My bankruptcy

Hello to anyone who might read my thread.

I am writing this trading journal not for anyone else's benefits,
but for mine.

So if you are happen to read my sad story, plz do leave some cheerful comments...haha that will be appreciated.

I began trading stocks when I turned 18yrs old.

Since I am a Korean, who studies in the States,
I have a great knowledge in Korean market.
And that's where I began my trading experience.

After having somewhat successful trading experience in Korean stock markets,
I decided to try something new.

Which happened to be FX trading.

I began FX trading about a month ago,
with initial account deposit of $250.

After 3 weeks, I had made great returns in my trades,
so my account balance was as large as $2220 (profits were $920 and I decided to put extra $1000 into my account)

With this quick profits,
I became maybe too excited.

I started ignoring any comments from FX analysts and started to analyze Eur/USD pair.

I made a huge mistake just this week.

After going through a horrible mistake, shorting this pair, I ended up losing most of my account balance.

Now I have little over $500 in my account.

Although I am very disappointed at my loss,
I am not ready to leave FX trading.

I am going to stick around and become profitable again.

There will be few rules that I will follow.

For now:

1. Write daily journals: what i have done correctly and made mistakes on.
2. Withdraw weekly profits from my account.
3. Do not hold one position for a long time if the overall trend is going agains my position.

I will be adding more rules to my initial 3 rules up there as I continue writing my journal.


Everyone makes mistakes, but those who learn from their mistakes become successful traders.

Another rule I suggest you add:

Trade ONLY with market money. Don't deposit more, make it grow.

Don't risk more than 3% per trade...better 1%!!!

Sounds like a lesson that cost you a few hundred bucks. At least you didn't go all in with 5 or 6 figures of cash. Forex lessons are expensive. Yours sounds reasonable. Just don't repeat it. Go back to what was working for you, and remember, if you do this for long enough, you WILL learn things that you should simply never do again.

Profit:$15(15pips) Acct Balance:$567.00

Price swing today was crazy.

Since I am preparing for my finals,
I could not focus on the market.

However, I did have few good chances to enter good positions.
But I could not enter,
because I was either scared or missed the timing.

Looking at two enter points last nite, which could have brought me total of almost 200pips, I just became more scared.

Maybe it's kinda Trauma or something that I got from this week's price movement which basically wiped my account from $3000 to $552.

Sometimes I get too greedy and doesn't make rational choices.

I guess it's something that I can learn from trading in FX market.

I lost total of something like $1800.

My first goal is to recover my initial investment.

Now I only have $1785 to go.

*don't get too greedy!!

Can I ask how you enter a trade or the reasons why you enter a trade?

Is there a system or methology you use to enter a trade?

wow. in my book, you are already a winner. what is your money management like?

Your going to spend most of your life finding out the things that do not work. That pertains to everything in life, not just trading.

Can you answer the following?
What did I learn about myself and my methods with this financial loss?
Can I keep my nature from repeating that which I did above?

As you have said.... you are in school learning. Tests are theoretically taken to verify and attest to what you have learned. Nothing different about trading FX. You just pay your tuition differently. In your case the cost so far, very very reasonable.

Might want to run demo or trade smaller units until you feel confident but not cocky, comfortable not complacent, disciplined not stubborn.

Good luck
BR

Hey,

Just wondering in which part of States are you in now?

Being able to deal with the losing trades is what separates successful traders from ex-traders. As a matter of fact, it has been shown many times that it’s not so much the system as it is the trader’s ability to maintain the proper mental discipline and emotional understanding that gives the seasoned trader the ability to take the higher ground. One of the intangible benefits of learning to become a successful trader is the fact that you usually become a much more honest and introspective person. You learn to honestly appraise your performance and probe your weaknesses. You learn to stay humble, focused and accepting of things you can’t control. All of these things do more than make just successful traders; they can make for success in life.

But just talking about these things is not enough. Most of us aren’t very good at giving ourselves a valid self-appraisal. What we need to do is establish a frame- work of not only how to trade our system but also how to manage emotions and mental discipline. A trader needs to establish procedural constraints and then learn how to match feelings and thoughts to the trading process. But how does a trader not only train themselves in the discipline of trading but also how to validate that they are indeed being honest in self-evaluation of what they are doing right or wrong?

Hope this helps

We are all crew members on spaceship Planet-Earth We can get off so we may as well get

Im totally agreed with bfantastic. The most important is how you handle your emotion while trading. In my early trading days, I keep on losing while other traders who use the same method as mine are profitable. So, what's the difference?

Then, I started the so-called "Morning pages". Every morning I wake up early and write around 2-3 pages of anything. Yes, anything! Don't stop writing until you got to 3rd page. For 2-3 weeks I still not feeling the effect of it, but after 2-3 months. I can surely feel the changes. Im looking at the market at different way as I look before. Trading is about yourself. It's simple but not easy.

Have a great weekend!

That's not bankrupcty at all. What would you do if you lost ALL the money in your account and you don't know what to do next to put some money on your account again?! Take it as a lesson, and simply don't repeat it. It's not hard, the hard part is becoming aware of when the same mistake is happening again and then preventing it. That's why what arcus said is for instance a helpful method to keep the rubbish out of your mind while trading to be able to discover when your mind drifts and you are doing some stupid thing again.
Just make sure you are not pissed at your loss and now you want your money back and that fast please. Doesn't work that way. Money in the markets is made slowly but consistently.

The old stock market saying goes "the bull comes in up the stairs and the Bear goes out the window"
You need to look at the positive here and learn from it.
One of the best ways I have found to to this is make a log of every trade and not just record the fundamentals of the action of the trade but also make note of my emotions as I entered the trade what I did during the trade and how I felt after the trade. This has helped tremendously in point out those little bad habits that keep creeping back in if you don't keep track of them. By keeping a record of each trade I can now look back work out strategy. It also helps to have a template log saved and use it every time I am trading.

Thank you guys for showing interests in my journal..haha
Did not expect to see any replies actually...

Well,
Last nite, Dec. 11th 2008 Monday,
I made another dumb entry.

Last nite, my intuition told me to short Eur/USD.
I shorted one lot and suddenly after my entry,
of course this pair started to move against my position!!..

This entry that I made, I did not do any technical analysis,
I only believed in my gut feeling, which is really dumb.

Well, I did not want to lossse all of my money so when I hit -52pips,
I closed the position.

Loss of $52.5 on Dec. 11th 2008.

So today,

I just got back from school and was having dinner.
And I show a good entry point, which I just entered for quick +30pips.
I don't think i can trade anymore today or for the rest of this week, maybe couple trades.

Being a trader sucks, but being a student sucks even more!!

Just done with one final exam...3 more to go!!.

*Don't ever go against long time frame trend!!

Good to see you still around and in good shape!!!!

I'm sure this guy is completely burned out by now. Its obvious that his lot sizes were WAY too large for his account.