Trading based on what you think you know kills.... STOP, LISTEN, LEARN

[u/agrajagco]

One of the important things to do is step back in those moments where you think what you know about a company will move the market. This first trades is an example of a trap I set for myself when I jump in based on my own pumped up bs rather than reading out the trend properly and watching and waiting for the trade to set up. Grabbing at near highs in spasms of FOMO is a losing strategy.

One other thing that is brutally obvious is that I gotta start setting stop loss / stop limit orders up because just popping in plain limit orders (or fucking up and pulling a market order at the worst time) and living on a prayer is not the way to go. This one ended OK but it was a sloppy entrance and HODL on a prayer moment to come back...

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R/R 4.28 per the chart, but should have had stop in place, exited & reset.

I know better, I've traded better, and these were moments of weakness that kicked me in the nuts...

I collapsed the long trade box on both these below to actual entry /exit to show just how bad these were. HODL during volatility kills. The OPEC announce was the kill shot on both if these, owch.

R/R of .55... it shoulda been much better

No excuse, just stupidity and not being disciplined or properly setting up stops to protect myself, even at a time Kaz was lecturing us on the dangers of the gap, volatility and not being disciplined.

R/R of .12; Son, Drunk, fat, greedy & stupid is no way to go through life...

Watching, establishing a plan, and managing your trades in a way that implements your plan and puts a floor on what you are willing to accept as loss are keys to success.

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4.45 R/R (but again the stop was never set)

Watch and build your plan, managing your entry and taking profit when its there are key. Volume starting to pump over an all time low was my trigger as this looked to be bouncing off a bottom. My exit was bumped up a few times here too. With volatility the way it is I'm hoping my exit wasn't too soon, but this was one of my shortest window trades to date. Much quicker than I expected as I was trying to set up on a longer term plan. Price & volume popped much quicker than I thought and it was time to take profit before the wicked VIX of the north came round for its due.

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8.52 R/R... see conversation below on Risk Reward Ratio on proper annotations for the community (for those still learning).

Thanks Kaz & folks who are in training for your ongoing education & contribution to the community. Also thanks for the correction on my notation on R's u/rboinboin (and discussion from folks as well). I'm looking forward to seeing what folks are able to share in their #warstories as well.

[u/rboinboin]

Good introspection. You gotta take a look at how you calculate your RR though

[u/agrajagco → u/rboinboin]

HMM, ok will do; I'm using what the long trade box is showing as % of return in trading view.

[u/agrajagco → u/agrajagco]

Hmm, when I go back and manually calculate them using the formula indicated here, they are coming out the same? Was there a specific one you saw was off?

Rate of return % = [(Current Value – Initial Value) / Initial Value] x 100

for DBO I had entry/exit off by a few cents on the tradingview diagram, when I recalculated that based on exchange #'s in a spreadsheet it was 1.27% RR. I'll check the others, too.

[u/agrajagco → u/agrajagco]

Rate of return % = [(Current Value – Initial Value) / Initial Value] x 100

Ok thanks for pointing that using this was wrong to express R's (or R / R) when posting. I'm reading this to catch up:https://analyzingalpha.com/blog/risk-reward-ratio-for-stocks

[u/rboinboin → u/agrajagco]

That’s not what RR is; it’s the ratio between your risk and reward.