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Just a vent / rant here. How do you guys that have been doing this for a long time deal with this?
Shortly after market open, I placed a short on /ZS. I was stopped out . . . no big deal, the was well within my risk tolerance. Shortly thereafter I reentered short. I was expecting a big day to the downside based on a few things. Everything was going well when I screwed up and closed the position with an inadvertent mouse click. Some would say no harm no foul as I had made back my earlier loser and a small (very small) profit. If I had stayed in the trade it would have been a killer. So frustrating. I shut down the platform after that as I was pissed and didnt want to try and get back into it while I was mad. Soooo . . . I have been fuming about it all day . . . any advice from the vets?
Fat Finger things happen to everyone...unless you enter and then physically sit on your hands...which is often an excellent idea....
But you did the right thing. NEVER trade angry. Just get up and walk away. If you calm down and are able to trade responsibly, get back to it after a while but generally, anger will kill your account.....
My two pennies worth.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
When you "expecting a big day to the downside " and you "closed the position with an inadvertent mouse click" then you reentry the position after your faux pas again. Why do you scrub your trading plan due to a nervous twitch of your finger?
Well, this is part of trading and will happen over and over again.
If your trading plan is set to a fixed target and once in a trade your target is reached, everything's fine and just move on, because you didn't make any mistake !
Don't look back and mess with the markets because you 'missed' a 100 tick move or whatever and 'leaving a lot of money on the table', just shrug it off and wait for your next setup, the markets will always be there for you.
And think about the 'other side'...if you had left a runner in place instead of taking profit on a fixed target, what about if the trade suddenly turned against you and your runner got stopped out at cost or with a small loss ?
How would you feel if this scenario happened ? You'd think that you should have taken your profit as the market presented it to you...
So, what I'm trying to say is that there will be no perfect solution for every trade you take....you always have to decide whether you take profit at a predefined target or go for the home run, with the full consciousness of having a scratch trade or a more or less small loser if things are getting worse...
And as @PandaWarrior already mentioned, please WALK AWAY from your charts if you feel angry after ANY 'bad trade' or missing that obvious (in hindsight !) home run.
I'm confused, how was walking away from your PC, after a fat finger mistake, doing the right thing? The right thing would be to get back in the trade immediately after your mistake, per your defined trading plan. Maybe you did not notice the mistake for a while?
You'll make mistakes a lot in trading. The WORST thing you can do is compound a mistake by making another mistake (in this case, your second mistake was not following your trading plan).