What has been your biggest mistake when trading? Your learning from it?

Ref:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nHEXraQ8hwb

I am doing trading past 20 years. My biggest mistake was not having written and tested trading Plan. Ref Dr. Van Tharp if you do not have trading plan what ever you are doing is a mistake. 2 Years back i did it and after that i am happy to say that i am  winner 60 day challenge five times.

Next mistake was not having discipline to follow the Plan.

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HELLO,

I AM TRADING FOR LONG TIME IN MY TRADING TIME I HAVE DONE LOTS OF MISTAKE LIKE (LIMIT-STOPLOSS DOES NOT GET HIT AND END UP TAKING HUGE LOSS) OR (AFTER TAKING POSITION POWER OR INTERNET WENT DOWN AND I DID NOT PUT STOP) EVERY NEWBIE GO THROUGH THESE KIND OF SMALL ERROR MISTAKES.

LIKE PAST YEAR I WAS GAINING  A LOT OF PROFIT  SHORTING SMALL SECTOR THAT HAVE GONE UP 8% TO 15% AFTER NEWS CHANNEL GIVE BUY ADVICE BASICALLY I WAS AVERAGING  MY SHORTS WHEN STOCK RISES AND USE ALL MY MARGINS IF MY TOTAL LOSS GET ABOVE 2% I GET OUT  I HAVE NEVER A SINGLE LOSING DAY FOR 3 MONTHS BUT 1 DAY I SHORT A STOCK AFTER USING ALL MY MARGINS LIGHT WENT OF AND I DON,T HAVE ANOTHER BACKUP SO I DON,T KNOW WHAT HAPPEN TO MY POSITION AFTER SOME TIME LIGHT CAME I CHECKED STOCK WAS AT UPPER CIRCUIT AND MARKET CLOSED  AND NEXT DAY MARKET OPEN STOCK AGAIN HIT ANOTHER UPPER CIRCUIT AFTER 1PM CIRCUIT BREAK I LOSE ALL MY OWN MONEY AND WHAT I EARN FROM 3 MONTH…

WHAT I LEARNED FROM MY MISTAKE?

I LEARNED A LOTS OF THING FROM MY MISTAKE AND MARKETS  . MARKETS  INSPIRE ME A LOT TO LEARN NEW THING KNOW HOW THINGS WORKS PAST YEARS I MENTALITY WAS LIKE A MOVIE THAT I WILL BE BECOME A MILLIONAIRE IN NO TIME WITHOUT KNOWING NOTHING  ABOUT MARKETS AND SOME TIME I BLEW A LOTS OF TRADING  ACCOUNTS  AND  I REALIZED THAT I HAVE TO LEARN TECHNICAL ANALYSIS  TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE  BUT I FAILED MISERABLE IN THAT TIME MY EMOTION WAS BROKE. BREAK A LOTS OF STUFF AND STOP TRADING…

BUT AFTER SOME TIME I GO TO A MARRIAGE RECEPTION I WAS TALKING TO PEOPLE . WHEN I WAS TALKING ABOUT MY KNOWLEDGE OF STOCK MARKET PEOPLE WERE LISTING LIKE I WAS SOME KIND OF GREAT MARKET GEEK   FEEL SO AWESOME AND I DECIDED  TO TRADE AGAIN TRADE BUT TO EARN A BIT LEARN A LOT . AND I READ SOME  PHYCOLOGY BOOKS IT CHANGE THE WAYS OF I THINK . NOW I ENJOY THE PROCESS LEARNING STUFF ABOUT MARKETS MAKING STRATEGY,BACKTESTING,HELPING OTHER TRADING,PYTHON PROGRAMMING,INDICATORS FORMULAS,AND  HOW THAT WORKS NOW I  SEE MARKETS IS GIVING ME  NUMBERS AND I HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT WHAT TO DO WITH THAT DATA AND NEWS EVENT DOES NOT BOTHER ME LIKE BREXIT ELECTION ETC I JUST SEE BINARY  NUMBERS TO MAKE  STRATEGY  AND COUNT EVERY POSSIBLE THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO MY POSITION.

