Lost some money on bitcoin over the weekend. I had a good position, took it off, made about $200, and then I was mad that I missed some of a larger move. We broke 10k, looked like institutional investors were coming in. I thought for sure we would go to 10,400 but it stalled out around 10,150. I bought back in and then I didn't respect my stop loss. And then it turned around and I lost all my profits and then some.
What was my mistake?
My big mistake was ignoring my long-term goal. I had profits and I took them, and then instead of saying "this is good enough" I thought "I think I can get more!" despite the less-than-perfect timing on my exit. My second big mistake was not respecting my stop loss. My third big mistake was trading while I was really tired and generally not taking care of myself, so my head wasn't clear.
Today: NG dropped a lot over night. Closed at 1.849 and opened today around 1.776. I had a strong voice in my head telling me to trust my pessimism. We'll see if that voice is correct, but I'm trusting my pessimism and trying to take a careful position.
There are two lessons I need to learn and the one I'm going to focus on this week is trusting my stop loss. I really don't like doing this. Before I've been punished for leaving a position too early, but I think this is different because I'm also picking my entries more carefully and I have day trades available. I think in general it makes sense to have a hard stop of $200 and a soft stop slightly higher than that, maybe around $125 in case it was a risky trade. But I've gotta get used to trusting my stops or else I just hand over too much money.
I also need to establish rules about holding over night, because I'm not going to *never* do that. Something to think about.
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