Future trading horror stories

[forex-forex]

Not a "Financial Future" story but an "Index Future" story. I will post it anyways.

Bought 1 contract Nikkei 225 SGXNKM with a 100 tick stop and limit. Held over night and it gapped down 400 ticks (300 below my stop) for a $400 loss instead of my set maximum loss of $100.00

 

[toorik]

I exited a lumber position with a market order once. After the fill, my account balance showed -500K usd. I thought: "well, there`s a lesson for you"


anyway, I contacted my broker and they did some magic and fixed it...

 

[commoditiestrdr]

Quote from toorik:

I exited a lumber position with a market order once. After the fill, my account balance showed -500K usd. I thought: "well, there`s a lesson for you"


anyway, I contacted my broker and they did some magic and fixed it...

WOW...500K was that on your personal or were trading on professional account

 

[sellingrich]

I'll bet it wasn't IB!

 

[BCE]

Here's the Mark Cook story of his greatest losses and recovery trading naked ops.
3 posts altogether. 2 and then one last one after someone else's post. Read down.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1116566&highlight=Mark+Cook#post1116566

_________________
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
- T.S. Eliot -

 

[toorik]

Quote from commoditiestrdr:

WOW...500K was that on your personal or were trading on professional account

it was my personal account@RJO futures. and i traded only few contracts, so the execution price had to be VERY bad. dont remember the exact numbers though...

 

[angel_king]

listened to a dancing clown I found on youtube who is right most of the time livewithoscarcom

he suggested soybean futures for friday boh08.cme ? boh8 ?

I bought, watched it go up a little, little more, insane spike... oooo time to get out. push sell button. out. collect $200 per contract.

as it peaked out i thought to myself .... looks like a good short, but it has 6 days of momentum and I dont fight a trend, did not short.

tanked for $500 worth per contract for the rest of the day.

futures are risky always use a sell stop.

possibly redundant and obvious but I also suggest to not trade during times of low volume like most of the middle of the day and scalping for 2 points is invitation to disaster.

 

[commoditiestrdr]

Quote from angel_king:

listened to a dancing clown I found on youtube who is right most of the time livewithoscarcom

he suggested soybean futures for friday boh08.cme ? boh8 ?

I bought, watched it go up a little, little more, insane spike... oooo time to get out. push sell button. out. collect $200 per contract.

as it peaked out i thought to myself .... looks like a good short, but it has 6 days of momentum and I dont fight a trend, did not short.

tanked for $500 worth per contract for the rest of the day.



futures are risky always use a sell stop.

possibly redundant and obvious but I also suggest to not trade during times of low volume like most of the middle of the day and scalping for 2 points is invitation to disaster.

That's funny that guy is on my site livewithoscar

http://www.commoditiesvue.com/showthread.php?t=10924

 

[riskfreetrading]

Quote from Jayford:

My partner and I started trading in July, 1987. We would phone in S&P orders that would take about a minute to get filled, and only the big contract existed then. Anyway, during the '87 crash, my partner was doing well selling the mini rallies, but then decided to go big, on gold, long. He figured it was just a matter of time before the world panicked and fled to gold. Well, he was no economist and didn't realize that a crash is by definition deflationary. In a matter of minutes he was down like 30 grand, on a 50k account. He was a deer in the headlights, and couldn't do anything. We call it brain freeze. Finally just covered everything. Started trading MUCH smaller after that.

BTW, we would call in orders for currencies BEFORE major reports. Total nuts. Surprising that we lasted about a year before blowing up. Even day traded juice! Geez, what morons we were.

Glad you stayed in the game until today. Impressive!
The reason why I thought to respond is this: there is a large number like you and your friends in the past who join every day the trading arena. I always laugh when I read a post from a new guy coming with a 50K, very warmed up to witness a killing (not realizing that there is a chance that he might be the victim rather than someone else). Trading is an unusual business! The people who make money are the "most scared and experienced" and the others do just the opposite (courage in the form of big leverage, no stops, etc, etc).

 

[riskfreetrading]

Quote from Market_loser:

was trying to move the market in my direction but it did fail miserably

lol what were thinking you could move markets with your order? lol