The Biggest Trading Blunder I Made and What I Learned

I think a lot of traders have made mistakes they wish they could redo. For me, it was listening to friends who acted like they knew everything without doing my own digging. A buddy would tell me, "Get this coin now, it's gonna skyrocket in a few days or months," and without a second thought, I'd jump in no research, no plan, no strategy, just blind buying. Sure, sometimes I made some cash off these coins, but more often than not, they would crash hard, leaving me back at square one. Those losses hurt, but they taught me a few lessons that I think are super important to share, especially for newbies on the same journey. Here’s what I learned: 1) Don’t just follow signals blindly, take your time to check and verify them. 2) Always do your own research (DYOR), it helps build your confidence and gives you control. 3) FOMO and panic selling can be really risky. Better to stay patient and disciplined. 4) And finally, never invest more than you can afford to lose.

Many mistakes are made by many traders and those mistakes are what have build them to be more cautious when investing or trading any crypto in the market. Blindly following your friends is one of the many mistakes many traders make especially when they trust these their friends so much and already showing themselves as successful traders where in the actual sense, they’re just lucky traders trying to build a community to also benefit from. They make this a success through telling their friends and community that they can give out good signals to make you profitable also without following the stress they’ve passed through. Always do your own research and always make choices that will make you be at a safer side, by investing with the amount you can afford to lose since the market is unpredictable and can make you lose everything if you invested too big and loss everything at a trial.

Most traders are losing big time. That's why many of them are learning in the end and tell what they should do. And this is also the reason why many traders shift from one to being a holder. It's hassle-free and you don't have to look out at the market most time. But the assets that you'll hold should be known and trustworthy, and mainly, that's with Bitcoin. As you folks are going to learn about the mistakes you did in trading, we also have our own fair share about the lessons that we've got from there and that's why we choose what's profitable in the long run and that's holding rather than trading.

I don't know if you have come across the abbreviation DYOR? It means Do your own research and as the name implies, it is your duty to find out about the coins being recommended to you and see if they are worth your money or not. You have to own up to the decision and not swallow your friend's advice hook and sinker. You cannot go far in trading and investment if you have not find a way of making your decision independently. Don't continue to beat yourself up because we all made one or two mistakes on our journey. Just take the lesson from those mistakes and do better.

Mistakes are normal, even those highly successful traders these days have certainly made a lot of mistakes way back then that taught them how to improve their trading performance and get more motivation to keep going despite of the consistent losses at first. Personally, the best lesson I’ve come to learned from all my past mistakes is that, never give up easily from trading. You could lose a lot, get frustrated a lot, but remember, there’s no easy beginning. All comes with risk and hardship, so if you can overcome all those trading threats, you’ll definitely win in the end, but if you chose to quit at the middle of your trading career, then you’ll always be the loser. Quitters never win, while winners never quit.

We have all been there - trusting your "expert" friends without looking into things yourself.  I definitely made that mistake plenty of times when I first got into altcoins.  Heck, I even got lucky on occasion, hitting it big on some random new coin my friend tipped me off on.  But those wins just covered for my bad habit of not verifying info and doing my own research. Of course, eventually my luck ran out and I got burned badly.  The losses were rough but you know what? They taught me to smarten up and  now before I put a cent into anything, I dig into it myself online to understand what Im getting into. Basically do my due diligence. So yeah, we all make mistakes starting out and maybe luck into some beginners gains.  But real growth comes from getting burned and changing your habits.

This often gets the better or every trader. It's an emotional thing. It's subjective, and for that it's not easy to manage. Sometimes, one won't even know when one hits the button for trade execution. It's involuntary for most people, a reflex action they've no control over. Each time I read about FOMO, I remember my incident with BNB in 2017 and how I naively sold off because of FUD. FUD is the opposite of FOMO, by the way. By the way, OP I hope you're putting all the points you listed to practice and not just theorize them. A step every day at trading and keeping the rules, is a step in the right direction. For me, I've come to realize in trading that profitable traders aren't traders who don't lose but those who keep more profits than losses.

I don't see you talking about Risk Management, and yet it's the backbone of trading. While we are majorly looking at the profits that we might make out of potential trades, it is equally very important to look at the risk part of the trade just in case thing do not go as expected. How do you minimize losses minus blowing off your account or the small profits you had initially made?

Number one is the main reason why some people are stuck on their journey and they don't even know it, relying on signals can affect your growth as a trader because you would not chase knowledge to know more you'd just focus on making profit. This mentality is what can take you off track, as a beginner or intermediate trader your main focus should be learning and building your strategy, copy trading wouldn't help you

I can relate here, especially if you have high screen time on social media, sometimes you will see some so-called "profitable traders" and them sharing some thoughts or some signals about buy or sell. Always be aware on these, like not all what you see in the internet or even how reputable them or how many followers they got are not 100%.

