Worst mistakes that you can make on a trade!

Alright so yesterday was a complete mess for me,

I traded VRA, which I shouldn't have in the first place, but ill get into it later explaining why I should have entered it and every mistake Ive made.


So I was looking at it at the open saw the good spike reaction to earnings and was waiting for an opportunity, so far so good.


this is how I saw it :



right after this first candle, I forgot everything I learned and assumed that this was the top, without anyyyy indicator pointing at it, mistake number 1.

I got in long after this candle broke, with no risk level, mistake 2!

After it broke out, it went down to 14.2 and + the big spread, I took a loss of 0.4 cent, the good thing here was that I took the loss..



moving on I was sticking to my plan and waiting for a top to be made and this is what I saw :



I was waiting for this top to crack and have a nice good breakout, NOW this is the worst mistake.

if you look at the chart, you see no good risk level to play off of it, only 14.8 and 14.4 are looking like good supports, when the entry is at 15.47, the closest one is 14.8 and that's a 0.5 cent stop which I NEVER USE because its too big for me, I like somewhere between 0.10 and 0.15 stops for best risk.

I totally ignored this and used just a simple 0.15 mind stop loss, mistake number 3!

when the breakout happened, I not only did enter the trade, I chased my entry and entered at 15.60 instead of 15.47 !!! missed by 0.13 cent. mistake number 4!

after going 0.2 cents for me, I didn't take profits because I was greedy, and wanted to cover my loss, It spiked down and gave me another loss of about 0.20 cent..

this is how it looked: (red line is breakout level and my stop)





It crossed it for a minute and after that kept going for another 1.5 $ ...



Major lessons that Ive need to remind myself before every trade are:


1.Don't guess the top! never try to guess the top, let the chart play out and give you the best setups!


2. don't chase the entry if you missed it, many more will come its not the end of the world!


3.take profits when you have them and you feel like taking them, its better to take a profit then to take a loss.


4.ALWAYS go into a trade with a plan, I usually do! but this time I don't know what happened, I wasn't in the right mindset to trade I guess and the fact the I haven't traded for two days made me think that I HAVE to play this one not to miss out.

5.Cut losses when the stock is reaching your stop point, don't let ego and hope to play the game for you.