Common beginner mistakes

Almost every blown account comes from the same short list. None of them are analytical errors — they are behavioural ones, which is good news, because behaviour can be systemised.

Taking trades because you are bored, because you feel you should be doing something, or because you want to make back a slow week. Costs accumulate, quality collapses, and attention thins out across too many positions.

• Fix: define in writing what your setup looks like, and cap yourself at 1–3 trades a day.

Immediately re-entering after a loss, usually bigger, to 'get it back'. The market has no memory of your last trade, but your sizing and judgement now do — this is how a 1% loss becomes a 15% day.

• Fix: a hard rule to stand up and stop for the day after two consecutive losses or -3%.

Usually justified as 'I'll watch it'. What actually happens is the loss grows past the point where closing it feels acceptable, and the trade becomes an investment you never wanted.

• Fix: the order is not valid until the stop field is filled in. No exceptions, ever.

Trading 1.0 lots on a $500 account because the margin allows it. One normal retracement produces a margin call. The setup may even have been correct — the size made it impossible to survive being right slowly.

• Fix: calculate volume from the 1% rule before every entry. If the answer is below your broker's minimum, the account is too small for that stop distance.

The single most expensive habit in retail trading. Once you widen a stop you have abandoned the plan and taken an unlimited-risk position with no defined exit.

• Fix: stops may only ever move in the direction of profit.

Without a record you cannot tell whether the strategy is failing or your execution is. Most traders discover their edge was fine and their management was not.