FINAL THOUGHT

IN EVERY MISTAKE THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR  GROWTH


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My biggest mistake while trading would have been to presume to know which direction the market will move in. If I’m in a profit, I would wait with the same position assuming my profit will grow.

The best practice would have been to book whatever profit I see as soon an I have a reasonable profit. Not doing this has led to a lot of losses. Simply put, I got greedy and fell on my face.

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Like others, I'm also having a story to dazzle you with my trading mistakes but are quite different.

I started trading just 3 months after I joined 18 year club. Initial amount was 25k which I saved from my saving. I was reading financial book like The Tao of Warren Buffett, Rich dad poor dad, Intelligent investor etc.

I stared idealizing myself as a Value investor and decided long before I started investing to invest for long run only.

No doubt, world richest investor are also a long term value investor. For example, take Warren Buffett. But it was much easy as it sounds. So here's my biggest trading mistake that may work as a base deck for newbie investor.

When I got registered with Zerodha, I was very excited with the virtue of earning a huge wealth from stock market. I had also heard many rag to riches stories like A man turned 10,000 Rs into 704 crores which excited me more to invest.

Okay, let's talk about the whole experience.

I analyzed stock based on my knowledge and considering the factor that I read on internet before choose stock for run. I came out with 4 stocks - Usher Agro, Inox wind, Treehouse and REC.

Now here's my bad luck with all of this stocks:

Usher Agro:

I bought this share at first because of its growing profit from past 3 years and also it was available at very low PE ratio. I bought my 400 share @28 in market. I saw this stock going high to 35 on positive monsoon news. I was excited as my first investment grown up by 25% in just couple of weeks.

I hold the stock for hoping for further rise but who knows the market trend. Mr. market turned opposite and the stock dropped out to 20. I lost 3200 in just couple of days. Still the stock is moving in very lusty trend. Still I've that 400 shares, worried to book the loss.

Lesson: Not always historic results of a company can be use for predicting future.

Inox Wind:

I invested in this stock when it was trailing around. In fact, it was the only stock with lowest PE in its industry with a ROE of 40%. And also Indian government is taking many initiative to increase solar energy by 2020. So thinking this solar related company as a great buy, I bought it. But again the bad luck, the stock trailed down to 215 in some matter of days. this was a greater loss than above Usher Agro. Still I'm not able to figure out why the stock fall out so high. Hard to understand the market behavior. Still the loss is not recovered.

Lesson: There are many other factors than financial statements which should be consider before buying a stock. Market do not consider financial statements to value stock, at least in short run.

Treehouse:

Again a big losing stock. Stock was traded at 0.34 times its book value and providing a good dividend yield of 3.86%. Also it has good consistent profit growth of 86.56% over 5 years. I think it's enough to conclude it as a good stock. Everything was going good until demon Morgan Stanley Asia enter the market. They sold 2 lakh shares of Tree House which made the stock drop to 40 Inr and my investment dropped by half.


Lesson: Sometime market works for big institutes.

My last bad investment.

REC ltd:

It's a good stock with a high earning and dividend payout. Also it was traded at 0.58 times its book value. I entered stock at around 169. It have a good financials and also traded at a very low PE as compare to others. For a long time, I was not able to find out why the stock price of such a good dividend paying stock is not growing high. Later on I discovered that most of government owned stock doesn't grow much despite of great value and low prices. This factor was not in my valuation parameters, that's why my portfolio was full of government stock earlier. This stock was also dropped to 158 when I sold it but later on grows in value and now trading at 182. Again my bad luck.


Lesson: Stay away from government stock.

However, I had also invested some money in other excellent stock which gave a excellent return but as the question state, this was my mistake that I made while investing and learned a lot.