There are contradictions like you are confusing trading with your mistakes of falling for a pump&dump manipulations. Still, the lessons you have listed are good and discussed on this board for years. Lessons are lessons but how you learn is the point here. You may learn them by heart through watching other people or by spending only small capital. No lessons are learnt by beginners without their own mistakes which is the biggest curse of trading. I mean, if you want to learn a lesson of life time, you must burn your own fingers. Trading is a mixed life of ups and downs but how you that minimize downs part is the catch here. You can paper trade and practice like a real trading to learn all the lessons for free of cost still how dedicated you are will define your learning process and then your success rate with actual capital.

You have good points, and anyone who follows them will at least limit the level of their exposure to danger in trading/investing. But at the same time, thanks to you confessing to be profiting from the signals blindly given by your friend and external sources, I'm afraid, that's how it would be for your own signal results too, except you are exceptional. Are you exceptional? The answer lies with you. However, what I appreciate most here is one's experience, it's better to DYOR than to solely rely on others. After all, if you lose, you lose honourably, not that someone else will make you lose. That's cowardice! But for the result, it's not a guarantee that it will change.

A biggest lesson you must learn while you did not learn as you did not mention in your post, is Don't Trade. In your post, you also mix Trading and Investing. Trading is dangerous even you are trading Bitcoin that is a strongest and safest cryptocurrency. If you trade Bitcoin with Leverages and Futures, not happy ending is waiting for your trading positions. So let's avoid trading as most as possible.

The last point hits very different and also so true. People often get caught up in their greed and invest much more than they are prepared to lose. They just can’t be happy with the potential returns they currently have and that’s why they either use leverage or risk their life savings on a very risky asset and that’s a recipe for a disaster. Instead of chasing get rich quick schemes, getting wealthy slowly is a much safer approach. Nobody has time for slow and safe sadly. Everybody wants something for nothing and they want it right fucking now. Not next year, not next week, not tomorrow. Pure insanity if you ask me.

I prefer the fourth one that you mentioned which is that traders should not use more than the amount of money they can afford to lose. This is very true as those altcoins are very risky. The best coins to trade is still bitcoin. If you can use low leverage and buy during bull market, do not sell if you are losing and be patient.

No analysis, rushing to buy and not having a plan in trading will not make anyone successful. Generally people think practically and do not want to learn to improve their trading skills and in the end they end up in the same condition, which is experiencing failure in varying amounts of losses. If you only rely on your friend's advice to buy a certain coin then one's steps are not taking the right approach because they do not know how the coin performs in the market. Many mistakes are made by beginners and for me it doesn't matter, as long as the mistake is used as a lesson to improve because then we can be much better in making decisions without rushing. FOMO and hype can destroy one's trading if one does not have a view before making a purchase.

It's a very good thing that you have learnt your lesson from the experience you have gathered, because I know for a fact that most people will keep on doing the same thing over and over again without learning anything from it. What mostly cause beginners trader to lose money in the market is mostly due to ignorance, they always venture into the market blindly, and when the trade goes against them they starts feeling regret. And one terrible thing about trading is that you can make a fortune from trading in a week or a month, but lack of knowledge and skills in the craft can make you lose everything including your capital in a single trade, so that why seeking knowledge and doing your own research because diving into the market is of essence.

One of my biggest mistakes in the past was being very reluctant to use stop losses, always thinking the price will bounce back so just wait, until when I realized the drop was already very deep and the coin was just dust. Day traders must be willing to set a loss limit or they will get stuck as holders and the dangerous thing is they hold altcoins that sometimes never recover in price.

Signals are a gross mistake to get into. You should never trust someone else's words for your own money. Do your own research and invest in what you can afford to lose, not more than that. The more you try to increase your capital while you are losing the more helpless you will become. There needs to be a balance between trading and holding. The rest of the points explain that clearly. FOMO is an instant no-no. All shitcoins have grown only due to FOMO and no organic development.

I will admit that when I was still a newbie, I follow these free signals that I see on Telegram and on Discord. Overall, I lost on most of them although I will not say that I didn't got some winning trades. Despite of that, I would still prefer learning to read the charts myself than relying on other people's signals. I'd rather rely on my own signal than others. As for DYOR, I don't do this TBH. If you're a trader, what you will focus is what's been seen on the charts, and what's been on the news. Another one is that, you don't need to do research if you're trading those top coins out there. What you need is a working strategy and that's it. For the 3rd one, unfortunately there will always be impatient and un-disciplined traders that's why they're losing money in trading. Panic selling is very hard to avoid especially if you don't have a strategy or plan. As for the 4th one, that's a phrase that I've heard a million times already. Well, just to add on it, I also want to say that don't use leverage if you aren't ready to lose. We've seen a billion worth of liquidation when the US hit Iran just a few days ago. That's a perfect example of "don't use leverage if you aren't ready to lose money".