£2400 down and counting...

[Hate2Lose]

Hello,

New here,

Opened an account with Cityindex back in May 2012,

I've put in a total of £2500, and currently have only £120 left!!!

But I'm not ready to give up just yet...

For anyone thinking of starting out my advice is to make sure you can afford to lose the money, and be prepared to lose it because you probably will...

One thing I have noticed though, is that over half of my total losses have been taken in the form of the commission from the spread! So for a 50p a pip bet with average spreads of 3 pips, even if you in reality break even after 100 trades you're down £150!

And what have I learned from this? I can see what my sins are which I'm still trying to tame and that is the gambling mentality of trying to win back your losses by jumping back into the trade almost immediately, resulting in more losses. The worst is doing this and changing the direction of your bet! This is one sin I'm trying to control!

I've also noticed overtrading is a bad thing, On my worst days I was entering and exiting trades over 10 times in the space of a day! just more commission to the broker.

I would like to hear of other people who've lost more money than me because that'll make me feel better and less of an idiot! lol.

I'm currently in the Dow30, bought at 14981 Friday, and have a stop loss placed at 14964. I am expecting a deal to be made by the Republicans over the weekend and hopefully it might open 100 pips higher than Friday's close. Before it opens I will trail the stop to break even. This is the best case scenario and if it does open higher after a deal, I expect this to be the catalyst to take the Dow to 16000 over the next few weeks, and I will try to stay in trailing my stops upto this level.

The other scenario is no deal is made, and the Dow opens lower and triggers my stop taking me out of the trade.

I also held the Dow over last weekend and it opened about 70 pips lower than the Friday close and I was stopped out way past my stop level, for quite a big loss.
Hopefully it'll open higher this week! Let's wait and see...

All too familiar! Sound advice from you, i.e. be prepared to lose when you start out.

I use DMA now (I trade mainly equities, via CFDs). Unfortunately, spreads are like death and taxes.

However, you can sometimes get 0 spreads on the underlying market with DMA, with multi-venue trading. If you have access to turquoise, BATS, LSE etc, sometimes the spread tightens to 0. Of course, you’ll have to pay commission, but you know the market isn’t being ‘made’ and you’re getting the real market.

Head up, keep going – practice makes perfect!

 

[MrBrilliant]

CharlesD: I did something similar, I opened a spread-betting account several months ago and made some trades, and lost a bit over £1000 before I stopped. About £400 of that was done in one day (I left a position on overnight and had alarms, etc. set but I slept through the alarm...)

I think the most frequent reason behind my other losses was that I had no idea what I was doing. If someone asked me "why do you think this is going up"? I really didn't have a solid answer. Mostly I was guessing, based on what I interpreted as a "trend". And if you're guessing, you're just gambling. And if you're gambling, the house wins...

 

[brewski1984]

Hello,

And what have I learned from this? I can see what my sins are which I'm still trying to tame and that is the gambling mentality of trying to win back your losses by jumping back into the trade almost immediately, resulting in more losses. The worst is doing this and changing the direction of your bet! This is one sin I'm trying to control!

It really is just psychological. When you do that you're trading on emotion and the need to be right.

The dow looks crazy today I'm staying well out

 

[Mycroft Algoman]

Hey... get some money back and go long today and wait for the 'Janet' effect.

Back around the 15,000 today/this evening is an 85%ile.

The current drop is only blowing froth off the market to make money for later.

Look at the YTD for the DJI,S&P and the Nasdaq... notice the three tiers of price drop, notice too the manner of the recent drop, it is a visual representation of the level of froth on the index.

14810 atm and rising...

 

[Mycroft Algoman]

It is trying gallantly to get through the 15000 today, the 'pause' running at the moment bodes well for a good 15050 before the close.

 

[Mycroft Algoman]

Through the minor barrier... 15018 atm.

200 points in 24hrs... easy money.