im 19, trading for 8 months. Learned an expensive lesson about greed this week.
I started with intraday trading first. Had a good run for a while, but I wasn’t disciplined about stop losses, and eventually gave a lot of that profit back. Switched to swing trading about 3 months ago, thinking a slower pace would suit me better.
For a while, it worked. I was recovering at a solid pace, felt like I’d actually learned something from the intraday phase.
Then three days ago, one greedy decision wiped out 15% of my capital again. Same mistake, same cycle, just a different strategy this time. No stop loss discipline, held on longer than I should have, convinced myself “it’ll come back.”
It didn’t.
What gets me is that I know the rule. Set a stop loss, respect it, don’t let one trade decide your month. I just didn’t follow my own rule when it actually mattered, again.
I’m not looking for stock tips. I’m trying to understand the psychology side of this, because clearly the technical knowledge isn’t the problem, my execution and discipline is.
For those who’ve traded longer than me, how did you actually fix this in yourself? Was it a system, a rule you forced on yourself, or did something just click after enough losses?
Genuinely trying to learn from this instead of just moving on and repeating it a third time.
Post locked because it is a duplicate. Not deleted to preserve the conversation. Take it to the other thread.
Bro that’s gambler’s fallacy. “I lost but I’ll win it back” is how people ruin lives. Go for like, safe long term stocks or something
If there was a way to predict how stocks would move, then I think it’s more likely the people with billions of dollars of computers, ai, and low latency connections to the market are going to figure it out and extract that money.
Like a casino, you may win once in a while, but on average most people lose. Who do you think pays for those Manhattan offices?
What you are doing is hoping that you will come out ahead by pure random chance, because any actual algorithm or pattern has already been predicted and detected by someone with much more money and influence than you.
Or you have insider information. Which of course isn’t very legal and OP is likely not important enough to get away with it.
Mate you answered it in the heading “greed”. Just be tougher on yourself to stick to it. Also, is your CGT a bitch during tax time? At least the losses offset your CG so it’s not all bad lol
