subject: Getting Started Trading Stocks - Don't Make the Same Rookie Mistakes I Did! [print this page] Getting Started Trading Stocks - Don't Make the Same Rookie Mistakes I Did!
Getting started trading stocks is a lot simpler if you can avoid some of the common rookie mistake. When I started out I made every classic beginner mistake there was and even invented some new mistakes along the way! Here are some of he things I did wrong. These are some pitfalls that you can hopefully sidestep and begin to trade stock profitably.
1 - I had no trading plan. I had money and I thought that was all that it took to make money in the markets. Take it from me, nothing could be further from the truth. If you had a friend come up to you and say give me $10,000 to trade stocks the first question you would probably ask them is, "How do you plan to do that?"
2 - I trusted the wrong people. I placed my faith in people who apparently did not know what they were doing. I am only assuming that they did not know what they were doing because they never, ever made me any money.
3 - I had the wrong set of expectations. One of my flawed expectations was that since I was so successful in other business ventures that being succesful in the stock market was a cinch. Boy, was I ever wrong. Profiting in the markets often requires a certain level of counter-intuitive thinking that you just don't learn in the standard world of business.
4 - I overtraded. It wasn't so much the frequency of my stock transactions, but the size of them. Every trade I placed was huge. This meant that my losses were not just pint-sized, they were catastrophic. My risk control was abysmal and because of that my trading results were as well.
5 - I had too much pride. There were many losing trades that I could have salvaged to make the losses bearable. Not wanting to admit that I was wrong quickly allow me to turn small losses into large losses and large losses to account-closing losses. One thing is for certain, if I learned nothing else I learned that the stock market is always right.
These are just o few of the many things I did wrong when I first got started. The list is made available to you so that you don't make the same rookie mistakes that I did. Learning from the mistakes of others is some of the best and least expensive knowledge that you are likely to acquire. Use what I have shared with you to your advantage.
