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http://www.myfxbook.com/members/BenjaminNathan/my-live–nearly-dead/258106/4rnJ7jhcfulbTz5wa5za
Hey guys!!
Well, I wanted to open by summarising the past 5 months of live trading and tell you about a pitfall I hit this week – a pitfall I KNEW of and had advised others against yet still became prey to….
Ok so to summarise October – December 2011 – I made over 7% in total with little effort…. Then January 2012 over 6% …. And last week I was over 11% up for February, I WAS ON FIRE!!!!! But unfortunately my James Bond alter ego came out and I did the unforgivable… I over leveraged… I was cocky, arrogant, thought I was some sort of trading god in the making and I destroyed my trading mind set and therefore my account…. My REAL account…
I was riding the CHF and as it was ranging I was placing martingale trades to chase the rate ready for the imminent breakout… well as a result I kept increasing my risk, as you do with Martingale… eventually I was risking something stupid like 40% and got into the trap of thinking I’d gotten in to the mess too deep to pull out now and so I continued to place counter trades…
I didn’t eat, or sleep for 2 days while this was going on then eventually I did get to sleep and at 5:30 am the markets went in my direction… “Phew” are you thinking? Well you’re wrong… you see the rate did go in my direction and actually past my TP levels… but due to spread it missed the close by 1/10, yes ONE TENTH of a pip…… ONE TENTH….. Of course I wasn’t around to manually close the trades (another dumb error, assuming TP would just trigger forgetting about spreads) so of course the rate bounced back up….. At this point I was around $200 down with open orders… but did I close them and cut losses? No I carried on in the trades hoping and praying the rate would go back in my direction… of course it didn’t and I watched over around 5 minutes as my balance went from $560 down to $69…… HORRIFYING…..
This, I believe is the most horrifying lesson I have ever learnt in my life…. And the most humbling…
So… my thoughts following this… well initially they were “IM NOT CUT OUT FOR THIS”…. “ILL NEVER TRADE AGAIN”…. Although, one thing was apparent, I KNEW this was all my own fault, I knew exactly what I had done wrong (even as I was doing it) and I knew that this was not the fault of the markets… there was no bitterness or hard feelings… in fact I had this strange feeling of relief… as I write I really can’t explain it but some strange part of me feels relief that this all happened and I’m now more determined than ever to succeed… This week is a week I will never, ever forget…. Not matter how good I do, it is now drilled in that I am not indestructible and I never will be. This week will ultimately have made me a stronger trader….
Well that’s it for now folks but I’ll be back next week.