I had a sell position open on EURGBP when all of a sudden, the price skyrocketted wiping my account instantly. I had no clue it was coming. I got so angry I damaged my laptop. Initially I thought it was my broker. Then I checked the news and realized that a Brexit minister had resigned. And this spike in price was visible on charts of other brokers.
Now I have to restart building my long earned profits all over again, from the beginning. 
Hard luck sprotz. Hope you’re back in the game soon.
But there might be lessons to be learned here too -
did you set a stop-loss?
how tight was it?
how much of your account capital was at risk of loss if your stop-loss was hit?
knowing there is extreme political uncertainty around Brexit, is it essential to trade EUR and GBP pairs right now?
if you chose to not set a stop-loss but to watch the screen instead, when price skyrocketed, how would you have known it was not a spike that was going to reverse in 2 minutes?
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Yes, I did not set stop-loss. I was using a strategy that makes me close the order at the indicators’ crossover. Next time I will always be using stop-loss.
Not using a stop loss in GBP pairs at the moment is like playing russian roulette.
I know the damage has already been done to OP, but anyone else reading this needs to be careful.
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Sorry about that mate. i hope you learn from it.
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That depends on your trading strategy. Whilst in simple binary betting, that tends to be the correct policy, there are other strategies where stop losses are regarded as simply a way of giving your money away. These tend to be reversal strategies and the cash value of each bet tends to be tiny, but if you look at some of the posts @rrram2 writes, one can see some merit in his observations.
To get instantly wiped out in a single bet tho’ does seem to indicate that the size of the gamble was way too large !
When did this happen ? I just looked at my charts and do not see any ‘Black swan event’ such as this in the last day or so ?
I understand that, but this is a special circumstance. Random brexit news can easily cause an unpredictable 1-3% pump or dump out of nowhere, and that can be incredibly dangerous given that people (especially short term traders) are usually leveraged up
I can’t speak for the guy, but I would assume the 1.5% pump that happened over 3 hrs on the 15th is what got him.
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Well I tend to agree but -
If you have a bet running where a move a little under 2x recent ATR will wipe out your Account you should not be leaving that bet untended for 3 hours ! and neither is 3 hours “All of a sudden” or “instant” [hell it was only 100 pips ! ]
How on earth did that little spike wipe out your entire account?
Either your stop loss was way to tight, or you were trading a much bigger position size than you should be relative to your account.
I’m guessing you mean this spike? That is nothing, you should still be in this trade or been able to exit at a much lower loss.
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Hi @sprotz,
It’s a shame this happened, but hopefully it can provide a valuable lesson to others.
We are curious about the amount of leverage you were using for your EUR/GBP position. What was the size of your trade relative to the amount of money in your account? Was your effective leverage greater than 10:1?
You might be interested in reading this earlier discussion about leverage.
The rumours that Raab would resign if the ‘backstop’ didn’t have a specific time limit were circulating back since Nov 5th - here is just one of the many sites that reported this:
There was no denial re the time limit from Raab, so the market waited.
The talk from EU was that there would be no time limit so many traders were cautious going long GBP when the agreement was published.
Note how ‘contained’ Eur/Gbp was when Irish broadcaster RTE reported a leak that a draft was agreed (Nov 13 at 15.55gmt) - maybe that move caused your crossover.
Next day - no time limit and no resignation - cabinet meeting announced for 14.00gmt - see again the containment - that was the time to exit.
Crossovers are great - but important to be market aware.
May I also subtly add that, if you have caused this damage as a result of the event you outlined, then perhaps you also need to work on your trade psychology.
This degree of emotion in response to a trade not going your way is a concern, and if I may add, an unhealthy way of dealing with losses (albeit one that wiped out your account).
I don’t think that picture was of teh actual damage @CandleStuck - The picture was a joke by @BaconSandwich. So hopefully he damaged it rather less than the pictured one ! 
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The leverage was much greater than 10/1, more like 500/1.
That’s a massive leveraging amount. Inadvisably so in fact.
With the possibility of huge profits comes also…I don’t need to finish the sentence I’m sure.
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1:500 Leverage is only dangerous if you don’t know how to use it properly and get greedy and open large positions will small capital.
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Sorry that this happened, but trading EUR/GBP in a massive Brexit news week with no S/L and not sitting on it minute by minute is trading madness. For me that’s a string of mistakes made, so at least learn from them. I don’t trade the news, but I stay aware of it and keep out of the way of it. The ministerial resignations were trailed the night before. I haven’t touched EUR/GBP in a while owing to Brexit, as each side can spike oddly. So I’d personally want a different currency on one side of that at the moment.
(Not saying that EUR/GBP can’t be traded just that it isn’t for the novice or the unwary imho)
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Hi sorry to hear this.
But surely you had a stop loss set.???
Also you sound seriously over leveraged. I personally use 0.2 lots per $5k.
Sort yourself a trading plan. Forex trading is a business and every business needs a plan.
Good luck.
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