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It is great to read those posts. Lot of learning here.
The only 3 general advice that come to my mind are :
1 - when you enter a trade you can't know for sure what to expect but you must know for sure what you don't want to see. If you see that exit don't wait.
2 - never enter a trade without a stop loss. It is an urban legend that the market is chasing stop loss order.
3 - never use your stop loss as an exit strategy. Your stop loss is like the airbag in your car. It makes you safer to have one but it not a reason to drive your car directly in the wall.
if you follow this 3 rules you won't be rich but at least you won't blow your account.
R.I.P. Olivier Terrier (aka "Okina"), 1969-2016.
Please visit this thread for more information.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
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There's obviously a potentially significant difference between "blowing an account up" and experiencing a near 100% drawdown. If I fund an account with 100k, then take out 5k/month for 2 years before "blowing the account up" in month 25 I'm still up $'s and have in reality only experienced a 45% drawdown despite "blowing the account up".
I'm curious when people say they've blown 2 or 3 accounts do they actually mean they got wiped out, meaning a near 100% drawdown?
I took 'blowing out' to mean what @Big Mike meant at the beginning, i.e. bring your account down to a level where you're unable to trade any longer, so in effects it means the account must have less than the minimum margin allowed to trade... in which case if I want to trade again I need to top up my account.... that definition of blowing out fits what I personally experienced.
I've just read again your question and now I think I understand better what you are asking.
In my earlier post I had indicated that in my case I had opened a very small account to begin with.
So it follows that with very small accounts the chances of 'blowing out' the account are pretty high, especially if you're classed as a beginner.
On the other hand, I believe it would be very unwise for a beginner to throw a lot of money into a newly opened account. In my case it would have probably made me more reckless.
Best to keep things small. There's always the psychological barrier of a margin call to deal with if I have a small account, so I'll try and avoid that.
Blowing accounts is self-destruction and self-sabotage.
The real emotional control is to stop the rational side of the brain when the emotional is not good. If you can do this, you can trade safely.