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Dear Zerodha Team ##As a beginner, According to me my biggest mistake was when I trade first time in stock market, I used borrowed money for purchase of shares. (The money that i can not afford to loose.) ## I was too passionate about stocks, so by the time when I got chance for trading I don’t have enough money so I borrowed it from relatives. ## As I told it was my first time in share trading so as usually I got losses in my holdings because of my greed of earning huge profits in a very less time. And there was pressure from that relative to return his money back, I was in very bad situation at that time, but some how now all is okay. ## Learning:- Dont be greedy and Never use other’s borrowed money OR money that you can not afford to loose for trading in share market, only use of your own money. Because if u made losses than even at that time u don’t have extra panic of returning of borrowed amount of others. And there will be no pressure from lender side also. And dont be greedy in the field of share market because some times in order to get more profit you will loose your small profits also due to your greed ## And also not used your money that is saved by you for your other purpose, For example :- If you save some amount for your new bike and instead of purchasing bike you purchased shares, and if you loose money, than your dream of purchasing bike will be extend till you again saved your hard earned money for it. So only use your money that is separated means extra amount left after all your pre planned budget. ## In this way anyone can easily manage their financial position as well without any problem. Happy Trading

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3 Top mistakes of my trading life since 2005...

- Gambling : Using margin money (of stocks held) to trade (without any technical indicators) from a non discount brokerage platform - Monthly turnover of 9 figures and a brokerage of 35 K per month. (I was a software engineer employed in a local IT company back then earning well below 35K per month)

- Averaging a losing trade and end up losing a 6 figure number over a period of 2 months - "All in" (Like the poker table gambler with goggles & a crystal glass - on borrowed capital)  - never ever do it.

- Trading in Options & Futures without fully understanding the greeks, their interactions and not simulating your purchases over a 6 month period - forward only. (every strategy will work on a backtest - since you desperately want IT TO WORK)  i.e. simulate for 6 months before you even think of buying or writing a call - someone has rightly called them "weapons of mass wealth destruction"

Top 7 Learnings

- Learn to use RSI, MACD, STOCs, Bollinger Bands to construct trend lines & points of inflexion (resistance & support) - identify critical levels using key candlestick patterns.

- Buy solid fundamentally sound stocks that deliver High ROCE, good free cash at books, EPS Growth, minimal DER and decent PER - for last 8 quarters.

- Just break away from the "intraday utopian dream of earning 5% day on day" - when you hit 2-3% daily, exit, either which way the swing happens.

- Transfer 20% of daily booked profits into your savings account - daily or whenever it happens.  From that 20%, give away 25% (or more) as a donation to some charity fund - It will help you  - trust me.

- Take a break if you see dark circles under your eyes and realize you are having a dream of the trading platform in the middle of night. Try and not touch the system for 5 days - every 25 days.

- Trade Volatility or FX , easier to predict-  if you follow global patterns and can predict the opening of Nifty by reading eastern country index charts by 8:15 am IST.

- Patience - Markets very easliy forget people who run too fast. Learn to swim with the tide. It is very easy to lose capital, remember, 100 to 75 is a 25% loss, but recovering from 75 to 100 is 33.3%

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I am into capital markets since 2006. Suffered a great crash of 2008, since then growing strong on my way of becoming a professional trader. Now working as a full time trader and investor. Now coming to the point of so many mistakes i have commited are as under. These might be useful for newbie into stock markets.

1. Trader or investor- Person should have a clear view about his/her trading approach. If you are trader then dont be investor and vice versa even if you have to cut losses. My personal example of 2007 when market topped out. At that time i was a newcomer and dont know much about the market. I brought 300 powergrid @ 148 rs for trading. And market crashed i became investor and now in 2015 i get that price. 



2. When to enter and when to exit-  This is the most important thing that i had learnt in my trading career. You should have clear idea what you are doing as when you have to take trade and when you have to exit from the position. When to book profits and where is the stop loss.

3. Trend of the market- For short term investors and traders ongoing trend of the market matters a lot. There are times when Long term trend,short term and intermediate trend differs. So trader should have idea about it.

4. Risk-reward ratio- In any trade or investment risk reward should be atleast 1:2 otherwise it is impossible to survive the market. If you are in profitable position ride the trend as long as possible. Dont cut the profits short and early to have a winning feeling.

5. Money and trade management-  Last but not the least,Person should not deploy all of his capital into trading. Suppose if you have 10 lakh trading capital then trade with 30 percent of trading capital only. And increase the capital gradually if you are successful into your trading or investing. Personally i withdraw 50 percent of profits and rest add to the trade capital so that both account living and trading account grows.and also enough trade capital ensures the survival of person into market for longer years of time to come . As these days domestic and global markets are volatile as some days ago sensex opened 1000 points lower appx.

