For the love of (Trading)God - PLEASE STOP TRADING

Trading Discussion
1

Hi traders,

Today a beginner “trader” contacted me on another website for help after he just lost AUD $30,000 in his first 3 months.

A part of me was shocked, another part in disbelief, another part felt sorry for him and another part of me just died a little. The fact that he thought it a good idea to just start off with so much money and somehow being brainwashed by internet marketers that “trading is as easy as 1-2-3” must surely be a crime.

Dear traders:

  • If you haven’t proven yourself to be profitable on a tiny live account for 6 months, and
  • If you haven’t then increased your account to 50% of what you want to trade and then trade that successfully for 6 months with no major drawdowns…

PLEASE STOP TRADING!

Go back to the previous step. Back to the small account. Maybe even back to demo, although I’m not a fan of demo. But losing $2000 because you realize you clearly have gaps in your knowledge is much easier to recover from financially and emotionally than losing $30,000 and just being totally defeated.

No matter what mind-blowing system or insight you think you just discovered - please, PLEASE don’t just bet the house on it!

If I don’t know the exact statistical probability of the outcome of a trade before I enter it based on a 2-year rolling data analysis of trades, I do not ever enter such a trade. In my opinion, anything before that is GAMBLING. And I don’t gamble, I trade for a living. I can’t afford to mess around a bit.

Also, nothing makes you more confident in your trading than when you have the unbiased facts in front of you that your next trade has an 81.25% probability to be a winner.

Priority one: always protect your capital. You can’t trade tomorrow if you lose everything today.

6 Likes
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The title got me intrigued! :stuck_out_tongue: Haha. :slight_smile: Thanks for the reminder Albert! :smiley:

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Glad you found it useful, thanks for the support! :slight_smile:

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Very important takeaway. Trade in a way that you survive to trade another day.

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Honestly speaking I don’t feel sorry for those guys who say" I just lost 30000 bucks within 3 months," cause if someone can afford to put that much money on risk it’s his own fault and it will not really do much harm to him cause obviously he has more money.

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What I was wondering is if some people aren’t getting desperate, especially during the Coronavirus thing, and then tries to make up for lost income by betting it all on hope, a wish, a dream, a false promise that they can double their money in a week. It’s difficult to comprehend what someone like this must be thinking, but I am 100% sure this must have happened to a few folks during this time.