Post your mistake here - warn others

Hi!
I thought it would be nice to tell others, what did I did wrong, how easy i blowed my account, so you can do it or avoid it.

ALL ARE WELCOME TO POST THEY MISEAKES

1. First trade mistake:
It happen several times that I opened my plkatform and saw "perfect moment"
Opened position wich was closed down by SL most of the times [It went up, couple of pips then down, so I decided to close.

WARNING:
When open your platform have your five-ten minutes wtching until do anything.

My way of trading is to decide that i start at 7am. So I'm watching the price from 6:50 to feel comfortable with its "breathing".



[P.S. when list of mistakes will be full we can trade 100% by trading oposite to what went wrong ]

here an old list collected for you to save your time of reading and posting and concentrate on trading and work and earn you living man

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=5875

I have made more bad trading mistakes, than I care to admit to, but just recently an old one came back to haunt my psyche and account. I thought I had this one big mistake taken care of but the volatility in December let me know it still lingered:
After definitely getting my signals for a bias and direction, I enter a trade. If the trade goes against me 30 pips I'm ok with that but when unexpected volatility enters, a -30 pip loss can double to -60 in 2 minutes or less. Coming from a 3 to 1 loss ratio in November, it can become difficult to quickly become aware the market changed it's mind and exit at a managable loss. Unfortunately I got stung about 6 harsh times in December and my win/loss ratio is out the door and a big chunk of my account got handed over to the market. Suddenly I'm in catch up mode........

biggest mistake ? Getting into forex instead of something else. Its a pit of randomness not easily solved. If you trade, you really better be ready to have the natural skill to read the market, otherwise its a 50-50 proposition at best....don't delude yourself into thinking your any better than the others who have come before or can think or feel your way through it. Forex isnt for the timid. The market doesnt command what you say.. .One week you can make a 1000 percent return and the next can take it all back and usually more.

When you realize you've made a huge mess of what seemed like a cakewalk, just log off the platfform, head over to the nearest coffee junction and once you've cleared your head, start learning more about forex and understand why you went wrong and where.
Forex is all about information and how to apply it effectively. BTW, every single trader would have made a huge mistake at least 4-5 times..approx, including me.

-Don't get married to your positions.
-Don't get emotional when trading.
-Use proper money management.
-Don't think about the money you want to make, concentrate on winning consistently.

Any more stories out there? And on the not getting emotional part, is there any ready cure to get around it?
Feel free to share..

Thanks Benssol that a very very useful and helpful link.

The problem isn't about kidding yourself you are better than others, IMHO it is not realising the work needed to master trading.

Think how much work and study professionals in any field have to put in before they become qualified, doctors, lawyers, accountants, scientists etc etc. To succeed at forex you should expect to put a similar amount of effort and expense, if you aren't prepared for that then you deserve to fail.

There are so many very difficult professions out there and some very hard working and focussed people doing those jobs, I often wonder what they would think of most of the 95% who fail in forex, I am certain they would LOL. As forex traders we have so much to help us suceed, decades of data, software, indis etc yet 95% still fail or give up. WORK HARDER to become the 5%, that is all that is required, WORK and SCREENTIME.

This is my "mistake", if you will. Having no prior experience, aside from a very brief dabbling with looking at the fancy numbers on the news, I really had no idea just how in-depth and complicated trading actually is. This forum is just one of few forums that I have been reading, and I'm astounded as to how murky and unclear some aspects of trading are - or rather, how murky and unclear people make trading out to be... you seem to be a bit more streamlined on the price action.

You're not the first person I've seen to really put price action into the forefront...

Do not trade money you can’t afford to lose. been there before

Do not think you can beat the chaotic nature of the market by indicators only - try to understand what happens

Big gains come with big losses!!!

My big mistake i have made thus far is to not have learnt proper position sizing with respect to risk per trade taken in the early days of starting out trading. I was foolish to only learn which strategy is the best for me and stick to it by having 100pip SL with 1 std lot sizing. It was a disaster!

The biggest mistake I made was holding on to losing positions in the hope they willl turn aruns and come back my way. More often than not they just keep going against me eating up a huge portion of the profits I have made.

The remedy is to set a stop loss at a point where if the price passes that point then the reasons for you originally taking the trade are invalidated. Then NEVER move it - just let the trade play out.

Just my humble 2 cents worth (even though it says I'm a Junior Member I have been trading a few years - just waiting for the modifiers to approve me!).

ya ill agree with the stop loss. im been through a few live accounts now and it seems like every time i make the same mistake.

i jump into one very large over leveraged position, and when it goes against me, i just leave my computer screen hoping that when i come back everything will be ok.

thinking back, this is actually pretty funny. i actually risked (and lost) several thousands of dollars by just walking away (with no stop loss or anything set for protection) hoping that when i come back to my commuter it will be all good.

The funny thing is that this is a loosing strategy even if you win. I recall one such occasion i entered a maxed out leveraged position going short GBP/JPY, a highly volatile pair. the position started going against me, so i did the same thing and just walked away. this was during thanksgiving 2008.

So i visited the family for the holidays, and when i returned i saw that position actually did turn around (and completely tanked as you probably remember from 2008) and my account had gone from about 5k to 17k in just a few days.

the problem is with money management. i was betting the farm on every position hoping to get rich quick (sound familiar?) and even if i won, i would eventually loose (and i did) destroying the account.

I would causion every new trader to learn from this mistake as i have and only risk a small portion of your account on each trade. you will not get rich quick, nor will you make enough to live off of. but you will learn and grow and live fight another day.

I'd say learn to let go of a losing trade. and forget about your lose. every trade should be treated like its the first trade of the day. with a clear calm head! all the best!

My biggest mistakes have been overleverage

Greed is bad..

I lost most of my early trades by over extending and getting pulled out of trades (mostly bad trades) by margin calls because of poor stops. Quickly learnt to value restraint in trading.

My biggest mistake is putting too many indicators on a chart, making it look like a Christmas tree. A simple clean chart proves very effective, and makes decisions simpler and quicker.