One day in October 2020, if I remember correctly, I was lying on a bed without sheets, staring at the white wall with no decoration. There were some things scattered on the floor, and during those days, I had nothing more than a laptop, my Chinese brand Android, a few bills to get by, and a huge emptiness like what some call loneliness, unease, despair... I had a bad symptom of apathy and had lost 90% of my usual motivation to do and fulfill my work.
I was trapped in a reality that perhaps I hadn't explored, even though in the past I had been in a very similar physical space, if it's valid to count those youth days when we want independence but have nothing more than pennies to put a roof over our heads. In the present, things had a more emotional tone, with a longer story, which was obvious since about 20 years had passed since my youth, and the world had tossed me around in different ways, as if wanting to prepare me for the most difficult. Facing and knowing myself in the deepest way and consequently that dark part I had not paid attention to.
I started with a binary broker that isn't worth mentioning, but perhaps many already know which one it is. Let's say it's the first offer you see as plausible and easy due to all the advertising it does to attract LIQUIDITY.
I put in 40 USD trying to recover the first 10 that the advertisement claimed, however, to my surprise, nothing resembled the promotional videos except for the chart, then everything began to change.
In a month, I had lost those 50 and had already deposited 100 more; I thought the problem was the little money, so expanding the amount was what occurred to me.
And you know what happened, right? I lost it, and my face turned so red that I felt ants stinging my cheeks. I lay down on the bed, cursed, and got so angry without knowing what was happening and that the worst was yet to come.
In the following weeks, I kept depositing 10, and although I was losing, I started to improve in some basic aspects like DETERMINING the exposure time of the trades and calculating the bet amount, because I really saw it that way; all I had to do was define if it would go up or down, and after watching so many YouTube videos where they win so easily, I questioned whether I was capable of achieving it.
One time, I had 18 dollars and started making 1 dollar trades. I saw how I reached 20, 30, 40, and so on until I hit 100 USD. I must confess that in some trades I risked 100% with a 1-minute expiration, and by fate and what had to happen, I ended up reaching 100 USD. That was the worst thing that could happen to me.
I never withdrew the 100 because after believing that finally, after 2 or 3 weeks of learning, I had managed to become the profitable trader from the YouTube video or the broker's advertisement.
From then on, there were more times I borrowed, and then I started winning and improving my entries; however, even though my entry strategies were profitable and met the forecast, I kept losing at the end of the day or even just starting out, I was already wiped out.
What happened then if I already had the entries mastered? Well, even though that was the case, there was something stronger than an indicator, DOUBT.
Emotions became my downfall; I realized I was fearful and greedy, a combination of two factors that, when mixed, generate a rapid loss of capital.
Therefore, developing self-control became a difficult problem to solve, as the loss was compounded by the eagerness to recover what was lost, which ended up accelerating the loss of all my money.
When I realized it, I was in debt, borrowing to keep throwing money stupidly into senseless trades, without analysis, with amounts that compromised the budget in large percentages, and instead of returning what it took from me, I ended up accelerating the negative outcome that left me close to going crazy from the responsibilities and my poor management that cornered me in a dead-end alley full of debts, unable to cope, daily expenses, rent, and I won't continue because I would end up making a paragraph of loose words and commas.
This left me with a very important and bitter lesson that ultimately makes sense: first, measure the capital; second, learn to stop when necessary, have a trading plan respecting every aspect; third, do not over-leverage and use stop loss; and the best of all, which I now practice, is to trade in SPOT at the lower part of the RSI if buying and at the upper part of the RSI if selling.
Something else I learned was to accumulate in a specific currency until waiting for a positive price change and sell. Here the risk is minimal; it’s just a matter of analyzing and waiting for the difference to take profits.
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