

Welcome to T2W

What a baptism of fire . As blackcab says, there's plenty of good reading here which I hope will help you avoid getting the rest of your fingers burnt.

Good fortune

jon

Spend more time reading these boards as recommended by previous posters, get to know the subject,keep in cash and only buy 100 shares at a time, learn to manage these, say 100 x $20 or less per share, it takes time, if you can learn to buy and sell 100 without loss, then you maybe in a position to increase the size, preserve your capital or you wont be able to trade very long, you've had a very bad start, try to turn that negative experience into a positive one by not repeating the same mistakes, .......................good luck

could you imagine if you had made a killing where you would be now?
in a false sense of security believing everything you touch turns to gold(pardon the pun) road to destruction.
you have been humbled we all have at one stage or another in various degrees
accept your loss and move on
you have learned what many have taken a long time to learn
you will do well
good luck on you path to knowledge

Welcome to the world of trading

your first mistake was to think that there are millions of traders making a living out of trading, in reality there is only a small percentage that are consistant enough to make money.
Before looking at any courses I would read up on the various ways of trading and which markets to trade in, when you have a better knowledge then you will be able to make an informed descision on the best path to take.
The K.LAB articles section on this website has a wealth of information provided by active traders that is well worth a read

Good luck for the future

As always if in doubt ASK

i know i did a schoolboy error ! and with my meagre earnings i will probably never recover the 6700 i lost - not at least in the next coupld of years

but i found this forum amazing - it is not that i did not look for information before i invested just that most google queries seem to return information that brokers want us to beleive

anyways - having taken the hit has only increased my resolution to take a scientific approach to trading rather than try to jump in a dark well based on guesswork....

Hi kkarank,

Just read your first post..........holy Jesus!

Very brave of you to share that with everyone.

Take your time before you get back into the markets. Paper trade for a while.

Your situation is a good example of what can happen when you have taken too much risk in companies that are poor quality investments.

Just my opinion of course!

Good Luck

Damian