What is the worst thing you have done as a trader?

In a forum full of serious stuff like how to make the right moves I see a serious lack of people fessing up on what wrong moves they have made.

No-one is perfect we’ve all done something stupid ignorant or plain vague that has cost us money and emotional pain. This is the place you confess.

[U]
Rules of this thread.[/U]

  1. Do not ridicule anyone for what they have wrote this is to help newbie traders see they are normal just like the rest of us and that with time and discipline they too will be able to look back and laugh.

  2. Be honest, it’s not a contest who can come up with the biggest load of BS

  3. If you laugh then you owe it to the thread to add something and if you don’t the FOREX gods will make you unprofitable forever.

  4. This is not a thread for you to tell someone else how they could have avoided their mistakes.

  5. Have a great day. :slight_smile:

When writing a post please add how long you were trading for when you made this mistake and how long you have been trading for now.

Mark.

When I was a wee baby trader of 6 months experience I was trading index CFD’s with 400 to 1 leverage, I was trading over 50% of my capital per trade and wasted $3.6K in the process.

I’ve been trading almost two years now and I’m still learning.

Mark.

I’ve been trading almost two years now and roughly half an hour ago I accidentally made a trade for .5 lots instead of .05 lots. cost me $130.

Whenever we start any trades we should carefully check about it as a mistake will lead us towards losses.

No matter what has happened in the past all i can say is that in the future you must remain careful about it so that this thing does not happen again :frowning:

Quiet thread eh!! :smiley: :smiley:

Ok, ok, so the [I][U]most [/U][/I]stupid thing I’ve done amongst [I][U]all [/U][/I]the stupid things?

I only trade EUR/USD. One day, whilst watching my charts on the workstation I saw a buy opportunity and double-clicked the BUY button - nothing happened…thinking that there must have been a transmission error I promptly double-clicked again…again nothing happened. After two more attempts I was about to switch off and return later when my extremely slow brain started to work and thought there must be something wrong here as the price is still changing!

Then I remembered that earlier I had been looking at the same system on some other USD pairs and realised I had forgotton to switch back to the EUR/USD page. With an instant clammy sweat I switched back to the EUR/USD page and there were my lovely 4 new trades sitting there representing 4x my usual trading size.

Fortunately, I was able to scratch the excess three trades and all was ok. But, whenever I think back and remember that I was about to switch off and leave it …

Since then all my positions automatically include a pre-set stop and limit which I can adjust afterwards if necessary - just in case there really [I]is[/I] a connection failure.

Very interesting topic! Not a lot of traders are willing to admit their big mistakes in the past so thanks for setting up those rules for this thread to prevent any bashing.

I’ve been trading for more than a decade already and I gotta admit that my biggest mistake was probably a “fat finger” trade wherein I placed an extra couple of zeroes on my position size during my first year. Needless to say, I thought I would have a heart attack right there and then when I saw my balance fluctuating like crazy. It took me MONTHS to move on from that nerve-wracking feeling!

Nice topic. All my big mistakes came from trading when i m stressed/tired/traveling/distracted. What are those mistakes?
Anything you can imagine from wrong executions, to forgetting to change tactics when markets change from ranging to trending or the other way. Over trading, revenge trades, over exposure, trading more than one index. you name it…

Whenever we are trading it is always better to have some or the other form of relaxation ranging from Travel to Music, from Movies to Mac Donald’s, from Driving to Sleeping, from Chatting to Surfing whatever that is more enjoyable to you :slight_smile:

My big mistake in the beginning was when I started trading with $200 account and when I say I was trading I mean I was trading like a crazy so like any beginner I was lucky to get to $2000 for about 4 months. So what I was thing was that I am having the holy grail. Unfortunately after on month I blow the account.

Accidentally set a trade for 1 lot instead of 0.1 - and it was an EA trade which happened during my sleep, luckily my account survived, although it was now scarred with a 60% dd, but hey, could have been worse!

Ouch! but you’re still live and kicking :slight_smile:

I see for a Forex analyst you have failed to not only [B]READ[/B] the [B]RULES[/B] but you are not [B]following[/B] them either. I refer you to post #1

Good to see some people in here with the guts to admit they are Human.

A gutsy move and good work. :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

I was helping my dad with a DIY project & decided to just stay at there house overnight to get an earlier start the next day. During the down-time at night, I downloaded MT4 on to their laptop, had a wee browse through the charts, saw a set up that I liked & the trade was place. I woke up in the morning, checked my phone & saw an oversized minus figure on my screen. WTF?!? On further investigation, the default position size on my dad’s laptop was set differently to mine, it was a good bit larger (I can’t remember the sizes though). I thankfully made it out with only a small loss & I learnt a valuable lesson that day.

It is always better to check before placing your trades and usually we make these kind of silly trading mistakes that will cost us much losses :frowning:

Hey Archie Miller

I see for a Forex analyst you have failed to not only [B]READ[/B] the [B]RULES[/B] but you are not [B]Following[/B] them either. I refer you to post #1

Read more: 301 Moved Permanently

[QUOTE=“Archie Miller;722637”] It is always better to check before placing your trades and usually we make these kind of silly trading mistakes that will cost us much losses :([/QUOTE]

Well it wouldn’t be a mistake if I had checked it, would it?

It’s always best to check that your shoe laces are tied but that won’t stop you tripping on them at some point down the line.

Phew! great that it was only a small loss! :slight_smile: - Funny how we spend so much time trying to get the probabilities on our side when we trade - but whenever these kinds of human mistakes occur they ALWAYS seem to end up in a loss! :54: - some kind of natural law I guess!

But that is the great value in this thread in that it shows and warns others how easily these kinds of oversights can happen when one’s concentration slips or when trading from a different environment. Thanks for the input Baz!

It could easily have been a big loss because in theory, I should have just closed it but I looked at it, drew a line in the sand & thought to myself, “I won’t let it get any worse than X or I’m out of the trade”. Thankfully I think that I looked at it when it was at its worse & it was nursed in to the realms of a small acceptable loss & I was out at that.

It didn’t trigger my SL so hell, for all I know the trade could have gone my way but with the shock of it all, I wasn’t thinking too clearly.

My biggest mistake was deviating from my winning strategy, my strategy was very quick trades normally around a minute long but then i started to hold my trades overnight and for 2 or 3 days etc i wasn’t being completely consistent and disciplined and i started to trade like a bank (not enough funds to trade like that) and I would read efx news and listen to what goldman sachs and credit suisse had to say etc which doesnt help a bit more than 50% of the time these analysts get things completely wrong don’t listen to them people. Eventually due to very bad luck and bad trading I blew my account.