Same thing happens to me when i play the market. I think I have figured a reason why guys like us always get screwed.
It is a simple reason, there are smarter and more sophisticated investors that have the resources, money and technology, to know what the average investor (you and me) is thinking and will do and knows how to make (take) money from us.
They are smarter and they will almost always win. They have the money to move the market where they want. You can't beat them, they know yours and the markets psychology very well.
Well hope this is understandable and makes sense.
You have to take a meaning full amount of money and be willing to lose it. But the objective at first is not to make money. Your main aim should be to educate yourself in trading. I lost quite a few bucks on my first trades not only in the stock market but in Bitcoins as well. But that forced me to pay more attention to what I was doing. I knew the night the mybitcoin news came out I should have sold all of my coins and was lazy, I think i read the news 3 minutes after it was posted.
One thing I can tell you I have been doing is not going all in or all out, stop thinking black and white, there are lost of shades of gray. I always keep some cash on hand to buy if the price get cheaper. And if it goes up ill sell a few. This way you dont really care as much what way the price goes.
Either way bitcoins are a blast all these crazy mother fuckers just coming out of the wood work to scam, argue, profit and invent. What I have not made in cold hard cash I have gotten in entertainment value. There nothing that polarizes people so much, you would think we are debating Pro-Choice/Life, I mean where else can you find one guy who thinks its worthless and the guy next to him thinks its worth 10K each.