How often

[DionysusToast]

How often do you make a mistake trading - and actually make money out of it.

I can't remember the last time I screwed up and made money.

I can remember
- finger f***ing my way out of trades
- my daughter placing trades when I was away from the keyboard
- software glitches
- writing stuff down wrong & working off that

For the life of me - I can't ever remember one of those occurrences having an positive outcome.

Should it not, by the law of probabilities, be about a 50/50 proposition - half of your mistakes have a positive outcome & half negative?

It sure feels like the SLIGHTEST thing you do wrong, the market punishes you for it.

 

[bbmac]

I tend to agree with this observation borne of experience - but I wonder as we apparently derive twice the pain from a loss as we do the relative pleasure from a gain - is this skewing our perception of it ? I dunno.


G/L

How often do you make a mistake trading - and actually make money out of it.

I can't remember the last time I screwed up and made money.

I can remember
- finger f***ing my way out of trades
- my daughter placing trades when I was away from the keyboard
- software glitches
- writing stuff down wrong & working off that

For the life of me - I can't ever remember one of those occurrences having an positive outcome.

Should it not, by the law of probabilities, be about a 50/50 proposition - half of your mistakes have a positive outcome & half negative?

It sure feels like the SLIGHTEST thing you do wrong, the market punishes you for it.

 

[the hare]

50/50 so far

 

[counter_violent]

50/50 so far

coin to55er

 

[deebee1]

im guessing in cases where people constantly blow their accounts, trading itself is a mistake....

 

[DionysusToast]

50/50 so far

How exactly do you make a mistake tossing a bl00dy coin?

One slip down the crack in the sofa or something?

 

[ChocolateDigestive]

How often do you make a mistake trading - and actually make money out of it.

I can't remember the last time I screwed up and made money.

I can remember
- finger f***ing my way out of trades
- my daughter placing trades when I was away from the keyboard
- software glitches
- writing stuff down wrong & working off that

For the life of me - I can't ever remember one of those occurrences having an positive outcome.

Should it not, by the law of probabilities, be about a 50/50 proposition - half of your mistakes have a positive outcome & half negative?

It sure feels like the SLIGHTEST thing you do wrong, the market punishes you for it.

you actually have the makings of a very good thread here Toast. lets assume that there is no confirmation bias and if you enter trades by mistake (and lets assume the mistakes are random in direction and timing) what is your expectation?

I would suggest your expectation is highly likely to be negative for reasons you may not know already but understanding the reasons why the expectation is likely to be negative could lead you to substantial profits.

 

[ChocolateDigestive]

50/50 so far

that is very interesting if you are not jesting Mr Hare. I would hazard a guess that your average trade time probably runs in the days rather than the minutes, would I be right? I would also be interested to know what instrument you are talking about however I understand if you cannot divulge this information where the upside to you is precisely zero. lol

 

[DionysusToast]

I tend to agree with this observation borne of experience - but I wonder as we apparently derive twice the pain from a loss as we do the relative pleasure from a gain - is this skewing our perception of it ? I dunno.


G/L

Unlikely - because I keep a journal. Unless I'm hiding my 'good' mistakes from myself by claiming them as successes in the journal.

In terms of mistakes - my most common errors are:

- Exiting a trade to early by way of an errant mouse click
- Entering the wrong position size
- Taking a trade in the wrong direction
- Leaving the PC logged on whilst I nip out & my daughter hitting the keyboard

OK - the last one only happened once....

I once brought 1 share of a stock and got really stoked with the move I captured. Why could the stock not have tanked, therefore making it an acceptable mistake.

It's not as if there is an error a day or even each week. It's just that when they occur, I never end up saying "wow - I'm glad I did that".

Actually - looking at this, it makes perfect sense why all of those errors lose you money when you are in a good trade.

So maybe the question should be - why don't you make these mistakes to prematurely close losers accidentally?

I need to make a few more mistakes and come back to this.

 

[DionysusToast]

Software glitches

The one that occurs most often is closing a trade right before the platform closes it, resulting in a new trade in the opposite direction.

