15 simultaneously.
Margin was never something I considered using, but perhaps I should reconsider. I had a meeting that day coming up, and, as I'll reiterate throughout this book, you have to attend to the responsibilities of your job and make sure it remains the first priority or no matter how good a trader you are, if you don't have enough to trade full-time, you must take your job seriously.
A Fresh Dose of Market Reality
I went to the meeting; it was a short department meeting that lasted all of 30 minutes. Once it was over, I hurried back to the office. I was excited about what I thought I would see. The walk down the hallway seemed to take forever, but once I got behind my monitor at the desk, logged in, and popped open the command center I was trading off of, I saw nothing but red!
The S&P gave up what was otherwise a great day, and was now tradingâ2.2 percent in the red. Those positions that I had gone into the day prior were getting slammed. Apparently, Alan Greenspan had flapped his lips, and the market did not embrace his comments.
My stop losses were roughly 7 to 8 percent away from the entry price, and they were flashing some major red. I honestly could not believe my eyes. How could this have happened? I felt cheated. Violated. Taken advantage of. Heck, I wanted a dadgum refund! Nonetheless, there are no do-overs in the market.
With one eye opened and the other eye closed, I squeamishly looked at the profit/loss on the day. It was more than what I had ever experienced in my lifetime for a single day. I had never lost even $1,000 in a day, much less $2,000. But that was how much I was down, and my stop losses were not even close to being hit. The thought of getting taken out at my original stop losses was too much to bear. The market looked like it had gone off of some cliff with no bottom in sight.
I really didn't know what I should do. Continue losing the money that I really shouldn't have been trading with in the first place and show a âtrader's disciplineâ of following my plan, or panic, sell now, and cut my losses while I could.
I chose the latter and did a fire sale on all my positions as fast as I could. I was emotional, as furious as one could be, and I proceeded to raise my mouse into the air and slam it down as hard as I could on my desk, not once, not twice, but six times! The bottom part of it cracked into multiple pieces and was rendered useless. To make matters worse, one of the stocks that I thought I had sold out of did not go through as I had inputted the order incorrectly. I watched that stock drop further with no way to stop it because my stupid mouse was broken, and I did not know the necessary shortcuts offhand on my keyboard to close out the order I was so desperate to close.
But before I could even leave for the folks upstairs in the information technology (IT) department, two ladies hurriedly came inside my office wondering what in the name of Sam Hill that noise was. Thinking quick on my feet, I made up some lame excuse about how I dropped the mouse by accident, which somehow or another created a thunderous noise that probably managed to shake the cubicles outside of my office. I doubt they were convinced of my story, but it was not my priority to convince them otherwise right now. I had a position still that was bleeding through the nose, and I had to get upstairs to the IT group and swap out my mouse for one that actually worked. After another lame excuse for why my mouse was in three separate pieces and the exchange for a new pointer, I finally made my way back downstairs, past the ladies now gossiping about what really happened, and then got out of that last position.
A Learning Experience, Indeed
Needless to say, there were two major lessons to take away from this episode of bad judgment that I exhibited early on in my trading career. First, I had placed the stop loss that might have made sense technically, but psychologically they were an absolute disaster and
Margin was never something I considered using, but perhaps I should reconsider. I had a meeting that day coming up, and, as I'll reiterate throughout this book, you have to attend to the responsibilities of your job and make sure it remains the first priority or no matter how good a trader you are, if you don't have enough to trade full-time, you must take your job seriously.
A Fresh Dose of Market Reality
I went to the meeting; it was a short department meeting that lasted all of 30 minutes. Once it was over, I hurried back to the office. I was excited about what I thought I would see. The walk down the hallway seemed to take forever, but once I got behind my monitor at the desk, logged in, and popped open the command center I was trading off of, I saw nothing but red!
The S&P gave up what was otherwise a great day, and was now tradingâ2.2 percent in the red. Those positions that I had gone into the day prior were getting slammed. Apparently, Alan Greenspan had flapped his lips, and the market did not embrace his comments.
My stop losses were roughly 7 to 8 percent away from the entry price, and they were flashing some major red. I honestly could not believe my eyes. How could this have happened? I felt cheated. Violated. Taken advantage of. Heck, I wanted a dadgum refund! Nonetheless, there are no do-overs in the market.
With one eye opened and the other eye closed, I squeamishly looked at the profit/loss on the day. It was more than what I had ever experienced in my lifetime for a single day. I had never lost even $1,000 in a day, much less $2,000. But that was how much I was down, and my stop losses were not even close to being hit. The thought of getting taken out at my original stop losses was too much to bear. The market looked like it had gone off of some cliff with no bottom in sight.
I really didn't know what I should do. Continue losing the money that I really shouldn't have been trading with in the first place and show a âtrader's disciplineâ of following my plan, or panic, sell now, and cut my losses while I could.
I chose the latter and did a fire sale on all my positions as fast as I could. I was emotional, as furious as one could be, and I proceeded to raise my mouse into the air and slam it down as hard as I could on my desk, not once, not twice, but six times! The bottom part of it cracked into multiple pieces and was rendered useless. To make matters worse, one of the stocks that I thought I had sold out of did not go through as I had inputted the order incorrectly. I watched that stock drop further with no way to stop it because my stupid mouse was broken, and I did not know the necessary shortcuts offhand on my keyboard to close out the order I was so desperate to close.
But before I could even leave for the folks upstairs in the information technology (IT) department, two ladies hurriedly came inside my office wondering what in the name of Sam Hill that noise was. Thinking quick on my feet, I made up some lame excuse about how I dropped the mouse by accident, which somehow or another created a thunderous noise that probably managed to shake the cubicles outside of my office. I doubt they were convinced of my story, but it was not my priority to convince them otherwise right now. I had a position still that was bleeding through the nose, and I had to get upstairs to the IT group and swap out my mouse for one that actually worked. After another lame excuse for why my mouse was in three separate pieces and the exchange for a new pointer, I finally made my way back downstairs, past the ladies now gossiping about what really happened, and then got out of that last position.
A Learning Experience, Indeed
Needless to say, there were two major lessons to take away from this episode of bad judgment that I exhibited early on in my trading career. First, I had placed the stop loss that might have made sense technically, but psychologically they were an absolute disaster and
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