Trading might seem simple: prices rise or fall and all you need to do is pick the appropriate direction before sitting back and waiting for cashflow? Unfortunately not.
Trading can be a lucrative endeavour for individuals with ambitious ideas but limited preparation. Uninformed traders may fail to appreciate that making mistakes is all part of learning from experiences that will eventually help make them a profitable trader.
Martin Schwartz, one of Wall Street’s legendary traders, opened up about both his successes and failures in his book ‘Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street’s Champion Day Trader’. Recounting how he lost $10,000 within hours of initiating his first trade, Schwartz admitted his early struggles may have had an adverse effect.
As is, this book stands out by openly exploring Schwartz’s early trading mistakes, especially as an inexperienced trader. He describes how he learned and corrected these missteps – eventually becoming one of the world’s premier traders.
Schwartz’s book offers a practical and realistic guide to the most frequently-made trading mistakes, and most traders (though perhaps not all) would likely have experienced or are experiencing similar errors at some point in time.
Trading mistakes are part of any trader’s experience. No matter if it is your first time or if you have been trading markets for decades, making errors will almost always occur.
Some errors can be more expensive than others, and accepting mistakes that are difficult can be daunting for traders. Yet by repeating them over and over, ignoring mistakes may mean the difference between becoming an accomplished trader or not.
To better assist both novice and seasoned traders, we have compiled a list of some of the most frequently occurring trading mistakes:
- 1) Trading without a trading plan
- 2) Trading too a lot, too soon
- 3) Emotional trading
- 4) Guessing
- 5) Not using a stop-loss order
- 6) Taking too big positions
- 7) Taking too many positions
- 8) Over leveraging
- 9) Revenge trading
- 10) Letting profitable trades transform into losses
- 11) Not tracking trades in a trading journal
- 12) Don’t forget about your investment time horizon
- 13) Being able to accept losses
- 14) Following the crowd
- 15) Trading in multiple markets at once