So - you have a stop there, you hit the exit button to potentially save a tick but the markets gone down.

Those trades always end up losing me money....

 

[DionysusToast]

you actually have the makings of a very good thread here Toast. lets assume that there is no confirmation bias and if you enter trades by mistake (and lets assume the mistakes are random in direction and timing) what is your expectation?

I would suggest your expectation is highly likely to be negative for reasons you may not know already but understanding the reasons why the expectation is likely to be negative could lead you to substantial profits.

Well - some trades end up being random, I should catch a break on approximately 50% of those (well - a skew because of the spread) - but that does not appear to be the case.

Good trades that are screwed up will obviously cause loss of money.

I warn you from outset though that pursuing the answer to this question could render your indicator obsolete - dont say I didn't warn you.

EDIT - I should add that the indicator would no longer be useless it will still serve it's purpose perfectly well however questions may be raised about it's usefulness.

OK - so keep banging this drum if you like. You know & I know that I don't sell indicators.

Why you want to follow me around the forum with this nonsense is beyond me. If you think you can somehow run me off the board with this stuff, you are wrong.

 

[the hare]

How exactly do you make a mistake tossing a bl00dy coin?

Ive only ever made 2 mistakes, both where incorrect position sizing. In one case the mistake existed for about a month before it was discovered. In the second instance I lost over a years profits in around 15 seconds.

 

[DionysusToast]

Ive only ever made 2 mistakes, both where incorrect position sizing. In one case the mistake existed for about a month before it was discovered. In the second instance I lost over a years profits in around 15 seconds.

:-0 :-0 :-0

Damn.

 

[counter_violent]

Ive only ever made 2 mistakes, both where incorrect position sizing. In one case the mistake existed for about a month before it was discovered. In the second instance I lost over a years profits in around 15 seconds.

I'd keep quiet about causing that flash crash if I were you

 

[wackypete2]

Ive only ever made 2 mistakes, both where incorrect position sizing. In one case the mistake existed for about a month before it was discovered. In the second instance I lost over a years profits in around 15 seconds.

Ouch. That was painful just reading it.

I've learned the hard way about mistakes. As soon as I catch them I immediately close out the position. When I used to go with it and try to get something out of it I always ended up compounding the problem.

I agree with DT. Rare is the instance where I make a mistake and it benefits me. I just find it better to close out and move on.

Peter

 

[robster970]

In the second instance I lost over a years profits in around 15 seconds.

Oh jesus hare, that hurts..............

 

[The Leopard]

In the second instance I lost over a years profits in around 15 seconds.

Ouch. That was painful just reading it.

Oh jesus hare, that hurts..............

Oh be quiet you bunch of fairies. I bet a year's profits for Teh Hare isn't much at all. He probably doesn't even make 300% per year.

 

[R.Charnock]

Depends how you define 'mistake'. As an experiment, a while back I did try a series of tardes where I used my normal entry criteria, then deliberately clicked to go in teh opposite direction. That was teh easy bit. Teh hard part was coping with what happened once teh tarde was open, particularly resisting teh temptation to close as soon as it went into profit (if it ever did).
Teh mildly interesting result was that it was quite possible to make an overall profit by making that sort of 'mistake', proving the importance of tarde and money management.

 

[scose-no-doubt]

Ive only ever made 2 mistakes, both where incorrect position sizing. In one case the mistake existed for about a month before it was discovered. In the second instance I lost over a years profits in around 15 seconds.

I told you not to put that monkey down on Man U winning the league.

 

[ChocolateDigestive]

Well - some trades end up being random, I should catch a break on approximately 50% of those (well - a skew because of the spread) - but that does not appear to be the case.

the above is incorrect. I could go into details about why your expectation is likely to be a whole lot less than 50% even if there was no spread. The problem is if I did go into details you would get in a paddy and cry nonsense so there isn't much upside for me especially as knowing the answer would also improve you chances of eventually become profitable. so I prefer to not explain it to you, just carry on with the indicator stuff.

GVTY