6. Losses are part of the game- It took me years to recognize that losses are part of this profession. No strategy is there to make profit on every trade. Even warren buffet cant do.

7. This is the last point i am making but very important one to grow as a trader/investor- When we are wrong then we should go back and learn where we are wrong in our approach or strategy.

Thank you. 

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I have been trading at least for 30 years.  No plan or idea other than recommendations from brokers.  I used to buy whatever the broker suggested and made some small amounts as profit on most shares but lost heavily on some 2/3 scrips.  Then somebody suggested to me to operate through a BSE broker and found that he used to charge the maximum rate with 2.5% brokerage for buying and the minimum rate with same brokerage for selling.  Also it will take at least a month for cash transfer.  Heavily lost money with no control and started reading investment magazines and analysing the scrips before buying.  The problem was I was not having idea when to sell and I was holding shares with the expectation it will reach the sky. (Some of the shares I hold today have reached such a stage!) but many shares plunged down heavily.  Then again, when those shares start picking up, I used to sell immediately not to allow the situation to repeat.  Alas!  The shares will reach their peak and I had lost multifold profits by selling it early.  Some of the shares in which I made very little profit after holding for years would have yielded two to three times profit of their value had I held it for one more week.  Hence my suggestion is not only to pick up the right share at right time but to wait for a good time to exit with lot of profit.  Also, we have to have the habit of booking loss also instead of holding shares for ever.

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These are the biggest mistake in Trading 

  • Positional Trading >> No one can be 100% sure in his Calls or trading , there is always some risk in every trade, it is fact, then how can we take the blind risk in positional trades. For Example: recent event "Brexit" . Britain exited So Gold straight up for 1800 Points & Sellers lost huge money. Thats why in Positional Trades Risk is so high that even we have to pay all our savings & Money to pay the losses. One more negative side In Positional trade is that Traders watch foreign markets whole night, they do not sleep whether market is favorable or adverse . They do watchmen duty whole night. A good life is about enjoying the life & not about earning money. So i suggest for Intraday Trading Only with cool  mind & Enjoy with family
  • Trading Without any Stop loss: Open trading is the worst Strategy because if trend changes still traders can not exit their positions because their loss is big & they expect that their rates will come again & Starts Averaging. For Example: Gold Silver up rally in 2008 to 2010.... Silver Was near its life time high levels near 35000 & traders started selling, then again up now its 50000 Rs. then they have not exited their selling positions, they Sold more lots & then again up 70000*78000 & finally they have to sell their assets to pay the losses....So Trading Without sl is very Risky
  • Using Average strategy: As Mentioned in the previous point, in Averaging we do not follow the trend , we starts thinking that we will take revenge from the market by taking more lots & finally huge loss may come with 7 digits, 8 digits or even more Amount. So Single lot & Consistent lots trading Strategy is best.
  • Trading With small Margin: I seen many traders who trade with 40000 Rs. in Mega gold & with 4 lakh Rs. in 10 gold mega. They lose in 1-2 trade only & then Stop their trading or they do less trading than earlier. So My Suggestion is that Why can they Start this trading as a business opportunity & Trade Properly With Some Good Margin backup . It will help them more for earnings
  • Trading In Dabba(on cash basis): Most of the traders do dabba trading ( trading in cash). They trade out of their limits because the settlements are done on every Saturday & till then they have unlimited margin credit from the dabba broker. when loss happens they do more heavy lots & finally at the weekend they have huge loss. it is very dangerous.They starts trading in daabba because they see the benefits of lower brokerages, no tax, no reporting etc. But my suggestion is that....trade with ZERODHA. They offer lowest brokerage, if we earn money in trading then what is the problem in paying taxes to the govt. & reporting is so easy with Zerodha account.

Hope my this Answer may help many traders in their trading & Earn Profits & live happy life.

Thank You

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Biggest Mistake : My biggest mistake while trading was when I started trading in Futures and option with loads full of emotions.After some initial profits I thought I learned the art of trading and started putting in more money.Then I started to make some losses and would not exit the trade thinking the market would reverse but all in vein.After those loses , I used to trade more with a view of recovering my loses in one go.At the end did the biggest mistake of putting my hard earned profit from mutual fund and pouring it in derivatives. I lost it all.

