Day trading- 3 months later, my experience

[PM123]

Thanks

[AlwaysInTheRed]

Thank you very much for your post.

I have been trading since the end of June and I thought that I was just being an idiot. When I am day trading, I keep looking at the screen and then I panic as soon as the trade goes the wrong way and I lose money.

I am analysing the charts and drawing channels and trend lines but I am still making losses.

To be honest I don't know how people can make a living out of this trading. I keep losing what I make.

I will take your advice and keep a copy of the charts - daily/hourly and 15 min. I do usually use daily/hourly and 30 min charts. I can't get my head around the 1 minute charts; they just make me panic more and when I have used them, I have made the wrong decisions and traded.

 

 

[FranticFred]

I have been following with great interest the various comments re your ‘baptism of fire’ over the last few months.
From my own personal experience and testing the advice of others, a comment made on another platform that sticks with me very forcefully is: “the only aspiration of the market is to persuade you to pay more for your shares than they are worth and then to buy them back from you at a much lower price”.

Whatever the ‘news management’ or any other marketing stratagems used, these are exclusively for the sole purpose of making money for the market at your/my expense. 
Call me a cynic, but nothing I have seen over the last 4 years convinces me otherwise.
True value has its place but it is hard to find and the ‘retail’ (that is us) usually arrives on the scene after the profit bus has already left.

 

 

[dmedin]

On 30/07/2020 at 11:58, DavyJones said:

I have come to the preliminary conclusion that only fast moving stocks or big news you can make money DTing. I did ok on EasyJet recently and FTSE is absolutely tanking today (i got in late) but for the majority  of stocks  is just not worth trying .

I think I will start looking more towards swing trading in the next month and easy off DT. The overnight risk is a concern but as you say you can always use  Share dealing but with UK stocks you have the charges. US I find much better 

 

 

 

I believe you are correct and also, active trading won't make big money in the short-term but it will beat the 2% or less that savings accounts will net you.  As to whether it beats buying an S&P 500 ETF and doing nothing, that remains to be seen

Edited August 7, 2020 by dmedin

[yosoh]

For day trading you need a broker who does not eat your profits in the name of conversion and commission. IG is the worst.

with falling USD there is no point in dealing with shares for IG. Example 

1) Bought SPOT 50 shares at $253

1) 2 hours later sold SPOT at $256.

Return -£25 (yes negative)

They say they don't charge commissions but their conversion rates are so different for buy and sell that you are just donating them your research, hardwork and profit.

Did the same experiment with DEGIRO ended up with £100+.

[dmedin]

Swing trade shares FTW.

[DavyJones]

21 hours ago, yosoh said:

For day trading you need a broker who does not eat your profits in the name of conversion and commission. IG is the worst.

with falling USD there is no point in dealing with shares for IG. Example 

1) Bought SPOT 50 shares at $253

1) 2 hours later sold SPOT at $256.

Return -£25 (yes negative)

They say they don't charge commissions but their conversion rates are so different for buy and sell that you are just donating them your research, hardwork and profit.

Did the same experiment with DEGIRO ended up with £100+.

 

Cheers, I made a post about the exact same thing , up $87, profit -£52 in 2 mins! Will check out Degiro. 

On 07/08/2020 at 05:44, FranticFred said:

I have been following with great interest the various comments re your ‘baptism of fire’ over the last few months.
From my own personal experience and testing the advice of others, a comment made on another platform that sticks with me very forcefully is: “the only aspiration of the market is to persuade you to pay more for your shares than they are worth and then to buy them back from you at a much lower price”.

Whatever the ‘news management’ or any other marketing stratagems used, these are exclusively for the sole purpose of making money for the market at your/my expense. 
Call me a cynic, but nothing I have seen over the last 4 years convinces me otherwise.
True value has its place but it is hard to find and the ‘retail’ (that is us) usually arrives on the scene after the profit bus has already left.

