Losing money due to uncontrollable events

Beginner Questions
1

Have you ever lost money in trading because of something you couldn’t stop? What happened?

2

Yeah that happens sometimes. USD had a couple of major major news, Gold dropped 131 pips in a minute. I didn’t have stop-loss. You can figure out the rest.

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3

Yes, one time, a sudden news announcement drastically impacted the market just after I’d made a significant trade :expressionless: but it actually taught me the importance of having protective measures like stop-loss orders in place.

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4

This happens now and then. People say it’s unavoidable, you can’t know what’s going to happen in the world and you can’t know about it before the markets have reacted.

But there are a few things I can point to -

  1. the damage caused by an unexpected negative event can be limited by setting a stop-loss
  2. there are also positive unexpected events, so be ready with a response to these
  3. a while back I looked at the worst one-day price falls in the Dow Jones over a period of years - 75% of them occurred while the index was already in a downtrend - none of us should have been long when these occurred. The same thing can be seen in the enormous one-day price fall in EUR/CHF - price had been falling for months, no private retail trader should have been long in EUR/CHF.
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5

Well I was going long on BTC when the Israel lunched Messel on iraq, or was it the other way, cant remember which happened the btc went down about more than 5% in less than one min and that was awful really.

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6

One day I didn’t look at the economic calendar and control the release time of very important news on the dollar, so I didn’t close orders in time and the price suddenly and strongly went against me. So the deposit was lost. Nowadays I always look at the economic calendar every day and know when such news will be released. I mostly don’t trade during this time.

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7

This is every single loss I’ve ever taken, lol

But seriously, I was short on US Oil that time the tanker exploded a couple of year back. I forget the details now but oil prices spiked when the market opened.

This is why I always set a TP. Not to limit gains but to protect them from price retracting after a spike.

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8

That’s one of the main problems with trading actually, no matter how good you are at reading price action or whatever, one major event or news ruins the whole thing in an instant.

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9

Absolutely, I’ve lost money because of breaking news. It’s frustrating, but it’s a risk every trader faces. The key is to learn from it and be prepared for sudden changes :wink:

10

Totally agree. Unexpected events or major news can really throw off even the best trading strategies.

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11

Oh man, that’s rough. Did this experience make you start using stop-loss on your trades?

12

But hey, at least you’ve learned the importance of having SL in place!

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13

BOJ monetary policy shift/intervention causing god/devil candles. It’s always a risk.

14

Thanks for sharing. They’re helpful reminders for us to be careful and smart when dealing with unexpected events.

15

I hope you’ve managed to recover from that by now.

16

Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s a tough lesson to learn, but it’s nice to hear that you’ve taken steps to prevent similar situations.

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17

How do you manage these events in your trading?

18

were you able to adapt your strategy in response to unexpected events?

19

thanks for the clarification !

20

Yes, I adapted by setting tighter stop-loss orders and keeping an eye on economic calendars for potential market-moving events.

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