TOTW What's the dumbest trade mistake you ever made?

Mine.....easy.....when i first started, put the position size in the correct box, then miss clicking on the stop loss box.........so you end up with both figures in the same box, then press Buy.

ie.........position size £4....then stop of 15, giving a total in the same box or the new position size of £415 per point on the FTSE......thankfully i came out flat......

and obviously i was then in a trade without a stop..........

Removing a stop thinking ES would eventually turn and revert then watching 20% of my account go in a single trade. It was early days, I was trading a $10k account doing 2 contracts. That day I learnt never to stand in front of a trend day. I didn't trade for about 2 weeks.

Hi Rob, everyone must have a tale to tell, hope it becomes "the confessions of a trader" thread, and peeps arn't too shy to post their **** ups.

Regards Shane......

Before I went to bed one night after a couple of drinks, I put some overnight orders in.
Orders should have been 10 bucks a point but put one in at 100 bucks a point.
Doing the night the 100 buck order picked up and some stage doing the night the base account would have been 70% down.
Woke up in the morning with 200 bucks profit showing could not work how for only a 10 buck stake and not much movement. Then looked at the order sixe.
The moral of the story is don't drink and trade and check every order placed.

Overtrading with a fixed tight SL .

I made a fat finger mistake but i don't consider it the dumbest mistake , cuz these things happen , and it will happen again , at binarybet.com i made a 25 pounds bet but i forgot to switch from binaries to fixed odds , so instead of risking 25 quids i lost 750 in minutes .

Some years ago I had single click activated and through a sneeze I clicked the mouse and got into a trade.
When I realised, I got out immediately and lost the spread.

My most expensive sneeze to date

I reckon everybody makes the exact same mistakes at some point the only difference is how much money is lost/made. My biggest ever win in money terms was through a mistaken high stake trade - never even saw a point offside and trailed it for a 140 points profit.

I must have made every dumb mistake there is to make but I learnt more from those losses than the profits ever taught me.
no stop
fat finger
short vol in a vol spike
futures into delivery
selling an o/b rsi
coin toss trade
stacking orders in depth bigger than i could handle through a figure
leaving an automated system unattended
falling in love with my position
thinking the market must be wrong
ignoring price action for fundamentals
ignoring fundamentals for price action
ignoring divergence

Just some that spring to mind

My dumbest was a real good one, it's my dumbest because it was my most costly. These days I laugh about it and it was all part of the learning curve and earning my stripes as an Options trader.

15 minutes left in the markets before options expiration. I decided to get some sleep after being up all night trading. Just after crawling into bed I hear the closing bell being rung and then an order get filled, "wtf was that" ... curiosity gets the better of me so I get up...

"WTF, oh my god are you f'ing serious... (more) WTF's"... followed by a lot of other colourful language as I see an ATM Vertical Call Spread filled for .03. 15 more minutes of after market remaining with no control at all as the markets are closed and then the Options expire.

The stock runs .01 or .02 'In The Money' and I am guaranteed an options exercise. It's New Years Eve and after a couple of days stressing about the new position and upon the markets opening on New Years Day it gaps up and rallies against my +$320k short position and within 30mins I blow my entire account.

Happy F'ing New Years to me....

lessons learnt:
- close all orders before going to bed.
- cover (exit) all assignments on opening rallies don't wait for a pull back.
- lady luck isn't on my side like she has been on others I know with assignments so always close all potential short options before expiration bell rings.

Are you telling us that you have that on while going to bed!? Do you have it on when yo put out the light?

You, really, are a keen type!

TWI said:

I must have made every dumb mistake there is to make but I learnt more from those losses than the profits ever taught me.
no stop
fat finger
short vol in a vol spike
futures into delivery
selling an o/b rsi
coin toss trade
stacking orders in depth bigger than i could handle through a figure
leaving an automated system unattended
falling in love with my position
thinking the market must be wrong
ignoring price action for fundamentals
ignoring fundamentals for price action
ignoring divergence

Just some that spring to mind

Click to expand...

Done all those , some more than once, plus a few !!

lloydbee said:

My dumbest was a real good one, it's my dumbest because it was my most costly. These days I laugh about it and it was all part of the learning curve and earning my stripes as an Options trader.

15 minutes left in the markets before options expiration. I decided to get some sleep after being up all night trading. Just after crawling into bed I hear the closing bell being rung and then an order get filled, "wtf was that" ... curiosity gets the better of me so I get up...

