What are the most common mistakes in day trading?

What are the most common mistakes in day trading, according to this video?

In a Big Wick Energy podcast episode, the RihariFX team (Rihari, George and V Hardy) says the mistakes that keep coming up are trading only the one-minute chart, ignoring the psychological side of trading, skipping a written journal, avoiding or moving stop losses, over-risking after a loss, and comparing personal progress to other traders' timelines.

These are described in the video as mistakes the speakers made themselves before and during trading prop-firm evaluation accounts, not as a checklist that removes risk from day trading or a guarantee that avoiding them produces profit. The table below summarises each mistake the video raises alongside the fix the speakers say they now use, and later sections in this article walk through each one in more detail, including how it was described, what it reportedly cost, and how the speakers say they now handle it differently.

| Mistake the video describes | What it leads to, per the video | What the speakers say they do instead | |---|---|---| | Trading only the 1-minute chart | Missing the wider trend and reacting to every small reversal | Checking the 5-minute, 15-minute, 1-hour, 4-hour and daily charts before entering | | No stop loss, or a "mental" stop loss | Watching a losing trade run until the account is wiped out | Placing an actual stop-loss order on every trade | | Moving the stop loss further away mid-trade | Turning a small planned loss into a large unplanned one | Leaving the original stop loss in place and accepting the loss if it hits | | Not journaling trades | Repeating the same errors without noticing the pattern | Logging entry time, price, stop loss, target, setup type and emotional state on every trade | | Over-risking after a loss | Trying to "make it back" quickly and losing faster | Keeping risk size fixed regardless of the previous trade's outcome | | Comparing yourself to other traders | Discouragement, rushing, and self-doubt | Tracking only personal data and timeline |

Why does trading only the one-minute chart cause losses?

Rihari says the biggest technical mistake beginner traders make is getting "stuck" on the one-minute chart, entering and exiting on every small candle without checking what higher timeframes are doing, which the video says turns a trader into liquidity for larger market participants.

The video describes a trader going into a session with a directional bias, then letting the one-minute chart flip that bias back and forth, chasing each reversal instead of holding the original read. The fix described in the video is to "zoom out": check the 5-minute, 15-minute and 1-hour charts, and look left on the chart to see the broader trading range before taking an entry. One speaker adds that gold in particular tends to move inside a roughly 15-minute range that lines up with what shows on the 1-minute chart, so without first identifying that range on a higher timeframe, the 1-minute chart alone gives a misleading read on market direction.

How does poor psychology sabotage day trading results?

The video says psychology is not separate from technical skill. Rihari says he did not get control of the psychological side of trading until the middle to end of last year, and that his technical analysis "would go out the window" whenever his emotional state was unstable, regardless of how well he knew his setups.

One of the hosts describes asking Rihari directly what would help build confidence going into trades, expecting what the video calls a "holy grail answer." Rihari's response, according to the video, was that there is no shortcut: back-testing, building a personal statistics base and journaling are what steady psychology over time. The video frames this as a lesson learned through experience rather than as a formula, and it does not attach any specific income figure, win rate, or timeframe to mastering psychology.

The video also connects psychology to daily structure, with one speaker describing a fixed morning routine as central to trading with a steadier mindset, summarised in the video with the phrase "win the morning, win the day." Rihari separately says a recent personal focus has been reducing stress and going into each day expecting it to be manageable rather than difficult, since he says the mindset a trader starts the day with tends to shape how that day actually goes. The video presents this as the speakers' own mental approach, not as a technique guaranteed to change trading outcomes for anyone who adopts it.

Why do most traders skip journaling, and why is that a costly mistake?

Most traders skip journaling because it's tedious, unglamorous work with no immediate payoff. The hosts argue on the podcast that this habit gap is largely why an often-cited figure, roughly 99% of traders being unprofitable, holds true, though this is their opinion rather than a verified statistic.

The speakers describe journaling as the "shortcut" to becoming a more consistent trader precisely because it is the step most people skip. One host recounts being asked what to work on and answering "journal every single trade," calling it the reason most traders struggle to become profitable. The video also describes journaling as revealing patterns a trader could not otherwise see, such as a recurring time of day when volume increases, or a habit of entering trades before a setup is fully confirmed.

What should a day trading journal actually track?

The video describes a detailed journal covering entry time, entry price, stop-loss level, take-profit target, the reason for entry such as a point of interest or breakout, and the trader's emotional state going into the trade, including whether the entry was rushed or followed a full pre-market analysis.

Building a trade journal, based on the process described in the video:

1. Record the time of entry, including which session (Asia, London or New York) the trade falls in.
2. Record the entry price, stop-loss level and take-profit target.
3. Note the setup type, such as a point of interest, a breakout, or a volume profile level.
4. Note the emotional state going into the trade, including whether the analysis was rushed.
5. Take a screenshot of the chart on the 1-minute, 15-minute and hourly timeframe when the trade is opened or closed.
6. Record the outcome and review win and loss patterns after a running period, such as a month or two.
7. Adjust session timing and setup selection based on what the data shows over time.

The video mentions Notion for a manual template and TradeZella as a paid tool that logs trades automatically and reports win percentage, though one host says a paid tool can remove a layer of personal discipline compared with manually writing an entry before taking a trade. Another speaker describes reviewing a trade in ChatGPT for a summary before logging it in TradeZella. These are described in the video as the speakers' personal workflow choices, not a claim that any specific tool produces particular trading results.

The video also connects journaling to market timing. One speaker says that journaling entry times over a month or two revealed a personal pattern of increased liquidity around 2 p.m. New Zealand time, tied to the Shanghai market open, along with activity around the London open, roughly 11 p.m. New Zealand time, and the New York and Comex open. This is described in the video as one trader's own data, not a verified or universal market pattern that applies to every trader or instrument.

