The set of possible trading errors is seemingly infinite. Yesterday's post said I entered a conditional order to short another contract if price drops below 600 3/4, which I did. Subsequently, price dropped to a low of 598 1/2 but our order didn't fire off.
After some investigation I figured out why. I entered a Market order with a condition. It turns out on the Interactive Brokers Trader's Workstation, Market orders cannot work after hours. If you want your order to work after hours you must use a Sell Stop order. Lesson learned.
A trader must master at least 4 different domains:
- Trading Platform
- Technical Analysis
- Money Management
- Psychology
Make a mistake in any one of them and you can lose real money. And retail traders normally trade alone. So no one can say, "hey man, you know Market orders won't trigger after hours right?". And all those possible errors are in addition to the expected percentage of orders that will fail even if you do everything right.
I love trading but wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
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