Days To Forget

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Unreal

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Hi,

Just wondering if anyone can share the worst day the had trading? What went wrong and how or if you recovered threw in the towel or reached new heights?
 
Was a few months ago on my first account. Thought I would show the Market who was boss, and got on the wrong side of the American Non Farm payrolls.

95% of an account gone bye bye.

Just stuck to what I knew and built it back up again.

Lodian
 
days? days???
days turned into weeks..months..then years. i've yet to throw the towel in i just keep wringing it out... don't quite soak up the tears like it used to!
 

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Days To Remember all our lives..

If you swing multi pairs you'll regularly have days when you'll be hundreds of pips offside and lots of times it doesn't come back; some stops may he hit in series, some signals may ping signalling the reverse trade is on and you have no option but to take the losses and stick to the plan...Some days it's a train wreck, 370 pips loss (as a snapshot) was the worst *day* recently...but that's the game isn't it? :)

Worst days? The emotional pain of relative big losses when you're starting off learning the job, nothing can prepare you for those unique experiences; days when you think of throwing in the towel but you carry on because, deep down inside, you reckon you've got what it takes to make it, those were also the days I realised that this game is MM and mind way above method (which is still vital) you have to go there to come back and all of that. It's an intense business, but you must lighten up on yourself about the losses...
 
That's one of the flaws in backtesting.. you code up your rules, run your little simulation and think "aha, if had been trading that for five years I'd have done well". However, the backtest doesn't give you even the slightest clue as to the emotional rollercoaster you're about to ride.
 
Days To Remember

The worst single day was around US$1400 which isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. What went wrong? Too much ego and not enough experience. The heading should really be “Days to remember” because I have learned the most from my trading losses.
 
I think 100% of beginners overestimate their capacity for risk, and tolerance for losses. It's another one of those biases.. if you make $5k, you're thinking "damn, could have made $7k" so then you take more risk, at which point, the inevitable losses result.

Learn from your mistakes, that's important, but don't dwell on them.
 
had plenty of bad days...

I have come to learn that when volatility is high (and usually start of NY market) and I get contradictory signals in markets that usually move in tandem with each other, is when a major drawdown is brewing!!
 
My worst day trading would be about 4 years ago. I was long GBP/JPY (which was the wrong thing to be doing) and took a £13k hit in about an hour. Think I managed to end that day down about £7k.....

It was not as bad however as when I travelled down to London to buy a car (Ford Focus ST3) paid £12k cash only to find out 3 days later that it had fake VIN numbers, reg plates, log book etc... That experience was worse, trust me. My car trading carrier did not last long.
 
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Getting knocked out for 50% of an account because of a fat tail (volatility) then promptly watching it surge from the price I placed the trade at.
It's important you take a lesson from events like that because they're the expensive parts of your education.
 
It is very interesting topic to discuss. In my opinion everyone has bad days that he wants to forget and I am not the exception. But I have forgotten them so much that now I can't recall any of them.
 
The number one problem is without doubt taking too much risk. But as the saying goes, take care of the downside and the upside will take care of itself. In other words, think about what you're prepared to lose, not what you want to make.
 
Had a major ugly on May 6th 2010 when I placed a long on EURJPY and had an SL at 119.00, went to bed after a long flight and woke up to an empty acc. Turns out I had placed my SL at 11.9 not 119.00 and it was the night of a 900 pip drop thanks to the Dow 1,000 pt crash due to robots going nuts I believe.

Rule number 1; ALWAYs check you have your SL placed correctly.
 
If I reflected on all the bad days I've had over the years I'd probably cry. These best thing you can do is determine if your bad day was due to mistakes or that day's market action not being conducive to your trading style. Decide if there's anything you can do to try to prevent it and then forget the whole thing happened and move on. If you dwell too much on your bad days you will develop a paralysis and be afraid to pull the trigger on your trades.

Peter
 
Dubai said:
Had a major ugly on May 6th 2010 when I placed a long on EURJPY and had an SL at 119.00, went to bed after a long flight and woke up to an empty acc. Turns out I had placed my SL at 11.9 not 119.00 and it was the night of a 900 pip drop thanks to the Dow 1,000 pt crash due to robots going nuts I believe.

Rule number 1; ALWAYs check you have your SL placed correctly.
Click to expand...

i'm sure that day wiped out many accounts.
 
meanreversion said:
The number one problem is without doubt taking too much risk. But as the saying goes, take care of the downside and the upside will take care of itself. In other words, think about what you're prepared to lose, not what you want to make.
Click to expand...

Agree, and yet ... there also has to be a positive driver ... ambition ... whatever you want to call it. I suppose it's striking the correct balance between not taking too much risk, and being overcautious.

I don't know what the answer is.....experience, probably.
 
Yes, you need to have positive expectancy. But as the other saying goes, you can't win unless you bet, but you can't bet unless you have chips. (I'm full of quotes today ... )
 
Rossini said:
My worst day trading would be about 4 years ago. I was long GBP/JPY (which was the wrong thing to be doing) and took a £13k hit in about an hour. Think I managed to end that day down about £7k.....

It was not as bad however as when I travelled down to London to buy a car (Ford Focus ST3) paid £12k cash only to find out 3 days later that it had fake VIN numbers, reg plates, log book etc... That experience was worse, trust me. My car trading carrier did not last long.
Click to expand...


You picked the right asset from the wrong provider. Maybe there is a general lesson there :)
Love the Focus BTW (well, the older ones, anyway).
They just keep on running.
...
Hell, that was hostage to fortune if ever I heard one.
 
Has anyone had a successful career trading cars? My first two cars I bought new and suffered about 40% depreciation. Third car was second hand, so no VAT payable, but the depreciation is probably going to be worse as I've kept it five years now.
 
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