How do you recover from a £25,000 loss....

iv got a job, couldnt have traded the large £'s per point to build the account up so much otherwise.
 
Surely it depends on your account size? If you had £200k it's not a huge deal. If you had £5k it's more of a problem.
 
True, i funded the account with £6,000, traded successfully up to £25,000 then lost the lot
 
True, i funded the account with £6,000, traded successfully up to £25,000 then lost the lot

Would you like to share a little more detail with us? Members may not be able to help you recover your loss, in the short term, but may be able to offer good advice that will serve you well in the future.

If it helps, I suffered a similar fate back in the mid 1980s. I lost my £10k investment plus £15k of profit. Unfortunately, in those days, there was no such thing as a guaranteed SL:(
 
If you have a balance of 0, there will be no recovery unless you deposit more money. Or are you talking about an emotional recovery?
 
Yes of course il share more detail, glad i found the site really as i havnt really got it off my chest yet. Im 36 and are lucky i guess in that I have a reasonably well paid job so i will recover over time. I wouldnt have traded if i wasnt secure. I have been trading for around 3 years. At the start tho, I bought shares in oil companies, making a little, losing a little and never really getting anywhere. Now I am a day trader spread betting and rarely hold trades older than a day or two. When my account was £15,000 plus, I was opening positions from £50 per point, up to £500. Mainly if a trade made a few pips showing anything from a £1,000 profit I would take it and close the trade then wait for another short/long opportunity in any market, be it dax, wall street, s+p500, ftse, us light crude, sugar etc. The last trade i made was on the germany 30 on 23 august at 09.50 going long at £200 per point. I entered at 5596 with no stop loss. (criticism accepted, my choice). I knew that the index would drop(despite being an up day), but given that the price had recently found support following a nosedive in the german economy, the index had been showing strength previous days so had no issue with the trade showing an initial loss. my rationale was that there was sufficient funds in my account to cover this initial loss until price began to head in the direction my research suggested. Unfortunately the price fell to the point it wiped out my account. The frustrating thing is, once my account was taken out, price began to rise in the predicted price range and my account would now be showing a £55,000 + profit. It was as though, the sb company i used knew they were going to be paying out substantially on the bet and the price was pushed down. I was watching the chart live as it happened and couldnt believe how it was forcing down so much, especially without any sort of negative news. The only positive to come out of this, is i know where i went wrong and this will give me the confidence to come back.
 
You sound remarkably similar to that guy who made some money from recent wild market swings and ended up losing the lots when trying to double his money again.

The best thing to do is to accept you don't know how to trade and stop, or seriously re-evaluate your strategy before putting money into it again. A lot of people have trouble determining if they just got lucky, or they actually know how to trade.

The market knows precisely what you are betting, and it knows how to wipe you out. Whether the SB bookie is behind it is unprovable. I am inclined to believe they are not.
 
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Maybe Joe, i do need to re-evaluate for sure, especially the risk management aspect of trading.
 
Yes of course il share more detail, glad i found the site really as i havnt really got it off my chest yet. Im 36 and are lucky i guess in that I have a reasonably well paid job so i will recover over time. I wouldnt have traded if i wasnt secure. I have been trading for around 3 years. At the start tho, I bought shares in oil companies, making a little, losing a little and never really getting anywhere. Now I am a day trader spread betting and rarely hold trades older than a day or two. When my account was £15,000 plus, I was opening positions from £50 per point, up to £500. Mainly if a trade made a few pips showing anything from a £1,000 profit I would take it and close the trade then wait for another short/long opportunity in any market, be it dax, wall street, s+p500, ftse, us light crude, sugar etc. The last trade i made was on the germany 30 on 23 august at 09.50 going long at £200 per point. I entered at 5596 with no stop loss. (criticism accepted, my choice). I knew that the index would drop(despite being an up day), but given that the price had recently found support following a nosedive in the german economy, the index had been showing strength previous days so had no issue with the trade showing an initial loss. my rationale was that there was sufficient funds in my account to cover this initial loss until price began to head in the direction my research suggested. Unfortunately the price fell to the point it wiped out my account. The frustrating thing is, once my account was taken out, price began to rise in the predicted price range and my account would now be showing a £55,000 + profit. It was as though, the sb company i used knew they were going to be paying out substantially on the bet and the price was pushed down. I was watching the chart live as it happened and couldnt believe how it was forcing down so much, especially without any sort of negative news. The only positive to come out of this, is i know where i went wrong and this will give me the confidence to come back.

