Crazy/Stupid mistakes you committed during trading

I'm always switching between demo and live.

f-ing pissed that I traded on demo than my live account.

i remember my first day trading fondly. I put $100 in my live account. Bought silver having no idea how much I had put up. 30 minutes later I was up $500, i didn't know how to close and bought by mistake again! finally figured out how to close a few minutes later, at that time my account was sitting at $60... at least I learned the hard way early on.

This is as good a place as any to make my first post here.

A little about myself. I'm a retired US Army 82nd Airborne paratrooper. 3 tours of combat - Desert Storm, OEF and OIF. Received the Bronze Star in Afghanistan. I'm 100% disabled Vet. Have been a trucker, welder, mechanic and a laboratory tech. Been either in the Military or self employed most of my adult life. Currently retired again at the ripe old age of 47, sold my last big truck in March this year and have been trading spot FX full time.

I'm a big fan of Sam Seiden and his webinars. They have taught me a lot and taught me how to take my trading back to being simple. I'm a recent grad of the Online Trading Academy Professional Forex course taught by Justin Krebs. Took the course to fill in the little blanks I still had in my trading and it has taken me to a whole new level.

I trade intraday primarily and do some swing trading. My trading is simple. My trading plan is set up like a pilots checklist. I don't place the trade until the checklist tells me I can. I trade pure supply and demand levels with strick risk management and only use candlestick patterns, trend lines, fib levels, bollenger bands and CCI as odds enhancers. I pay attention to news only to understand what is happening in the world and how it affects price action. I don't run with the herd and chase the news I let the news bring the herd to me. I do pay attention to index and commodities futures to try to judge if market sentiment is risk on or risk off.


Biggest blunders... Oh yea, too many to list having learned almost everything I know about trading the hard way. I've done all the common mistake like trading without a plan, not managing risk properly, revenge trading, trading too much, having to be in the market all the time, changing my strategy every time I lost money, trying to trade a 24 hr market 24 hrs a day, trading against the trend, taking every signal from a lagging indicator, trying those too good to be true holy grail EAs etc.....here are a couple of my most memerable account killers, I'll never forget these 2.


Back in the early to mid 90's when online trading of stocks was in it's infancy.... It wasn't one of my better ideas to day trade without a margin account on 56k dial up internet which is all we had back then living in the middle of nowhere. That account didn't last long.... 2 trades to be exact. 1st trade doubled my account, 2nd one wiped it out in about 2 minutes.

Opened my first FX account around 2005. I was going to get rich quick and become a millionaire. I was overleveraged trading way too big of lot size on my first FX account and removed stops not wanting to take a loss thinking to myself, "it can't go much higher" Woke up the next morning, which was the day after thanksgiving, to a margin call on every trade and about $6 left in the account.... That didn't last long, I was the one that got the "Thanksgiving Stuffing".

The first day of my trading career I get 130% profit. I said "Why its so easy to make money in forex? I wonder what it feel to lose your money."

Damn, I wish I didn't say that, because I blown up my account in the first week trading because of my greediness.

my biggest mistake: holding a losing position for >1yr with 2000pip in red...

My biggest mistake: Not internalizing the difference between understanding and internalizing.


All that I know today on trading is what I have already understood 3 years back. There are probably not many things that I have not known 3 years back that make a significant difference to my trading performance today.

Even with the same level of understanding on trading methodology, money management, and trading psychology today, I was like a 'wild horse' running loose in all directions on the market 3 years ago. Fast forward to today, I am a much 'tamed horse' still trying to sync and become one with the market rhythm.

From my current experience, at least applicable to my case, there is _huge_ difference between understanding/knowing and internalizing the art of trading. I do not know how one can learn internalization but for me, my teacher come from all the trading losses that I have incurred and all the hours spent on trading live.

Other people may termed it as experience or other labels, but there is this 'thing' that you know is different from just knowing and understanding. It is the 'thing' that make a champion F1 driver different from the millions of drivers on the road. That 'thing' that make the top 5% traders different from the other traders.

Wrong hedging because of fast decision taking.

This is a slightly longer post so I hope you bear with me.



The biggest mistake you can make as a person, a human and a trader is to fool yourself. To think that you are right and the market is wrong... To have grandeur dreams of a lunatic . To earn millions without putting in the right amount of effort, time and study.


Think about this. A doctor takes 5 years maybe 10 of intensive studying in some countries and working another 10 years in order to earn 500k a year .. Or so .. A lawyer similarly studies 4 years then pupils another 2 .. Work for 10 years before becoming a partner and drawing that amount .. What makes a trader .. Who would achieve financial freedom .. Wealth beyond that .. Any less suspectible to the time frame ??? Trading takes effort ... Love and deep passion .. Anything less would be a lie.. Be honest to yourself .. What exactly are u in trading for .. How long are u prepared to work and stay in this field and how committed are u .. Lying to yourself is the biggest mistake. Time is precious my friend and chasing after something that you really didn't care .. Wouldn't make u rich or successful either

First, please excuse for my bad English.

my stupid mistake:

- 100% trust to ea (very stupid)
- I thought I'm at the top of the world because I manage to collect profit more then 200% in two days by my self, so I got greedy (very stupid) then become careless (stupid) to put on too many position (very very stupid) and when the trend eventually as not as I expected, I can not bare with my margin and almost got close by MC. Now I felt my tears looking my last equity.

Useing a stop loss , the 20-50 pip stop loss range that is so often advocated in the retail FX industry is your brokers biggest money spinner

As forex trader, I always have a not reliable exception of the return, so always make the huge loss.

-> to late: join a move, if it is nearly over.. ever and ever again
-> listen to other people (read forum while trading = disturbing me)
-> keep lose trades open to long
-> close win trades to early

I have one..

somehow I knew there will be a strong trend movement going on (bull/bear) so I put my position base on that.. but eventually, it reverse and start making me nervous, I close my first position, put my second base on the reversal. yup I made my self a few bucks profit then I move on to another pair. then I came back after 2 hours just to see what happen, and you guys probably had guess what happen.. yupp it goes just like I have expected.. way more than I expected at the first time....

akkhh..idiotaa...

my broker started to offer gold as instrument for the first time...i was aware that trading units are not the same as with spot currencies but i still managed to calculate it totally wrong ...in the end i accidently bought 500 ounces gold risking 50% of my margin

till i realized what i did i was down already 5% in my account after 5 minutes

i prayed price will retrace what it eventually did and i could close it at BE

Setting the stoploss too tight, not giving enough breath for the price to move. Resulting in a loss when there wouldn't be any if the stoploss hadn't been moved.

Also, opening lots too big than I should have.

My worst enemy is greed ... it is important to know your entry and exit levels before the submission of an order !

For me I used to chase the market and always be behind it... by the time I was in on a trend it was at its turning point and it proceeded to go against me... did this a number of times with my first account and lost £1k quite quickly. I now try to avoid knee jerk reactions and chopping in and out of positions and stick with my direction rather than chase it.

Bought too much of a currency pair and I should have divided that between several. The pair fell way down.

My biggest mistake is not putting stop losses. Even with pending orders, i usually overlook this. Learning now.

Trading live when I was supposed to trade with demo (I usually have two accounts for testing purposes). Also not to be patient enough and change the plan in the last minute: big, big mistake!.