Nothing Hurts More Than a Missed Opportunity

How often do you hear it? Whether it be around a dinner table, scouring through the internet or even a quick chat with your friend, the spectacular returns made on a trade of a life time. Of course you feel a bit envious, don't we all but today I wanted to fess up and tell you about the trade I never took and what it feels like knowing the potential gains I could've had.

Naspers has had a phenomenal run over the past 5 years with a significant stake in the tech giant Tencent helping the price amass what can only be described as a rally made in heaven. No resistance can keep the price down and in saying that at the beginning of October there came a chance when the market selloff offered a bite at the cherry.

It's not very often that you see a momentum play such as this in oversold territory so the chance was there for the taking, yet my inability to act came from a piece of data I thought to be worrying. The price had reached an all time high of R 1474.95 some time in August of this year and the pullback that we were experiencing suggested that the lows being registered were over 20% from those highs.

Thinking that the sheer drop could trigger a sell off on epic proportions I stayed cleared, content with just watching from the sidelines. But as the market began to bottom out I once again started to show interest. Having been burned by Nasper on a few occasions in the past ( coincidentally going short rather than stick with the trend, another confession I wanna fess up too) I had an inclination towards not taking the trade. I consider it to be pure fear, yet a little over a month later I find it to be pure stupidity.

Although hindsight can be a perfect science, the fact that I had allowed my emotional response to act rather than my trading plan was justified to call it stupidity. The rules when it comes to trading is to trade what you see. I clearly got lost in the emotional mix of it and missed out on an opportunity.

I'm sure I'm not the only trader to have done this and I know I won't be the last. Missing out on movements like these can really put a dent on your confidence to trade.  However I like to use a bit of reverse psychology on myself and pat myself on the back for seeing the potential move and being satisfied with my predictions working out. But you should be mindful that the occurrence of these situations don't take place too often because if they do you need to question your emotions in the participation of taking trade.

Finally remember that opportunities such as these don't happen to often but that they will always appear. Knowing that your longevity in the market is a goal you wish to obtain should be enough motivation to ensure that the next time they come around you won't miss the boat or rather in this case the freight train.

If you would like to contact me you can through my email atcadetrader@gmail.com or if you wish to follow me on twitter and get the latest updates of news, interesting commentary and general trends in the market, my twitter handle is @CadeTradeR if you follow this link it’ll take you directly to my twitter timeline: https://twitter.com/CadeTradeR