Given that you had £25k in your account and you said you would be up £55k by now if you didnt get stopped out suggests to me that you have no risk management whatsoever and you lost inevitably. Everyone can get lucky and risk £6k up to £25k in a short period of time. You're just a typical gambler that spreadbetting firms love to have.

FYI. The spreadbet firms didn't stop you out. They dont control the price of the dax. £200 a point isnt alot in the real market. It's big for an individual but small in real terms.
 
I don't know how anyone can function when they have their whole account on the line each trade. I would get light headed at more than 3%.
 
It's going to be a slow process mrfigure. Some key issues emerge from the detail you provided, thanks for being open.

Firstly, you need a system to protect capital, so rsking a fixed (and low) percentage only per trade would be good, backed by a stop loss.

Secondly, you probably figured that intra-day trades were less risky than overnight positions: arguably so with stocks but less applicable to indices and forex. But what avoidance of overnight positions really indicates is that you don't have a plan for the trade, so you have to watch the position throughout its duration so you can react to price movement - or rather, unrealised profit/loss. Even if you were good at market analysis, this is like letting the tail wag then dog. Every trade should signal an entry, a stop and a profit target price. Work out where these are objectively, (i.e. don't base your profit level on the profit you wish to bank, let the market tell you where price is likely to travel to within a realistic period) set your orders and walk away from the screen.

Thirdly, your positions themselves are potentially way too big, even if they complied with the % risk rule (most people using this set 2% as the limit). Big red loss £ figures on the position screen make for poor decision-making. Start with very snmall positions for lunch money until you've got a consistently successful set of rules for each trade type you run (I would only recommend one at this stage), then slowly ramp up the position size. There's no hurry to recover the losses as you have a secure income. Remember the inventor of chess - he only asked for 1 grain of rice on the first square of the board as the first instalment of his reward, but simple maths shows how he was able to 'ramp up his position size'.
 
I echo tomortons post
what you lost was £6k not £25 and I consider you got off lightly what you were doing was gambling pure and simple you had £6k on an accumilator and the last horse fell I think thats the way to explain it.

Will you recover absolutely will you trade again my thoughts would be yes but I would first lay down a plan of what and how you wish to trade then find out everything you can about those markets you wish to trade and how you will trade them. open an account with a broker.

Stoploss yes and consider trailing stops if looking for small moves. I dont use fixed stops but I trade over a few days normally and will often give the market room to move, my trade at the moment has been $48k in a hole but at 11565 it will give $50k profit, there are other methods of limiting downside but thats where education comes in
 
Have you actually checked to see if they were manipulating the price to take you out? Not that it will help you as they will have you well stitched up in their T&C but it would be interesting to see.


Yes of course il share more detail, glad i found the site really as i havnt really got it off my chest yet. Im 36 and are lucky i guess in that I have a reasonably well paid job so i will recover over time. I wouldnt have traded if i wasnt secure. I have been trading for around 3 years. At the start tho, I bought shares in oil companies, making a little, losing a little and never really getting anywhere. Now I am a day trader spread betting and rarely hold trades older than a day or two. When my account was £15,000 plus, I was opening positions from £50 per point, up to £500. Mainly if a trade made a few pips showing anything from a £1,000 profit I would take it and close the trade then wait for another short/long opportunity in any market, be it dax, wall street, s+p500, ftse, us light crude, sugar etc. The last trade i made was on the germany 30 on 23 august at 09.50 going long at £200 per point. I entered at 5596 with no stop loss. (criticism accepted, my choice). I knew that the index would drop(despite being an up day), but given that the price had recently found support following a nosedive in the german economy, the index had been showing strength previous days so had no issue with the trade showing an initial loss. my rationale was that there was sufficient funds in my account to cover this initial loss until price began to head in the direction my research suggested. Unfortunately the price fell to the point it wiped out my account. The frustrating thing is, once my account was taken out, price began to rise in the predicted price range and my account would now be showing a £55,000 + profit. It was as though, the sb company i used knew they were going to be paying out substantially on the bet and the price was pushed down. I was watching the chart live as it happened and couldnt believe how it was forcing down so much, especially without any sort of negative news. The only positive to come out of this, is i know where i went wrong and this will give me the confidence to come back.
 
I echo tomortons post
what you lost was £6k not £25 and I consider you got off lightly what you were doing was gambling pure and simple you had £6k on an accumilator and the last horse fell I think thats the way to explain it.

If mrfigure wanted to withdraw before he took the trade which lost him his account, how much could he take out?
 
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