Dear BBT community,
My contribution to BBT has been minimal, so I thought I would share my experience which I thought might be helpful to others.
I have a maximum loss risk control in place to prevent me from overtrading, but on Friday it saved me from a situation which I had never considered.
I presume it may have emptied my account if there was not some form of risk control in place. I am still trading very small and my risk controls are very tight so the numbers concerned were very small, but it made me aware of a situation which could arise at any time in the future.
I was in a LONG position of Friday, when I hit my hotkey to exit 25% of my position, this initiated what I can only assume was a keyboard malfunction ( sticky hotkey?) which continued to short 25% of my position. Within 2 seconds (and 58 tickets later) my system has shorted me out of my position and into a new an ever increasing (25% per ticket) SHORT position.
My spread costs eventually reached my max loss for the day which automatically initiated the closure of my position and got me out with a loss off 4 X my max loss for the day.
As I said above getting into the position took 2 seconds, which then activated the automatic closure of the position which took another 5 seconds to complete. I only became aware of what had happened when it was all over.
My point is that even for those who feel that they have their emotions under control and feel that they may not need a risk controls, these controls can cover you in the event of a power failure or loss of internet or in this case a hardware malfunction. Without that or some sort of risk control in place I can only imagine how that scenario would have ended.
I am eternally grateful for all the knowledge and experience that is shared in this community that has helped me on my journey. I can only hope that sharing this experience may help someone out there in future.
