How My Own Trading Mistakes Cost Me My Funded Account
Today, my prop firm funded account was breached because of some repetitive mistakes.
I'm sharing them because I know many traders are making the same mistakes and struggling to overcome them. Hopefully, my experience can help someone avoid repeating them.
1. Taking trades based on emotions
Whenever I opened the chart and my analysis was correct but I missed the entry, I would enter because of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Most of those trades ended up hitting my stop loss.
That loss made me angry, and then I would take another trade to recover the previous loss. That trade would often hit my SL too.
2. Revenge trading
It didn't happen every time, but I did revenge trade. I wanted to "take revenge" on the market after a loss, and that mindset only led to more losses.
3. Not sticking to one strategy
I kept trying different strategies in search of better results. But I never committed enough time to mastering one strategy.
No strategy will give you a 100% win rate. Instead of constantly switching strategies, I should have focused on understanding and mastering one setup.
4. Not following my Risk-to-Reward plan
Most of my trades had a 1:4 or 1:5 Risk-to-Reward ratio. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I wasn't consistently profitable and didn't have enough confidence in my setup.
Looking back, around 50% of my trades reached at least 1:2 R:R, but I kept waiting for 1:4 or 1:5. Many of those trades eventually reversed and turned into losses.
If I had followed a realistic 1:2 target based on my strategy and backtesting, I might have avoided some of those losses.
5. Not backtesting enough
I wasn't confident while taking trades because I hadn't done enough backtesting on my setup.
Because I didn't have enough historical data to trust my strategy, I ended up taking random trades.
These are the 5 major mistakes I made that contributed to my funded account breach.
If you're a trader, take a moment to look at your own trading journal and ask yourself:
Are you making the same mistakes repeatedly?
I use Tradez Log to track my trades, mistakes, emotions, rules, and performance. Journaling doesn't automatically make you profitable, but it can help you identify the patterns that are holding you back.
Learn from your mistakes before they become expensive lessons.
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