my greatest mistake

G

Gordon Gekko

as we all know, we learn from our mistakes. i'm going to share with everyone one of my biggest trading blunders. however, looking back i think it was a blessing in disguise.

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS HAPPENED A WHILE AGO. lol i don't trade like this anymore.

my intention was to go for easy 1% gains. i would enter a position going with the trend. then i would enter a limit to exit at 1% profit. this worked sometimes....but i let one trade run away from me.....i kept thinking, i'm only trying to get 1%...surely it should eventually at least go 1% my way.

i exited this trade with a 30% loss. LOL!!!! hahaha

anyway, like i said.....this was just one trade..an experiment..and it was over a year ago.

anyone else have any big mistakes?
 
Selling US Robotics for a measely 4pt gain :( Anybody who remembers this one from back in the day knows what happened!
7 years later Im still whining :)

I remember owning 800 ACTM when I was like a sophmore in HS and watching it rise 9pts. in 4 days... Decided to take the money and run with it, put in a market order to sell at market for next morning... Next day when I came home from school and check where I got filled I realized that I put in a buy and actually bought 800 more, she happened to get clobbered that day and I lost almost all of the 9pts plus what I had from the top :( That was the first time she sent me a very clear message that she gives and takes unconditionaly!
 
My greatest mistake was opening a brokerage account with Dean Witter in 1999-2000 and having the lady tell me that AOL was a screaming buy at $150 and that the "new economy" was rewritting all the old laws.

I didn't buy AOL, but I did invest in an internet mutual fund that gave me a whopping -59% return in 2001. I have since closed my account with them and will never be a "long-term" investor again.

aphie
 
During April 2000, I used RJT.com and qcharts and turned 4k into 22k in 2 months using level 2. I got cocky and put it all into some stupid 5 dollar stock that dropped like a rock and killed me.
 
The first time I tried scalping "by the seat of my pants" was Sept 2000. I had never even heard of a stop-loss at the time. I bought 128sh MRVC for 62.63ea.($8000) and was looking for a 50-75 cent scalp, just for fun. It went up a dime or so then down ~ 40 cents into the close. I thought to myself "I'm not going to take a loss, I'm going to at least get back my commission.", and held it until the next day. It went down a little farther and I thought "It may take a couple days, or weeks but I think it's going to reverse.". It never did. I still own it at $1.25ea. I turned $8000 into $160 just like majic!! One of these days it's gonna go back up, right? :p
 
coming here using many differeny handles, thinking your the crackerjack trader (how could anyone be such a good trader posting here ALLL day??), and belittling others you are jealous of.

Did I get everything?

Vinny
 
Two trading blunders come to mind. The first was listening to my broker tell me that Motorola was not a $36 stock. In a way, he was right since MOT is now trading between $10-$14.

When I first got into short term trading, I was watching the QQQ's trade between $45-$50. On a Friday I decided to buy some QQQ 50 options as the index approached $45. Fortunately, I recognized, in retrospect, that I had made a bad trade, watched the futures in the premarket the following Monday and unwound that trade asap. The QQQ's plunged through $45. As a result of that busted trade, I paid the market $4300 tuition for that lesson to never "catch a falling knife". This was another situation where my broker could have earned his keep by warning me about "catching a falling knife" but chose instead to collect his commission.

While somewhat expensive, the tuition I have paid to the equities markets for these lessons have forced me to become a much better trader. In particular, I am much more cynical about advice provided by any of the "so-called" experts.
 
Originally posted by Commisso
Selling US Robotics for a measely 4pt gain :( Anybody who remembers this one from back in the day knows what happened!
7 years later Im still whining :)
More...

Well, it was better than holding 'till now. Wouldn't you have ended up an owner of COMS? There is no perfect entry and no perfect exit.

I know I told this one before. I was long VERT overnight. Opened up 9 pts. Sold it up 12. Ended the day up 70. Last I looked, it was trading under a dollar.

No regrets.

:)RS7
 
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