Top 5 Live Trading Losses

And What We Can Learn From Them

Analysing The Trades

Alright, something a bit different today. There’s a video called Top 5 YouTuber Live Trading Losses With Reactions that has over 3 million views. (Tells you something about humans huh!) It shows 5 different traders reacting to losses they took whilst trading live on YouTube.

So in this post, I want to see what we can learn from them. I want to be clear, I’m not making fun of these guys, but using it as education for other traders, I’m sure these traders would want people to learn from their mistakes…

Traders lose trades, it’s guaranteed.

Occasionally you’re going to get a big hit (I’ve had more than my fair share along the way), but how you respond is important. I’ll make comment from a place of education and opinion. No judgement or ‘woulda shoulda coulda’ nonsense. I know full well how you respond in the heat of the moment can be very different from a logical post-trade analysis.

Ok, here’s the video:

#5 Meir Barak

Takes a long on TSLA. Initially in profit, it then reverses, and he gets hit for -$38k

Mistakes:

  • Looking and trading his P&L and not price
  • Ignoring his stop loss
  • Starting to consider the daily chart on his 1-minute trade

Meir flip-flops back and forth with his stop.

“Getting ready to stop it”
“Oh I do NOT move out on spikes”

So he ignores his stop and then tries to justify the trade by looking at the daily chart… Then again by mentioning the gap fill.

I think that creating the “I do not move out on spikes” justification for not sticking to a stop loss really started this whole catalogue of errors.

That chink in the armour and ambiguity is all that’s needed sometimes to break the rule.

#4 Max Santtia

Sadly I think this is just gambling taking large overnight risks. By trading these option plays overnight, he’s given up all risk control.

Not much to say on this one. Hopefully, he knew the rules of the game and played it willingly. This time he lost.

#3 Patrick Wieland

First, he misses a fill which annoys him. You can see and hear the frustration. That sets the emotional stage for his next error…

He then just misses a fill on his short exit, and covers at BE only to see it dive lower shortly after. You can see the frustration build…

NOTE: At this point, he has no real loss, just missed trades. He had time to regather his thoughts and refocus.

But, potentially out of frustration he then FLIPS his thesis to long, only to get completely hammered by a large down move.

Mistakes:

  • Getting emotional over missed fills
  • Changing his thesis too quickly
  • Not having a pre-defined stop/exit point

#2 Trader Tom

Tom’s a good guy, I’ve had him on the podcast before.

He trades SIZE and is happy to take the big wins with the occasional big loss. He makes money over time and this is part of the game for him.

Anyway – in this trade he’s long Nasdaq £300pp

Notice how he’s frustrated and annoyed (he’s human)

He grimaces for a second at the camera and then a wave of peace comes over his expression.

  • Feel the pain
  • Reset
  • Move on

I actually don’t think that loss is very big for him, he takes his circa £12k medicine and gets on with the job. A professional.

#1 Chancey1979

He starts with a reasonable reason for taking the trade and seems calm.

‘Cheering’ on the trade is a red flag, that’s the first sign of emotional attachment to a trade. Then something happens, it looks like news to me. Price spikes a bit and then moves sharply lower.

At this point, it’s only a few cents under his buy. He could hit sell, suffer some slippage and probably bail with a paper cut. But he freezes – a deer in headlights and price then moves massively lower on him.

I don’t know what actually happened in the end, but he’s down about $1300 at that point, which isn’t the end of the world.

Hopefully, it didn’t halt and get delisted… This guy is way too emotional and didn’t seem to have a clear risk plan. Plus what sort of internet feed was he using? Dial-up?!

So there we have it, what have we learnt?

  1. As traders we WILL have losers, it’s how we manage those and respond that’s important.
  2. You cannot get over-emotional in the markets, that’s when big mistakes happen.
  3. Risk management must be pre-defined and stuck to. (Tom’s the only one who got stopped and took his loss!)

Day trading is unforgiving. If you’re trading in size and don’t make a quick decision to cut that loser you can be heavily underwater in seconds.