Margin - One of the biggest mistakes one could make...
I have been learning about day trading for some time now. Looking back, I have already lost a pretty good amount. But when I analyzed my previous trades, I found a clue to why I'm losing big...
It's because of my trading with excessive leverage... I sometimes trade with margins above 20 and when I started, my average margin for each trade was like 10...
And know what, my win rate was low and risk-reward was 1:1 or sometimes while scalping, lower than that... No way why I was losing big... There were trades where I lost 10% of my account... And i continued doing that over and over again...
Now that i have matured a bit as a trader, i have understood the danger with big margins...
Nowadays, I never trade with leverage unless I am pretty sure I want to. And when I am leveraged, I make sure that my leverage for each stock doesn't go beyond 5.
Of course, when I win, I don't win extremely big as earlier and lose twice that winner later, I am happier now with fewer margins...
This is what I have to tell to people who have just started on their trading career, don't use big margins. Try them out and lose, that's the only way you learn. But don't overleverage. It's dangerous... Extremely dangerous...
I am also comparatively new to trading, but with my experience as of now, this is my opinion...