My first week on the desk I lost $60k

I was 23 years old, had two years operations experience under my belt, and had just been promoted to the deals (hedge) desk. I'd seen other members of the team handling multiple pricings with different customers on the line, all while negotiating with LME brokers and feeding prices back in real time, I couldn't wait.

However, as with most overly enthusiastic people I quickly found myself in over my head. The pace was like nothing I had dealt with before, and when executing hedges, even small mistakes can turn costly extremely fast.

I approached the end of my first week having avoided any catastrophes and was feeling pretty proud of myself. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder from my boss:

"Sam, did you buy that copper option yesterday?"

"I sure did, here's the confirmation"

"Hmm, why does this say sell, not buy?"

My stomach dropped. I immediately went back to the trade confirm hoping it was a simple confirmation error but alas, I had indeed sold rather than bought. Of course the market had moved against us, to unwind the trade and rebook correctly was going to cost $60k.

Mistakes can be something as simple as mishearing an order. Sometimes they happen because you overlooked a position, or were so overworked you just forgot to book a trade. I know plenty of Cat 1 brokers that have borrowed instead of lent (don't worry I won't name names!) so you are in very good company.

How you handle a mistake is FAR more important than the mistake itself. So important that I spend a whole chapter of my first book talking about what to do and what not to do.

If you realize you have made an error, the first thing to do is raise your hand. Bringing other people into the fold is the best thing you can do. There may be a solution that you haven't thought of or at worst they can help confirm what needs to be done to rectify it. Mistakes can turn into great learning experiences and can prevent systemic errors if handled correctly.

The worst thing to do is ignore mistakes and hope they go away, or try to hide them. I once had an operator that tried to trade their way out of a missed hedge. It ended up costing four times as much as it would have done had they simply owned up originally. Needless to say they were exited pretty quickly.

Trading is far too often a sink or swim environment, learning curves are incredibly steep and mistakes are somewhat inevitable. But what you do with mistakes will determine whether they lead to career growth or become career ending.