Margin trading has me on edge
It's been three months since I used Bitmex and I can remember why. Compared to spot trading, margin trading is infinitely more stressful.
Compared to alternative forms of trading, this is by far the riskiest and I wonder how I was able to sustain it week after week. I think I was simply too ignorant of safe trading practices to properly understand what I was doing.
I almost find it inconceivable that I was safely pouring money I made at work into Bitmex each week, risking it all on positions that were made with little understanding of how the markets worked and of the risks involved. Granted, I did learn many lessons from it then and I've returned to it now with a much better sense for the markets and for the dynamics of the price, but no amount of knowledge is really enough to ensure a winning trade.
I check the prices every 10 minutes
On spot trading I'd only check the prices every hour or so, or perhaps even less. I'd usually check it when I'm doing a TA or when I'm monitoring for an opening to put a position in, but on margin trading I have a compulsion to look at it constantly. I'm always looking at my Bitcoinwisdom tab on my browser, which shows the prices just in the tab.
Trading can certainly draw out the paranoia in a man.
That being said, it certainly trains your resolve and makes you fight against your emotions. At every step of the way there is a desire to do something... to get in and fiddle. Add a little to your position here, sell a bit here, average up or down here or there. It's very hard to fight the habit of pulling your orders and just buying or selling on margin price, which is by far the worst way to trade.
I'm already regretting the sells I had placed at 9500, which filled as the price moved up. I really should have reserved half of that for the resistance up above, perhaps at 10k, but even then I might have been sitting at 9700, which means my averaging might have ended up roughly the same no matter what.
Fingers crossed that the price starts to fall soon!