"WTF, oh my god are you f'ing serious... (more) WTF's"... followed by a lot of other colourful language as I see an ATM Vertical Call Spread filled for .03. 15 more minutes of after market remaining with no control at all as the markets are closed and then the Options expire.



The stock runs .01 or .02 'In The Money' and I am guaranteed an options exercise. It's New Years Eve and after a couple of days stressing about the new position and upon the markets opening on New Years Day it gaps up and rallies against my +$320k short position and within 30mins I blow my entire account.

Happy F'ing New Years to me....

lessons learnt:
- close all orders before going to bed.
- cover (exit) all assignments on opening rallies don't wait for a pull back.
- lady luck isn't on my side like she has been on others I know with assignments so always close all potential short options before expiration bell rings.

Click to expand...

Cracking story.........especially with it being out of your control.

ha, bizarrely my one is very similar to lloydbee, though not quite as dramatic.

It was last century, I had a bunch of call options open on Reuters and was 65p in the money the day before expiry.
I was working and trading at the time so I thought I'd let it ride.
The options dropped like a stone into the close, expired worthless and rallied nearly 65p the next morning. I dropped close to 9k because I didn't sell in time (that was a lot of money to me in those days).
When I rang the broker and said why didnt you exercise the options (so I would have had around £150,000 of Reuters shares, but still have made a packet selling them immediately, the guy said we tried to call you but couldnt get hold of you!

Moral you cant do 2 things well. Work or trade, dont try both.

Afterthought, The Chap on the phone said and I quote (you dont forget those words even after nearly 20 years)
"Classic market manipulation" - someone wanted those options to expire worthless.

Shame this thread never took off. Could have been quite educational.

robster970 said:

Shame this thread never took off. Could have been quite educational.

Click to expand...

Yep plenty of readers, but they must be too shy to post......but hey ho, we have all made c0ck ups.....

I was thinking it would be kinda cool to highlight a different thread like this each week, an open-ended question that everyone can contribute to then rotate it, say every Friday. What do you think?

I could use the same notification box that's at the top of the page now, to bring it to members' attention.

Sonicscooter said:

Yep plenty of readers, but they must be too shy to post......but hey ho, we have all made c0ck ups.....

Click to expand...

mine was way too stupid..
could be quite a long story, it was 2009 and the market was right at the beginning of the bull market. I remember that I was noticing a pattern in the morning for UK stocks, especially after the S&P was closing higher the night before. There would be an initial dip until about 8.30am and then they would soar right til about 4 and then begin to drop again before the UK close
After noticing this for about a week, I set to work..
£100/point (which to me was huge) I bought barclays at 8.30am (no technical analysis to confirm this, it was just around 8.30 and no stop loss either!). True to my theory, Barclays flew. I remember running up the stairs to the mrs..I've just made £1200!! It was a Eureka moment. :smart:

Next day, the same thing. I was glued to the screen for the S&P close..its higher..I could barely sleep unable to contain my excitement. Next day, £1000
This is it, I'm gonna make a fortune.

Next day I had to go into the office, but my wife could easily take the reigns. I mean what could possibly go wrong? At 8.30 I got a text that I was long £100 a point, by 9 the wife was on the phone, I was in a meeting with the FD, I couldn't take the call. 9.15..9.30...9.45 the phone kept silently alarming me that my wife wanted to speak to me.
Eventually I got out of the meeting to find I was £3000 down, 10 minutes of berating her I was £3,500 down and the clock was ticking
She closed for a £3,600 loss.
Barclays closed for the day break even. It was a doji day and rallied all the way back up straight after closing

Just to echo Postman's "trade or work don't try both" I'd add, what works today, won't necessarily work tomorrow. Oh and don't trade without a stop, and yes overleveraging..probably everything you should never do.
I learnt a huge amount then in a very very short space of time

Sharky said:

I was thinking it would be kinda cool to highlight a different thread like this each week, an open-ended question that everyone can contribute to then rotate it, say every Friday. What do you think?

I could use the same notification box that's at the top of the page now, to bring it to members' attention.

Click to expand...

Whatever you think works best on the forum, everyone has made mistakes, they are interesting stories to read that we can all relate to, all good fun and that hopefully we won't repeat.

Regards Shane..........