The video also describes rating each trade's emotional state rather than noting it once and moving on. One host says he would sometimes write a basic note such as feeling good going into a trade, but if he noticed himself writing that too often he would push further and ask what had actually happened in his day, since repeating the same reassurance without real evidence was, in his own words, telling himself something untrue. The video presents this self-check as part of building an honest picture of the conditions that preceded a winning or losing trade, not as a formula that predicts future outcomes.

The video also touches on defining a personal "A+" setup, meaning the trade type a trader is most confident placing size on. One host says that when asked directly what his own A+ setup looked like, he did not have a fixed answer beyond entering around similar times of day, and that his setups varied mainly by how much he chose to risk rather than by a distinct checklist. The video frames this as an open question the speakers had not fully resolved for themselves, not as a defined framework being presented to the reader.

Why is skipping or moving a stop loss such an expensive mistake?

Skipping a stop loss, or replacing it with a "mental stop loss," turns a manageable loss into an account-ender because there's no order forcing the exit — the trader has to act manually while price runs against them. Rihari says this habit wiped out a fully passed prop-firm evaluation account late last year.

The video separately describes moving a stop loss further away once a trade is already open, effectively turning a planned small loss into a larger unplanned one. One host says this was a more common mistake for him early on than having no stop loss at all. The video also describes blowing several prop-firm evaluation accounts worth roughly $800 each, and losing a live $1,000 account within five days after over-risking while trying to recover an earlier loss. These are recounted in the video as the speakers' own past experiences and are not presented as figures anyone should expect to reproduce.

The video also walks through a hypothetical example to explain why keeping a stop loss in place matters even across a run of losses. In the example, a trader has three possible points of interest for a trade; the first two are stopped out and the third continues in the intended direction. Risking a small amount, described as around 2%, on each of the first two losing attempts, then catching a larger move off the third, described as roughly 5% to 6%, produces a net gain across the three trades despite two losses. The video presents this purely as an illustration of risk-reward logic tied to a fixed, respected stop loss, not as a projected or typical outcome for any trader's actual account.

How do comparing yourself to others, rushing, and overtrading hold traders back?

The video says comparing your own journey to another trader's, rushing money into the market before finishing education, and overtrading by taking too many setups are separate habits that the speakers say slowed their own progress and cost them confidence or capital early on.

On comparison, the video says judging your own trading journey against someone else's is discouraging and leads to rushed decisions, because every trader starts from a different background, schedule and starting capital. Rihari says he avoided this trap partly because he had no experienced trader to compare himself to when he started, which he describes as both a disadvantage in learning speed and a source of independence. The other hosts describe the opposite experience: watching a more experienced trader make it "look very easy" and assuming they could match that pace immediately, then feeling discouraged when early trades did not go the same way. The video frames the fix as tracking only personal data through journaling rather than another trader's results, and it does not offer a timeline for how long that process should take for any individual trader.

One host says his own biggest issue starting out was overtrading, taking too many setups instead of waiting for the best ones, and he frames the general problem as binary: a trader who is not profitable is either losing too often or risking too much on the losses they do take. The fix described in the video is simply taking fewer, more selective trades.

Several speakers describe wanting fast results because of what they call "humble beginnings," and say that mindset pushed them to rush. The distinction the video draws is between rushing into the market and rushing into learning: the advice given is to rush toward education, back-testing and tools such as FX Replay, but not to rush money into live accounts or funded-account purchases before that groundwork is done. One host admits spending an estimated five to six thousand dollars quickly as a beginner without a clear plan for where that money was going, which he now frames as a mistake of sequencing rather than of amount.

One speaker says he wishes he had built a consistent daily routine much earlier in his trading, describing the routine the team now follows as a "game changer" once it was in place, though the video does not specify the exact contents of that routine beyond trading set sessions rather than every session.

Rihari says one of his own more recent mistakes was under-analyzing the market, relying on lower timeframes during a period of heavy travel instead of the multi-timeframe approach the team otherwise describes teaching. He also says he has been focused on reducing stress and mentions reading Dr. Joe Dispenza's books as part of that process. This is presented in the video as a personal habit connected to mindset, not as medical, financial or investment advice, and this article does not treat it as either.

The video additionally says the group values having an experienced person to ask questions of, based on their own experience of learning faster once they had that access compared with learning alone. This is described as the speakers' own account of their learning curve, not a claim that a mentor produces any guaranteed outcome for a reader.

What do independent statistics say about retail trading risk?

Outside the video, one Australian regulatory report and one central-bank survey give independently verified context on the market that retail day traders operate in. Neither source comments on the RihariFX video, its speakers, or any specific strategy discussed in the podcast.

According to ASIC Report 828: Risky business, 68% of Australian retail CFD investors lost money in the 2024 financial year. That data covers CFD trading specifically, a different product from the futures prop-firm evaluation accounts described in the video, but it remains the clearest independent figure available on Australian retail trading outcomes and is a useful reference point alongside any account of day trading, including this one.

Separately, the BIS 2025 Triennial Survey reported average daily OTC foreign-exchange turnover of US$9.6 trillion in April 2025. That figure describes the scale and liquidity of the global market that day traders, including gold and forex traders like the speakers in the video, place individual trades within. It does not indicate anything about the odds of any individual trader's success.

Read together, these two sources describe a market that is extremely large and liquid at the aggregate level, while the outcomes recorded for individual Australian retail participants within it have skewed toward losses in the period ASIC measured. Neither figure should be read as a prediction for any specific trader, strategy, account type or timeframe, including the ones described in the RihariFX video.