Your biggest FOREX trading mistake

TulipFX · 8 January 2011

My thread got hijacked by those silly share traders getting all wound up over early exits so I have started a new one seeing they wanted their own to lament not keeping a stock they sold at 25 cents.

I have never been worried about an early exit, a what could have been trade. I find once you start worrying about what'ifs you miss what is infront of you.

So to get the thread back to its original question:

What in your FOREX trading have you really cocked up? and what big lesson did you take from it?

We all have them. Barry Crockers, bloody shockers, trades we wish we had the TARDIS to correct.

What was yours?

Mine was the usual, in my early days of trading I thought I could predict the market - the fundamentals said that the EURJPY should rise. So I took a hugely over-leveraged position and blew my account. As it turned out Keynes was right when he stated that the market can be wrong for longer then I could stay solvent. My account was gone before the market did move in the direction I anticipated, but it was too late.

Luckily it was only a small, learning account of a couple of thousand, not fatal. It did learn me a huge lesson - it pushed me towards both technical and automated trading as well as better risk management.

What lesson did you learn from your mistake?

IB12 · 8 January 2011

TulipFX said:
My thread got hijacked by those silly share traders getting all wound up over early exits so I have started a new one seeing they wanted their own to lament not keeping a stock they sold at 25 cents.

I have never been worried about an early exit, a what could have been trade. I find once you start worrying about what'ifs you miss what is infront of you.

So to get the thread back to its original question:

What in your FOREX trading have you really cocked up? and what big lesson did you take from it?

I think your only problem there was risk management and money management, and not particularly technical analysis, or automated trading.
As technical analysis can be just as bunk as fundamentals if used in the wrong way.

nichole · 7 July 2011

My biggest mistakes were to over leverage and refuse to cut loss. These two mistakes cost me a total loss of USD$400k. I was also mentally wounded and develop a phobia to trade for awhile. Hopefully by sharing my experience, fellow traders can take note and be careful not to fall into these two pitfalls.

The_Bman · 7 July 2011

While not "Biggest" monetary loss in fact in some cases wins! I've on multiple occasions doubled my positions when setting up conditional orders incorrectly

I call this biggest as someone somewhere smarter than I said something about if you do the same thing again and expect a different outcome...

101 stuff, get your orders right!

Paulo30 · 7 July 2011

Not hedging positions, and taking too many pairs in one direction at one time (e.g. going long with EUR, GBP, AUD in one hit).

PS- This only really applies to traders without strict SL. I trade long-term and don't use strict SL exits.

nichole · 8 July 2011

Paulo30 said:
Not hedging positions, and taking too many pairs in one direction at one time (e.g. going long with EUR, GBP, AUD in one hit).

PS- This only really applies to traders without strict SL. I trade long-term and don't use strict SL exits.

Try to have in place a stop loss mechanism, trust me, it is going to worth your effort in the long run. Sometime, safekeeping your cash and preserving them is a form of winning.

G-Zilla · 9 July 2011

TulipFX said:
What in your FOREX trading have you really cocked up? and what big lesson did you take from it?

Having the TulipFX team run a managed account for me

Learnt to run better due diligence to and stick to my successful discretionary style

cogs · 9 July 2011

1. Didn't understand all the great usability of MT4 could be totally useless when hooked up to any market maker or broking service.

2. Thinking there is a better way of trading than commission only.

3. Trading during low volume. FX in particlular is too easily manipulated during these periods.

Fixed commission and futures direct to CME is the only way to go for me.

Roseanne Garriso · 25 April 2014

If I want to success in this profession, I've to dedicate and a sharp minded trader as well. No emotion and have enough capability to take risks.
That's my own opinion, am I right or Am I right

>Apocalypto< · 25 April 2014

trading Forex:1zhelp:

barney · 25 April 2014

>Apocalypto< said:
trading Forex:1zhelp:

LOL .....

I resemble that remark

Welcome back Joe.

barney · 25 April 2014

Actually I'll give you three mistakes to start with ..... If I wrote all my mistakes Joe Blow would need to apply for more bandwidth

1) Opening a position about 5 seconds before an important news announcement came out ..... guess which way it went ... not so

2) Opening a position in MT4 after I had been trading Futures and not realising I hadn't changed my lot size (I trade futures at much higher lot sizes than FX) ....... Market immediately spiked the opposite way and cost me a bucket load

3) Holding onto losing positions too long/slash/adding to obviously poor positions instead of cutting or flipping

I could go on

Steve82 · 25 April 2014

Auto trade and Robots!

Your biggest FOREX trading mistake

TulipFX

IB12

nichole

The_Bman

Paulo30

nichole

G-Zilla

cogs

Roseanne Garriso

>Apocalypto<

20.03.2012

barney

barney

Steve82

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