How to blow my account?

People who double down often fall into the "blow it all quickly" camp. This happens because the odds of making money short term in a double down scenario are usually pretty good, unless your timing is terrible. The problem is that over time, you WILL eventually get into a losing streak. If you just keep increasing position size, you will be toast. Very few pros use a double down strategy for this reason. When they are wrong, they bail.

I personally always get smaller when I start losing. Sometimes I even go on vacation!

Many traders employ a max risk per trade parameter, which automatically increases or decreases position sizing depending on performance. For example, if you never risk more than 2% per trade, it will take a long time to blow out an account as you keep risking on 2% of the account as it shrinks, thus risking less and less each time. Makes it almost impossible to blow an account if you know what you are doing.
 
Quote from shabushabu:

Until you can handle a chain of losses emotionally, take the "position-sizing" strategy seriously.

I had similar concerns like you a few months ago.

I became consistent and a bit cocky trading. Started leveraging my positions to a crazy amount.

I made some big wins (non-consistently) that surmounted my losses. This blinded my emotions...leading to over trading, then got caught in the volitility switching to a bullish trend last week, lost all my profits in the last fwe months and incurred losses too.

the losses piled up not only on one trade, but the subsequent once when i tried to "win it back". the moment you do this, you are screwed
good post
my position size stayed the same which led me to even more loss for the next few days.

lesson learned:

- position sizing - if you have a good LONG streak, don't be afraid to bring up your position size a bit. if you hit a big loss - just take the loss and LOWER your position alot until you build your confidence back up

- don't be afraid to not trade

- don't be afraid to take a day off

my 2 cents... :P
 
Quote from ammo:

i wrote good post on the above quote ,don't know why it didn't print

what'd it say? :P

I'm interested in hearing insight. Planning on quitting this week to pursue trading...

And in my spare time, maybe checking out some automated systems to see if I can develop my trading plan into software.
 
Quote from HedgefundTrader2:

Can you explain the latter part how bottom feeders pick your stop? How does that happen? I think you mean to say market makers or exchange people?


In a nutshell if your broker shows your stop in the level II books a scalper can see and buy your stock at your stop point. At least they used to.
 
Quote from shabushabu:

what'd it say? :P

I'm interested in hearing insight. Planning on quitting this week to pursue trading...

And in my spare time, maybe checking out some automated systems to see if I can develop my trading plan into software.
i just said that yours was a good post,by the way,i would stay away from automated systems unless you developed it yourself
 
Quote from ammo:

i just said that yours was a good post,by the way,i would stay away from automated systems unless you developed it yourself

Yeah, I plan on developing it myself. I use to play with bots all the time on legacy systems (corporate world) as well as in multiplayer online games.

So I figure it'd be cool to play around this, especially since IB has a testing platform to run these on...

i still have a sweet spot for good software even though i dont want to climb the corporate ladder in this field :P
 
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