Worst order-entry error you've made

My very first trade on IB was not by choice. I too have a fingerpad instead of a regular clickable mouse. I was just watching the action and somehow I must have gotten excited, and my finger hit the pad. Lights blinked, colors flashed ... I had just bought .... all this excitement got my finger twitching again (really) and guess what - I sold .... same contract - just lost the slippage between bid/ask. Of course I was so petrified at the time comprehending what COULD have happened that I didn't appreciate the pure luck of the exit. Leprechans anyone?

I wish you all the same luck.

Meanwhile, I am still considering a real mouse.
 
Quote from newestmember:

What's the worst order-entry error you've ever made?

I'll start:

5 years ago I was using E*Trash to place an after-hours order to buy 1000 @ 7.51...I accidently typed $17.51 and entered the order....

It filled @ $17.51 and I was immediately down $10,000. At the time I didn't know that trades could be broken (I was a newbie), so I had a grueling 30 minute wait on the phone with E*Trash before they got on the line and explained that they would break the trade.....
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About eighteen months ago, I planned to buy ten contracts of QQQ Call. Because of some typing errors, I bought the Put. I immediately sold it at a loss of $50 plus commission.

Then, QQQ dropped from 29 to 25 within next few weeks. I guess something is not meant to be .......


:p :p :p
:D :D :D
 
years ago when jdsu was trading over 100 it split overnight and i wasnt paying attention. i come in the next morning and took an island offer at presplit price.was instantly down 50%. lucky for me it was only few hundred shares.
 
Combination Bad Luck/Timing and improper checking of trades.

Cattle.. in Late September went long at 83.30.. 2 or 3 days later it was up to high 84 area.. every $1.00 worth $400..

market was about to open.. told myself. okay if it gaps up I will sell immediately..

I had my stop at 84.50.. it gapped up to 85.50 I believe.. these are phone orders on cattle..

I picked up the phone.. and all lines were busy.. the market was tanking.. I couldn't believe it.. I tried all 5 freaking numbers that I had.. all busy.. the phone lines went down.. first time it ever happened..

Well.. I finally thought to call my broker who set up the accounts number.. those were working they transfered me..

Market was still moving down.. 84.90, 84.85, 84.60.. I told them to cancel my stop order and sell one at the market..

Got a call later in day and girl verified that I sold at 84.45.. THE LOW OF THE DAY...

Next morning pull up my account statement.. expecting to see a $460 gain in account.. I was down like $700..

the stop was not cancelled in time and was filled and the market order also was filled.. so now I was short 1 contract.. and the market was up over another point..

I was furious.. partly my fault for not making sure that I had only sold one contract.. but of all times for the f***** phone lines to be down..

To make it even worse.. Cattle shot up to 95.00 in about 10 days right after that.. that would have been $4,000 or so.. that trade never went in the negative.. I was too anxious to book the profit.. which turned into a big loss..

Was a perfect entry on one of those trades that would have been a great one to remember.. would have more than doubled my small account.. but by trading the money and not the market I missed out..
 
Buying CECO today before it was halted on the way down.
Averaging down, losing enough money to buy a BMW and then puking it out becayse i couldn't take the pain any more.
 
Quote from vhehn:

years ago when jdsu was trading over 100 it split overnight and i wasnt paying attention. i come in the next morning and took an island offer at presplit price.was instantly down 50%. lucky for me it was only few hundred shares.
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You were likely deliberately rooked. Traders used to get in early and pre-market - offer for sale a stock that had closed at say 80 the day before, at 75. THe buyer thought the seller was making a mistake and bought it. But then the stock opened up at 40 because it split. The buyer was out 35 points. The seller covered his short.

Seldom did the buyer break the trade, though, probably because he felt like he deserved it.
 
Quote from dgabriel:



You were likely deliberately rooked. Traders used to get in early and pre-market - offer for sale a stock that had closed at say 80 the day before, at 75. THe buyer thought the seller was making a mistake and bought it. But then the stock opened up at 40 because it split. The buyer was out 35 points. The seller covered his short.

Seldom did the buyer break the trade, though, probably because he felt like he deserved it.
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People still try to play this game... sort of a "used car salesman" way to trade.
 
Back in the heyday of 2000. I put out an offer to sell 1000 shares on this really thin stock INFY. the stock was trading at around $150. I offered $15 on ISLD and got filled every on every Island order on the bid and still had shares hanging on the offer crossed like $100 dollars out of the money. Most of the shares were broken but the ones near price level one were not and I probably lost a couple thousand. I can't remember exactly.

Back in the day
 
Just a month ago, as I was getting around in understanding fast order entry in Optionsxpress (great broker so far), I came to realize that they have a link on bid and ask price and by clicking on them, the order forms get filled automatically.

As I was leaving to go to work, I saw SNDK going down and so I decided that I buy its put if it spikes higher. Any way, I did the fast order entry to buy 30 puts at 2 (it was at 2.5 at the time I placed the oder).

I got to work and checked my account and noticed that I'm actually short SNDK puts at 2.45. Any way, instead of getting out right a way and chasing the price, and by the time I called them to understand what happened, the stock kept tanking. I put stop loss order and 10 min later, my stop got hit and I got out at 3.3 (high of the day) for a loss of 2.6K. Sure enough, by the end of the day, the same puts were worth only 1.5.

What happened was instead of "buy to open" the fast order entry filled it up as "sell to open".
 
Worst mistake was using an automated order system (Ninja) and trying to manually close the trade with price too close to my programmed stop loss(2pts). I hit the "CLOSE" button to exit with price against me by 1.5 pts. and saw the position close, but my running total (loss) on the TWS screen continued to increase. Pulling up the trade executions, I saw that I had closed by buying back 2 contracts, and in addition had bought another 2 (now long 2 contracts). DAX market can really move, so as I tried to close on the TWS screen, it looked like a Vegas slot machine gone wild. Lets just say it cost a few dollars to learn that lesson (let your stops play out). Steve46
 
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