Am very impressed with your honesty and candour in this post and video. I suspect there are lots of blown accounts over the years, but I’ve not come across very many admissions, certainly ones so detailed and honest, such as yours. Big kudos.
Also, from a psychological perspective, this act of vulnerability is an important step in moving on (especially hard as a male in this seemingly bravado trading culture). And, ultimately, as a sign of character and for personal development, it is (IMO) far more important than some mistakes and a blown account.
My only suggestion would be to take some time completely away from forex to recover. We (generally) experience losses particularly hard, and with a complete wipe out like this, you probably experienced it as a big loss, emotionally. The risk in not taking some time away is that you’ll continue to be implicitly affected by it, without really knowing that it is impairing your judgement.
From a risk perspective, with the style of investing you were following, I would absolutely suggest regular adverse scenario testing. Take the top 5 adverse events from the last 20 years to hit forex and throw them against your portfolio. How does it respond? What would happen? Could you stomach it? Then double the impact of those and do the same.
Although you referred to this event as a black swan, it’s not really. These events are predictable in that we know they’ll happen, we just don’t know when. I’ve spent most of my career focusing on 1 in 100 year events, these are nothing like that. These are are maybe 1 in 5? 1 in 3? With the swiss franc last year and this one recently, evidence that these types of risk are realistic and should be expected. Particularly if you’re holding positions for long periods of time you’re inherently exposed to these risks and need to be aware of them, how they’ll impact you and be deliberate in how you accept or mitigate them.
Good to see you’ve got your average loss value lower than your average win, a positive move. Do you know why your ratio of losing trades is so much higher than your wins? Flipping a coin would get you 50/50 but your only getting 30/70.
That was well said Manxx , so well that i don’t have anything to add. PipMeHappy is well liked and respected on this thread. Keep doing your great work and thankyou.
“For an individual to think that they are going to create a computer program to trade successfully reminds me of a child thinking that they will build a space ship in their bedroom over the weekend. Pure fantasy.”
Sadly I have come to realise that with time being short I have less time for trading as I thought, and as much as I tried
to stay up late to fit it all in, it is a huge ask of me at this time. Given new demands on my time, also to do with being a dad to a young baby, I really think that my project of learning to code etc. has to be left alone…
Ps: I am still dabbling… Currently only trading one pair in a strong uptrend, and ignoring everything else. Fear Of Missing Out can be a huge distraction, so I am just focusing on trading one instrument, getting some consistency.