How to Handle Failing and How to Get Back Up
After all of my studying, practicing and attempts at financial freedom I finally passed the TopstepTrader Trading Combine and got my funded account!
Check out my results below!
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I was ready to start my new life and marked the calendar for the day I would fully transition into a Day Trader.
I was at the peak of my life, I felt, and nothing could stop me.
But guess what happened next?
Here is the The Situation
7:00 AM ET
I was sitting at home one morning, just two weeks back to work from paternity leave.
You should know, the first time I got funded for my TopstepTrader account, my first child was born the DAY BEFORE my Squawk Radio interview!
I was a funded TopstepTrader and a new father! I was on top of the world.
It was Unemployment day for the month and I was trading the 30 Year Bond.
My wife needed some rest so I decided to take care of the baby for the morning so she could stay in bed.
8:20 AM ET
My 2 week old daughter is whaling and crying on my shoulder.
I decide to place a Buy Limit Order above the overnight range and a Sell Stop Order below the range.
My plan was to console my newborn while Unemployment numbers were released. If the Bonds exploded, I would make the money with my limit order, if they crashed I would bank with the collapse and my short order.
Folks, this is the lesson I learned.
“It is completely against the rules of the Funded Trader Agreement to be in a trade one minute before and after a major announcement. I, of course, broke that rule. This was the price I paid.”
There is a reason for these rules.
8:30 AM ET
The Unemployment numbers are released, my baby is crying on my shoulder and I am glued to the screen. Orders in place.
Whipsaw
Something I have only heard about but have never really seen in a live market situation.
The Whipsaw
At the instant of the Unemployment release the Bonds shot up in a split second and triggered my buy order, shot down the next second and sold at a far lower price!
I didn’t even have time to react. I hit the daily loss limit and my trading platform was remotely shut down.
All that was left was a private message from John Hoagland in the Team TST chat room:
“Really bad idea.”
8:45 AM ET
John called me a few minutes later and informed me that my TopstepTrader Funded account has been revoked.
If you ever get a call from this man, as I hope you all do when you get funded, you can put a voice to this conversation. A deep, late night radio voice of a man with age and experience telling you the world the way it is.
Having a man like him tell you, “What were you thinking? It’s unemployment day!” Can really make you feel down.
How To Handle Failure
When I lost my account I was devastated!
Am I going to have to slave away at my current job for the rest of my life?
Will I always be in debt?
Those were my first reactions.
But what I learned to do, after sleeping on it, was learn from the experience.
The team at TopstepTrader want you to succeed. John told me on the phone,
“Well, I hope you have learned a lot from this experience.”
And I absolutely did.
I wrote down what I did that day and what lead me to place that trade in my trading journal.
I took it for what it was, committed myself to not making that mistake again and decided to retake the Trading Combine.
Be True To Yourself
“The road to success is filled with failure.”
You will fail.
There will be events in your life that make you think all is lost. But these situations happen for you to learn from them!
If you do not make the effort to learn from them then you are bound to make the same mistakes again and again until you learn that lesson.
This is especially true with trading.
Get back up and try again.
The option to re-test for TopStepTrader is always there.