So, immediately after talking up a big game about not taking on too much risk I go and do the exact same thing the next day. Except this time I can't salvage the trade. I'm back dating this post because this really shook me up and made me feel like an idiot. Took me awhile to come back and write about my trades.
This one hurt and really made me question what I was doing. Ultimately this was a good thing because I needed to question myself for a long time now. While I did address several bad habits after blowing my account up there was still one critical thing I wasn't doing properly and that was risk management.
On August 24th, I expected the S&P 500 to have another down day and loaded up on puts to cash in on that. That didn't happen and by the time I realized I wasn't seeing a temporary spike I was already deep in the red. I thought I could just make quick trades and stay ahead of market movements but that clearly didn't pan out. I was painfully exposed when the market moved in the opposite direction of my trade.
This is where I realized that I can't count on the market to always fall in line with my theories. I needed to hedge my trades and always be prepared for a reversal. I will have to dedicate an entire post to this because it has so far kept me in the green since this day. Looking back in hindsight this possibly could be the greatest trade I've ever made.
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