Lessons I learnt :1) Trade in F & O with a fixed capital with very strict stop  losses and no place of emotions here , mistakes are ought to happen and with the first sign of loss we should exit .

                              2) Trading should be secondary , primary way of earning through markets are, and always will be through mutual fund (SIP).


 

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My Biggest Mistake in Trading and What I learnt from it
 

I am very sure that I have committed all the possible mistakes which one can possibly commit in trading.But the title of biggest mistake in trading undoubtedly goes to Holding on to the losing trade and adding to it and finally making a big loss. My trading earlier was like Snakes and Ladders board game .I used to accumalate number of small profits and after 2-3 months, a big loss used to whipe out all the small gains made plus make a dent in my trading capital.This sequence used to repeat with clockwork precision.Because of this mistake, I was not able to progress as a trader and my trading used to be 2 steps forwards,3 step backwards Lezim dance.

Why do we commit this mistake ? Market makes us believe that taking a stoploss is waste of money, a losing trade if we bear some pain will eventually go in our way and we will come out even from that trade.In 70-80 % times the market comes back to our levels giving us a chance to make a small profit from the trade .But in 20 % times it will never comeback to our level and to make matter worse, we add in the losing trade in the hope that with averaging done, we will get our breakeven level quickly. This makes the matters worse and results into a big loss which we have to book when it becomes intolerable to us ( or our broker).Many trading careers are ruined by these 20 % large losses.

Just think about our large losses. In more than 85-90 % of the time they start as a small loss. But our not taking that small loss and adding to the loss making trade makes that small loss into a big loss. I define big loss as a loss in which we loose 10% or more of our capital. Now think about all our small gains and few big losses. Would we be better off if we eliminated these large losses? I bet all will agree that if we had eliminated the large losses, our capital would have increased substantially.

If we have Rs 1 Lakh as a trading capital, the following table will show how much more we have to work for coming out of large losses :

If we lose 25% of our capital, we have to make 33% on the remaining capital to come just to breakeven level.

If we lose 50 % of the capital, on balance capital we need 100 % returns to come to breakeven level.

If we lose 75 % of our capital, on balance capital we need to make 300 % returns just to reach breakeven. So it needs three times more efforts and after a large loss, it is very difficult psychologically to make high returns.

All the above process continued for almost 3 years and then finally came a mother of all big losses.I remember that day . the market opened gap down and I took a short trade. The market went down a little and reversed from there . It started coming up and went above the level at which I had shorted. I was in a small loss, but I kept telling myself that this is temporary and soon it will start going down. The market went up more and I happily added one more short trade thinking that now a small retracement and I will comeout with small profits as now my average has gone up. It never came to my profit level. It went up and I shorted a third position. The market closed at the high of the day andd I was frozen out of fear as I had 3 times my normal position and a losing position.

The market next day opened with a gap up and I had to cut my loss as it was way beyond my tolerence levels.But good that I covered, that day again market closed at the top and the market was in strong uptrend. Why did I not take the small loss in the short position and made 3 times profits in a long trade ?? Because of my attachment to my position and my ego. That was a BIG LOSS.

What I learnt From This Mistake

This was a turning point in my trading career. From that day onwards in last few years I have not had even a single large loss ( >10 % of the capital) The shock and the thinking I did on this mistake put me on a winning track.We have to take small losses and NEVER AVERAGE IN A LOSS.The add is to be done in winning positions to increase our profits from a winning trade.Now I am at peace with the markets. I have my stops and in no case I am going to lose even a rupee more than my predetermined stops.Now markets cannot do any harm to me. They are my friends now.

Snakes and Ladders game still continues.But now the snakes are small and the ladders are big, which help me to stay in top row of the board.I am happy that I learnt from this mistake and made my trading career.

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Inspired by few of the young traders in the post, I would like to share a glimpse of my story so far in the trading profession.

