What is the biggest trading mistake you have made?

What is the biggest trading mistake you have made?

Mine was not learning enough before I started.

I bought my first bit of stock at 10k.. then a few days later my account value shot up to 25k after a parabolic move.

...then I lost 17k because
1) I didn't look on the long term (i thought it would continue going up)
2) even if i did look on the long term, i wouldn't have understood it.
3) I didn't sell to take my gains.
4) then as it started going down i kept telling myself (it will go back up, it will go back up)



Then i DID sell whenever the stock plummetted to it's lowest low on the parabolic move.

Sark,

May I suggest a trailing stop on the equity in your account.
If I made a trade that took my account from 10k to 25k, I would have placed a sell stop when my account had 6k profit. If you really liked your position then at least put in a break even stop.

NEVER let a NICE winner turn into a loser.

"When in doubt stay out".

Occasionally I have bouts of adding to losing positions based solely on stubborn pride. It's a fault I try hard to stamp out but I'm so far from being perfect that you can't even SEE perfect from where I'm standing.

It always always comes back to bite me in the @ss eventually.

Widening my stop-loss in the hope a losing position would turn into a winner.

Going live

losing £10k trying to short Oil last year. then losing more trying to learn from my mistakes.

the trend is your friend

You win adv