+$21.23
I had a really, really bad day. The morning was off to a bad start.
First thing, I had an erroneous tick that took me into the red where, for whatever reason, the system executed and closed a trade early. I figured, ok, cost me $10. Then another trade took me well into the green, two or three trades deep into the green.
Then my system took on a deadbeat trade on a stock that had earnings due out after the close, so the behavior was not what my system expected. When I realized what happened, I adjusted the trade manually to minimize the damaged, but the trade ended up costing me commissions on a flat.
Finally, around 2:30, my network connection dropped. So I went to my "backup network", which is a sprint mobile broadband card I have for the sole purpose of logging in over a different network. So I log in, check all my positions, everything is fine, so I leave the sprint card in so the system would close out the positions on the right signal. Then, my system was getting ticks very, very slowly in a batch fashion that it is not typically used to. Because of this, a batch of ticks flew in and my system took on another trade. I should have turned the damn thing off. I wasn't thinking.
Then it got worse. The sprint card lost its signal, and I was blind for a half hour. I had to run out, find another computer, log in over the web, and see if my trades were working. The final trade cleared into the green, but since I had no way of checking when to exit, I simply took the profit.
- VERY MENTALLY CHALLENGED BEHAVIOR (-1)
- I got to trade (+1)
- No extreme profits (-1)
- Did not start dot com business (-1)
Self-performance score: -10000, because I should have thought about some of the shit that happened today before it happened. I'm taking the rest of the day off and dedicating some serious thought as to how to avoid disasters like this, even as a lowly, mentally-challenged retail trader.