The Pleb in Me: How I got REKT at the start of my crypto trading journey —
Pt.1
If you at all believe that you don’t need to read through this, to hear and understand someones mistakes — if you feel that you will be the expectation to the statistics — you are 100% on a path to get completely fucking washed out. Pride comes before a fall. Here are some of the mistakes I made and how you can make them too, just hopefully with loss than I sustained:
100% of first and 85% of second account blown out.
Mistake #1: Trading on leverage
My first exchange was BitMEX. That is honestly all that needs to be said. Don’t do that. Leverage is like a Ferrari. If you know how to handle it it’s a fucking great ride. But you don’t. Fuck, you’re brand new, you don’t even know how to drive a car to begin with. Trade spot positions first.
Mistake #2: Repeating Mistake #1 after taking a big loss
I’m not kidding.
Mistake #3: Taking trades off of charts from people on crypto twitter
Oh this random fuck with a [insert random animal/anime/gaming character/Jedi Master] profile pic said _____ is a buy. Well he’s (it?) has a lot of followers so he MUST know what he is doing!”
I did it. You have done it.
And it’s stupid as fuck.
Yes I made money from this. Yes you could make money from this. But you can also get REKT in many ways. News flash — no one is posting a chart until AFTER they have bought what they are posting. Little do you know (because you might not know shit about trading) that their ‘safe entry’ is actually where they are taking profit and you are getting fucked.
Is this cynical and not usually the case? Yeah. But trading is a zero sum game, meaning for you to win, someone else is losing. As such, trading only off of someone else’s calls is like playing poker and you always have your cards available for the other person to see. You’re someone else’s bitch.
Don’t be someone’s bitch. Use respected traders charts to compare and contrast against your own. Use them to learn new aspects of TA. If you see something you don’t understand or disagree with fucking google that shit and study up.
Mistake #4: Not having a trading plan
You should not be in a trade unless you know at least these 3 BASIC things
Your risk
Your target
Your stop loss
If you don’t know all 3 you have no business being a trade. No discussion on this.
“But how do you know those things?!?”
You fucking google ‘how to trade’ or some shit and you teach yourself. There are many crypto twitter traders that have put out fantastic amounts of information. A few are mentioned here, which is also a resource I made in itself. There will be more of these in the future.
Mistake #5: Chasing price
This goes right along with Mistake #4. If you don’t have a plan you will be emotionally swayed to enter into a trade anytime you see price moving. You don’t really know yet if this is the right trade to take (because you have no plan) so you market buy in. It’s ok though, because price continues to go up. You’re a new god, the young money that has it all figured out.
They the MM slams price down past your entry and then support breaks (do you even know if that was support?) and all the sudden price is in free-fall. Oh and you’re on leverage. And cross margin. (Your whole account is used as margin and could get liquidated). Oh and you don’t understand risk management so your position was already like 35% of your account. You get liquidated for your whole account by just $2 before price turns around and goes up and up for days.
Don’t chase price.
(This was how I blew out my first entire account by the way)
Trading is a battle between against yourself more than anything. You have to master YOU. Each of these mistakes so far comes down to you as a person. They are, at their core, mistakes of ego.
Check that shit at the door.
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