 

One personality trait I noticed, I turn on my IG account , check the markets, news and usually with 15minutes I make a trade. That makes no sense, Its like I am just looking for an excuse to trade  . A good trade didn't happen to coincide with the moment I randomly decide to open IG 

 

22 hours ago, dmedin said:

I believe you are correct and also, active trading won't make big money in the short-term but it will beat the 2% or less that savings accounts will net you.  As to whether it beats buying an S&P 500 ETF and doing nothing, that remains to be seen

 

I am still leaning towards there are profits to be made if you put in the hard work and further that you need to focus on particular assets. I trade silver more that anything and have about 70% hit rate now, however my one trade yesterday wiped out twice anything I made on silver since I started! Dumb mistake, I could have sworn I put on a stop with PRT but on the IG platform it did not registered , I should have checked! Was £250 up, went to supermarket came back £1400 down! Same with Gold, was 350 up, swing trade running last few days, stop moved up to swing low within 30 mins it dropped and stopped me out at £5 up,  I didn't sleep well last night, turning over in my mind what thinking about how reckless I was! That could be the half bottle of whisky I drank though to drown my sorrows. haha

 Again it's these these foolish mistakes are costing me badly. However I suppose the positive side is they that are fixable mistakes, 

 

[Kodiak]

53 minutes ago, DavyJones said:

 

Cheers, I made a post about the exact same thing , up $87, profit -£52 in 2 mins! Will check out Degiro. 

 

One personality trait I noticed, I turn on my IG account , check the markets, news and usually with 15minutes I make a trade. That makes no sense, Its like I am just looking for an excuse to trade  . A good trade didn't happen to coincide with the moment I randomly decide to open IG 

 

 

I am still leaning towards there are profits to be made if you put in the hard work and further that you need to focus on particular assets. I trade silver more that anything and have about 70% hit rate now, however my one trade yesterday wiped out twice anything I made on silver since I started! Dumb mistake, I could have sworn I put on a stop with PRT but on the IG platform it did not registered , I should have checked! Was £250 up, went to supermarket came back £1400 down! Same with Gold, was 350 up, swing trade running last few days, stop moved up to swing low within 30 mins it dropped and stopped me out at £5 up,  I didn't sleep well last night, turning over in my mind what thinking about how reckless I was! That could be the half bottle of whisky I drank though to drown my sorrows. haha

 Again it's these these foolish mistakes are costing me badly. However I suppose the positive side is they that are fixable mistakes, 

 

Maybe options?

 

[dmedin]

9 hours ago, Kodiak said:

Maybe options?

 

 

 

One needs to have a special kind of autism to be able to understand charts like that.

[THT]

On 08/08/2020 at 09:00, Kodiak said:

Maybe options?

 

John is one of the nicest people I have ever met - Best thing I ever did was buy him a coffee at the London Traders expo in 2011 (ish) and get him to sign a copy of his book, as the 10 min conversation that followed for the price of a coffee before he took to the floor was enlightening.  

 

[yosoh]

On 07/08/2020 at 10:02, dmedin said:

Swing trade shares FTW.

a platform should not dictate what strategy to use for gaining maximum profits. In the end it depends on the setup of the trade you are doing which one to go for.

[dmedin]

11 hours ago, yosoh said:

a platform should not dictate what strategy to use for gaining maximum profits. In the end it depends on the setup of the trade you are doing which one to go for.

It's not the platform that's 'dictating' how one ought to trade, it's the structure of the fees and commissions.

A common complaint against day trading in the academic community is that after fees and commissions, most 'day traders' fail to outperform an S&P 500 tracking ETF.

Edited August 10, 2020 by dmedin

[FranticFred]

To my mind there are two basic strategies plus money management.

1. Focus on just one or two shares that have a logical relationship, indices or currency pairs. Not all at once, but just two from the same genre so that you have something to compare with.

2. Discover by observation (not by chucking money at them) what time frame works well with the Guppy Moving Average + Ichimoku (with only the two colour fills; Senkou span A & B in play). If using IG platform, then you can switch out the Tenkan, Kijun and Chikou San).
Some indices will lead you a wild goose chase except on very short timeframes 30s or 1minute or the longer time frames, 2 or 3 hrs but you need to observe, observe and observe.
SMA 50 and 200 SMA can be useful to get a sense of trend.

Think of it like planning a fishing trip. If you do not plan, usually you do not catch, unless you take a young grandchild with you who disobeys all the rules and out-catches you.
BUT he is gambling with your fishing gear so he has nothing to lose.

Sorry if I started to get wordy.

 

 

[LousyMyor]

I've had a good last month, I hope it continues.

[LousyMyor]

I don’t think I’ve ever come across an accurate post like this.