From a very tender age, I was fond of the financial markets. I started off as a forex trader at the age of 18 (i.e. just after passing my higher secondary) with a corpus of almost Rs20,000. I heard of the forex market is where one should trade as volatility there is maximum and technical trading does turn fate of many traders. I tried a lot of indicators and shuffled them every month to look around what works best, but failed to make a difference to my account. But I tried to embrace every mistake of my trading life as a lesson.

“Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth.”- Richelle E. Goodrich

Below, I will try to explain the mistakes I had done and my learnings individually.

Here’s a list of mistake I seem to have done:

  •  Missing the basics: This is the mistake all of us do initially. Eh? When I started as a forex trader, did I have the knowledge of the currency pairs enough to make it count? Yes, I knew what are the currency pairs I am trading, what technical indicators I used, how does the trading strategy works, etc. But, what I failed to understand is the importance of macroeconomics which drives the currency values, the importance of changes in interest rates, inflation, the government’s indebtedness & others to name a few. So, ultimately I did not know what I am doing. Isn’t that what Sir Warren Buffett has to say?

“Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing” –Warren Buffett

  • The strategy shuffle: I always failed to stick to a strategy (whether technical or fundamental). By the time one year passed, I had tried a dozens of technical indicators which failed to work for me. We often tend to give up too early to these indicators. What happens then? We trade with an indicator, may be take one month or two, we end up making losses again, we try a different indicator and this cycle continues. Eventually, we end up blowing our account and quit trading. I remember, I had lost all what I had initially invested but fortunately, my fondness for financial markets did not made me quit trading. What we need to understand is that every trading strategy has its own risk and return characteristic and a specific set of market in which they work.
  • The leverage blunder: We all have a willingness to get rich overnight, don’t we? For this desire our brokers do provide us with the leverage to buy a Rs100 asset with just Rs10 in our account. What we fail to understand is the ill effects of using leverage that if the assets moves against you by just 10%, you blow up your account. I did not understand what role does risk management plays while trading up until I read the book by Van K. Tharp on Position Sizing, the book which changed the way I placed trades.
  • Greed vs Fear: We’ve heard this discussion many times around. We tend to buy at high when market gurus are quite optimistic about the economy and shares are flying high and sell our holdings once the situation as a global slowdown arises and all gurus turn pessimistic. What we ultimately do by following this is “buying high and selling low” just opposite of what ought to be done. I remember buying Canara bank in 2014 at Rs545 with almost 30% of my portfolio value just when the market sentiment was overly optimistic about the health of PSU banks and lost quite a bit selling them at Rs230 (thank god I did, it went to levels of 170 after that) . I failed to have a contrarian view then. If I had known what history tells about the market characteristic, I would’ve not done the mistake. Few days back, I wrote an article on my blog for the same. A detailed analysis on the Nifty 50. ​Here’s the link: https://alphadesire.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/what-does-the-history-says-a-fundamental-analysis-of-nifty50/

In the initial days of trading, most of us loose money and so did I. It is very rare (with a stroke of luck), to make money at the initial phase of your trading career. Instead of focusing on what I had lost, I focused on what went wrong and promised not to make the same mistake again. Here’s how I’ve learned from my mistakes so far:

  • Knowledge vs Skill: Ever since I’ve been wondering that what is more important in trading? Knowledge or Skill? Here’s how I interpret.

“Knowledge is the foundation, skill is what you acquire over time. Without knowledge it would take twice the time to acquire the same set of skills as a learned man.”

By the time it was almost a year of trading, I realized that I don’t have good knowledge of the markets. I certainly knew that currency market is not the place for me now, may be it would in future or maybe not. I started trading equities which I feel are less complicated than the forex market. Then I focused on where to gain the knowledge for financial markets. For the very quest of knowledge, I started pursuing Chartered Accountancy just for the sake of understanding the financial accounts of the companies. I did not stop there, I also started pursuing CFA(USA) for this very reason. I also read books by Van K Tharp and other eminent traders whenever I got time. Now, 4 years down the line, I am a CFA level 2 candidate and a CA final student. The best part is that studies were boring for me up until now but I love these courses for the very sake of depth they carry in financial markets. Obviously I do not trade much now (as time does not allow) but surely this is what I look as my career aspiration in future.

