How I lost 4.1 BTC because the Bitfinex hack and what to do next? Update: It was my fault.

The beginning of this post was copied from a previous article under the same title. I tried editing the original but it would not let me so I copied and pasted the original here. After reading my original post I was embarrassed by the level of negative emotion I put in it, as a professional trader one should never be emotional when trading and after reading my post it was obvious I was extremely emotional and I apologize for that. My update is at the end of this article and there I describe what went wrong.

Today was the worst trading day of my life. I have been a serious trader for several years but I have never been ruined like this in a trade. After setting up a trade and hitting my first target with decent profit I let the second half of my trade ride like I always do. I always set stop losses when trading but for some reason my stop loss did not trigger this time during the crash. In addition, on the Kraken exchange, I have a limited amount of margin just in case price cascades through my stop loss. Unfortunately Kraken did not close my trades like they are supposed to when I reached my margin limit. As price cascaded Kraken allowed my account to fall -3.5 BTC under my margin requirement. Any other exchange would close my trades as soon as my margin liquidation limit was reached but not Kraken. Not only did my stop loss not trigger on the Kraken exchange, they also allowed my account to fall way below my margin liquidation requirement (-3.5 BTC) before closing my trades on the crash. This is extremely frustrating and daunting at the same time because I always protect my self with stop losses in case something like this happens. I have now lost faith in crypto and the Kraken exchange.

So what do I do next you ask? Well this is where you guys come in, any suggestions on how to cheer up and what to do after experiencing loss and how to regain faith in something that you strongly supported would be greatly appreciated. This loss is brutal to me and I am trying to find something positive to learn from this and how to avoid this in the future but I have no answers. I set stop losses, I had a limited amount of margin yet I still suffered a big loss on my account. Any useful and uplifting comments would at least cheer me up. Thanks fellow steemers.

UPDATE: After carefully reviewing my loss I discovered where I royally screwed up on this trade. First off, when trading, I never risk more than 1% per trade or in this case .5 BTC. Then how the hell did I lose 4.1 BTC or a whopping 8.2% on this trade you might ask?! Well this is where I screwed up and I take full responsibility for this blunder. In this instance I set a "limit stop loss order", a "limit stop loss" is a stop loss where your stop order is filled at the specific price you set. In this case my stop was set at 1% or .5 BTC. When the price flash crashed due to the bitfinex breach no one was willing to fill my order at the specific price I set and my order was skipped over. Since my order was never filled my stop loss never triggered and unfortunately I was margin called for the first time in my life. Being margin called is extremely embarrassing for any self respecting trader and I took pride in the fact that I have never been called before but I guess there is a first for everything.

How do I remedy this you might ask? This is a simple solution, I should have set just a "stop loss" order. In this case the stop loss acts as a market order. When this happens I might not get out of the trade at the exact price I want due to slippage but at least I would get out of the trade. I sincerely apologize to Kraken for calling them out and I take full responsibility for this loss.

It's not every day you learn a 4.1 BTC lesson but I am making the best of it and have learned from this embarrassing mistake. Remember the number one rule of trading is to manage risk and protect your capital. Come find me at tradingview in the chat and feel free to look at my published charts here.
https://www.tradingview.com/u/domavila/#published-charts

Happy trading everyone!! Peace