[Ozquant]

Most daytraders just have gambling problems/addiction  .  If when you sit down at your platform and are in a trade within minutes chances are you fall into this category  .  You need setups that provide an edge , an empirically proven systematic edge with a positive expectancy  , Many times this 'edge ' may take a few hours to trigger  .  Patience is needed to wait for the' right ' moment and then decisiveness and the ability to unemotionally take a trade is paramount . I'd suggest that > 90% of 'daytraders ' would have no idea of their expectancy and if they actually knew their expectancy it would force then to acknowledge they have negative expectancy ( zero edge ) . Anyone what actually quantifies their expectancy and finds its negative would be a fool to continue trading  > daytrading successfully is one of the hardest jobs out there , easier to become a successful lawyer imo  .  Anyone that think they will become a profitable daytrader without putting the best part of a decade learning is fooling themselves  .  Daytrading has its benefits sleeping on cash overnight and weekends as time in market is risk  , you need to be in a position while its moving and get out when it stops  .  In an average day i can often only be in market for as little as 2 hours .  If you can get to the level that maybe the top 2-3% can get its a lucrative pursuit but it will be the hardest thing you have ever done . Thats what makes it worth doing . Good luck to all that go down this road but lucks got nothing to do with it in reality . The correaltion between ' luck ' and HARD work can never be underestimated   Maths and data will set you free  but not the usual datafit thats prevalent out there , You need to understand what to measure in price action that presents itself in repeatable patterns  . You need to understand bias regimes , volatility , momentum , etc and develop tangible unique ways to define . The usual generic studies in most platforms are not great at doing this  . There is no one stop algo to deal with all market stages ., you need a ' set ' of systems for different regimes and some filters to switch between them as markets shift regime . Volatility is what i find the key to much of this  .     If i have turned anyone of from daytrading you were not right for this pursuit .  

 

Rock on   . 

[LousyMyor]

I don’t think I’ve ever come across an accurate post like this. The post is fantastic, and I honestly agree with almost everything about how YouTubers scam people to gain views and make money. And also how bloggers and authors sell some not-so-good tutorials. Frankly speaking, I don’t trade anymore because I believe trading is not for me. Trading is so tempting that it makes me a bit greedy sometimes. I’m starting to get involved in another thing, maybe investing in some stocks I’ve seen in https://timthomas.co/12-best-5g-stocks-to-invest-in/. The only thing I hate about investments is how long it takes to benefit from them.

[iom120000]

Hey good post.

It takes years and big losses to make it through - I know; that's why so many fail. The money runs out before they can establish a technique/edge to put the odds in they're favour.

Would you do brain surgery on someone without years of training and experience building? The same principle applies here.

Don't go there if you don't have the funds and committent. Nothing but nothing can get in the way of your trading; family. friends, jobs, holidays count for nothing whilst you are learning the ropes - it takes years - there are no short cuts.

[chloerampl]

I haven't been trading stocks for very long, but I really like it...

[chloerampl]

On 18/08/2021 at 01:15, chloerampl said:

I haven't been trading stocks for very long, but I really like it...

Wow, your three-month experience is quite impressive, there are some people who in a few years can not do so much. Plus, I think your experience will be useful as a theoretical part for those who want to invest specifically in this area and not know how to do it. When I started trading, not knowing how this mechanism works, I started reading and receiving experience from Porter Stansberry. I think it was a fair step, because in the shortest time I could feel myself growing. It is quite important to receive some theoretical information from an experienced person, so run away from some failures that you may have

[nit2wynit]

On 17/07/2020 at 06:55, DavyJones said:

The point being, you start to learn about your  technique and they way you trade which no book can possibly know.

Your post is Spot on.  I couldn't have written it any better myself.  I started with IG back in March 2019 and boy did |i learn a lot about myself and my own Fear and Ignorance.  I nailed the Demo daily using only 2k.  I posted my wins on here a lot too but received a lot of criticism as it was The Demo and Not Real.  I argued It Was Real.  I traded as if it was real.  the stock picks were real.  But i was wrong, you can't comprehend the Real Emotion using Real Money and taking real Losses.

I had £1400 to start to Learn to Trade.  I made £400 in 6 months but ultimately lost 1800 too.  Then i took a 6 month break from it all.  I learned a lot, like you say, about myself!

I've been trading with IG and Saxon.  I use IG for Day Trading as the platform is quicker and easier to use, but:

This week with IG I made a 30% gain with Geovax.  It was up 70% but when it pulled back i got out.  I made 290£ on it.  But even though I've been trading for almost 3 years (18 months really) I didn't realise there were costs associated with Day Trading US shares in the UK.  I've been Swing Trading for 12 months.  I started Day Trading shares this week.  Imagine how dumb and embarrased I was when I noticed that I lost the 290 profit from last week as I was placing so many in and out trades.  There is a Currency Conversion cost and a 0.5% Spread in Share dealing!  I thought it was FREE



But here is my greatest learned experience.  Stay Away from Illiquid Stocks if you want to Day Trade.