  • Risk Management:​ I was inspired a lot by the book “Definitive Guide to Position Sizing” – Van K Tharp. This book changed the way trades were placed and started taking calculated risk now. Now I do not risk more than 1% of capital on a single trade and do not fail to square off the position once the stop losses have been triggered.​
  • I have basic strategies working for me and I trade using them. To name a few, I use Fibonacci, Pivot Points, Moving average, Point and Figure charts, etc.
  • I don’t hesitate to square off a losing trade and having a diversified portfolio view after the blunder I made in CANBK.
  • I simply ignore to what the market guru’s in the Business Channels have to say about the market sentiment.

To conclude, the most vital lesson I have learned from trading is having PATIENCE of sticking to what you believe and not getting carried away by what others do, patience of not early squaring off the positions for a winning trade.

Surely, these 4 years have been volatile for my life as the stock markets but this has made me a more knowledgeable & patient than before.

Thank You.

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biggest mistake in trading :

doubling up money, leverage and trades to recover what was lost earlier.

you know what would have happened.

My biggest mistake : (1) When we have sufficient fund,we have no trading plan,not familiar with any technical or fundamental studies.

(2) After some time we got some technical & fundamental studies,they also work well but we not benefited coz - fear of loss, lack of patience & decipline.

(3) Many time some order placing mistake - place Buy order in the place of SELL or place SELL order in the place of BUY.

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Following are my learning and and they were also my mistakes

I misunderstood following points and now learned that trading depends upon following four factors

  1. Capital :

Normally you can earn 20 to 30% return in a month. Means, if you have Rs.1 Lac as capital, you can safely expect to earn 20,000 to 30,000 in a month. In other terms if your expectation is 50 to 60 thousand, then you should have 2 to 3 lacs as capital. Including Zerodha, brokers allow you to start working with Rs.25000 or even less. You can just calculate 20% of that for monthly earning. Once you are settled with your expectation, you can read following point.

  1. Plan : Plan and sticking to it, come what so, is next essential point.
  • You must decide before hand where will you work, in Equity, Futures, options, Index Futures etc. One you decide should not be changed for a period of 3 months at least.
  • Decide Script or Index to work before hand.
  • Decide strategy in terms of conditions to enter in trade, profit booking points and stop loss points. Do not change this even if on some day you see large movement on your profit side. Again stick to it for at least 3 months.
  1. Consistency :

Once you settle on Capital and Plan part of the game, next thing many traders fail is consistency.

 I would strongly suggest you to consider Stock trading as a Job or regular grocery / fruit / vegetable/ metals trading shops.

 If you have a shop, what you do is early in the morning you will prepare yourself and will regularly open shop at a predefined time and close it at predefined time. You will do this all days in month except mandatory holiday. Same thing needs to be done while stock trading. Even if you decide not to trade, you must open trading terminal and sit in front of it for decided time.

Consistency must also be observed in terms of the above mentioned plan. If you have decided to work in market to achieve profit of X amount, stick to it for a span of month. Don’t change it suddenly by any reason including some profitable trades or loss.

  1. Emotions:

The one, who takes over the emotions while in market, wins over!

You have stress of being successful anyhow; you have to convince your parents / family members that you are successful trader. At the same time you need to keep your image in your friends by telling them how much have you earned in market.

Well, my rules to manage my emotions are

  • Do not feel over whelmed by some profitable trades
  • Do not feel frustrated by loss making trades
  • Do not discuss experience of stock trading with anybody till some time.
  • Always try to imagine, as how it will look like at the end of the month.

To help traders, I also run a study group for trading at http://baalshastripandit.weebly.com/

Holy Shit!!! It's happening again!! I know where the market is headed, I have seen something similar in the past , and the market behaved exactly like this. Hurray !! I can Predict the market !!
Predict ? Okay , so you can tell the direction in which market is headed..cool , There's 50-50 chance that will happen,

but then what about depth..How far will the market go in that direction ? And what about time...what's the timeline for that move...You know the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent ?
Well, you know, I have a special gift.

And that my friends is the biggest mistake of my trading life , thinking I can predict and play the market.
The moment I realized that I do not have any special gift, am just another person on the street, trying to make a few bucks, I was out of my misery.
I stopped trying to predict the market, rather learnt to move along with it.
I realized market can move in any direction , be prepared with what to do in either case...that's basically having a "PLAN" as in trading Lingo. Not strategy as a whole, but just a plan i.e target , stop loss , position sizing.

Here's what a trading day looks like for people trying to predict :


Let's do some simple Maths here on Planning.
Assume you have a strategy that's favorable 50% of time.
You have set stop loss at 1% move , target at 3% move. Also assume market movement is directly related to profit /loss %.
50% trade fail . In each trade we lose 1% i.e. 50% loss total
50% trade result in profit. Total profit for 50% trades = 50 x 3 = 150%
Net profit : 150 - 50 = 100 %
OF course it's a bit more complicated than that, for eg, no. of continuous winning / losing streaks changes the capital ,market may not reach target and reverse( trailing target will help here ) etc,
but this is just to give an idea of what simple planning can do.

Someone rightly said, only when you accept you are mortal, can you be truly immortal.

Well, to be honest I just made that quote up, but who cares ? Done a mistake, Lesson learnt , One step closer to Nirvana.

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My Biggest Mistake in Trading and What I learnt from it

It’s rightly said that “Trend is our Friend” but my biggest mistake was to go against current market trend, expecting a turnaround & on top of it not setting stop loss order. Due to this mistake lost my almost all capital as I used to trade in derivatives options most of the time.

When I realised my mistake I started rectifying it and I thank Zerodha sincerely, as it has helped me a lot in terms of tools & technologies  

Learnings:

1)Study Global Trend- Market follows global trend and news more than 90% of the times. So it helped me to predict market direction. Other parameter like brent crude price movement gave early indication as global markets are heavily dependent on Brent crude price.


2) Channel Movement- Channel movement of stock or nifty is prominent indicator of trend. If channel movement is broken, I started taking instant action- either booking loss/profit or taking new position.


3) Heikin-Ashi parameter- Came across this amazing indicator, which helped me in intraday as well as in positional trading. Works fantastic in combination with MACD & Volume.

4)Options chart- After watching many videos and reading couple of books got to know importance of Options chart. Everything of future price movements, it’s all hidden in it. Specially parameter Open Interest. Following it very closely, helps during major events like Brexit, RBI meet, Fed rate.


5)Knowledge is key- Knowledge play vital role in successful wealth building. Even though luck parameter is always involved, if technical and fundamental studies are done most of days would be profitable. Specially in case options functionality has to be known as many parameters influence premium value. Got insight of it from zerodha varsity Options module.

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Trading can be a money-making process, as long as you know the right ways to start and avoid the mistakes that traders generally make. Before making an attempt, putting your trading skills to the test is quite an important factor. Accumulating information from sites like http://www.binaryoffersreview.com/content.php?id=1007, http://www.binaryoptionsplace.com/Scam-Reviews etc. are ideal way to get your financial feet right! You should start with a demo account before risking your own capital. Learn the techniques behind the trades to become a good investor.

I started day trading without having any knowledge about the market.I had only one strategy,buy low & sell high…I started with a little capita l& started using leverage.I thought this is a very good opportunity for making money by using 10 times leverage offered by the brokers.I had some good days & some bad days.I would take 1 stock from the top gainer list & buy it &sell it . I would rate for very little variations. Then I came to know about brokerage charges & other charges.My 1 St broker was a full broker & his rates were very high.Then after researching I shifted to discount broker Zerodha. My biggest mistake was trading Infosys with leverage on the quarterly result day.It lost almost 10% on that day & I had to endure a heavy loss

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Stocks are appearing by companies in order to raise capitals and are bought by investors in order to acquire a portion of the company.With the help of Stock Tips service Provider India you will determine about stock is profitable for you.The things you should about stocks trading i.e. Profitable stock trading over the long term does not come from luck as well as it does not come from stock tips Profitable stock trading is the result of applying the best trading practices to stock trading. Profit comes from a sound trading strategy and greater profit comes from a continuously improved trading strategy. Because a stock price patterns repeat themselves the alert trader using technical analysis tools like high stock pattern formations can profitably anticipate changes in stock prices. 

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