I am around 80% correct on my Stock selection.  All of them have gone in a big way, but my timing is Way Off.  I've been holding some stocks for 6 months.  The frustration has ruined me, not to mention the Daily activity I've missed out on as my Capital was tied up.

These days i flick thru the Timeframes.  All of them.  When I see an opportunity to get in, first i need to decide how long I'm going to hold the position.  Am I going to Swing OR Intraday.   Knowing this is essential.  I use MACD, RSI, EMA and VWAP, Pivot Points, then place based upon S/R lines.

I'm usless at studying Fundamentals, know nothing abuot how the market moves really and choose my stocks based upon tomorrows news not todays.  Basically I Specualte, which I guess is what it's all about.  What will be Big Tomorrow.  But Swing Trading is making me get in far too early and i still have a bad habit of buying at the Top.

Though i may be correct in my stock picks almost 100% of the time where I Buy In is wrong.  So up and down I got for weeks waiting to even Break Even again.  I've done this so many times too where i get back out at my In price only for it to Break Out lol.

So as I continue learning my New Improved Strategy is this:

Whatever i think is going to happen, do the opposite.  We'll see wha thte rest of this week brings. 

 

[amilio]

hello . I am  very new here. started 2 weeks a go trading CFDs. and stop trading uk stock after my first week . as it made no sense  due to very high in commission ... for example    I buy Aviva   .... 10,000    AND I was out £80  AND my position was FEW   %  BILLOW the market price  then price went up by (1.8 pence)  I made less than £70 ..

I  now found out if, I trade USA stock with my own cash ( share dealing)...  is 0  commission ?? even if I day trade with it ( NOT CONSIDERING EXCHANG RATE )  as its  very small 

 trade  CFDs... USA stock   $30 per trade /  10 TRADES A DAY  AVERAGE $100  PER POINT    .....OVER 50% go as commission considering some RED trades as well ......   

DO you have any advice on how to reduce the commission  ????   

thank you .

[Zamurai]

Thank you DavyJones for this nice and objective post. I did FOREX trading 10 years ago, had no idea what I was doing, and lost money. Now I am returning and want to day/swing trade. Your post has a lot of things that resonate with me.

It has been over 12 months since your post, I wonder how you are going with it? Would you like to share some of your thoughts?

I am also looking for a day/swing trade community that trade in the Australian timeframe. Any suggestions?

[hombrebuns]

On 17/07/2020 at 06:55, DavyJones said:

I thought i summarize my experience so far day trading in case any newer folks are interested 

Day trading is much harder than swing trading and especially at those lower time frames. 

From 100+ day trades so far I am certainly no expert and I like being honest, I am on average losing  but I learnt a lot. My thoughts so far are:

1. Forget 95% of youtube,  it's full of turds just trying to market courses, **** out their channel. Same with forums, no matter what topic it is (fitness, languages), a lot of people lie their asses off and pretend they are experts but in fact know jackshit about it. Even the supposedly guru's are full of sh@t. For example the guy who wrote that best seller "Trading for a living", Dr Elder. He came up with his own "impulse system" and brags about it. It just  MACD and Moving average, nothing more . Aslo on their own private forum (which I was on for $60 a month) the group consistently underperform the S&P and even their best Gold start traders barely out perform it. Everytime you asked a question you got told, "buy this extra course for $100's  Its the same with Anton Kreil, $15k for a course? I have no idea if he is good or not but its seems to me that it's the easiest thing in the world to prove your validity. Publish your trading accounts, get them audited by an auditor, show tax statements, do live streaming etc If I was building a business as a trainer that's what I would do. 

2. Having said that there is a lot of useful information that if you look at it objectively it can be great advice. Keep a word document and write down your own points. Ignore every cherry picked chart they show you (apart from the educational content), use your own, scroll back a 500/1000 bars and then start looking at the extreme right hand bar, moving forwards bar by bar and ask yourself "ok what will I do here", you will soon  find out that even if you got the direction right, spreads, commissions, trend reversed too quickly,  stops etc killed it . It will paint a very different picture than what youtube baseball-wearing-cap-on-backwards hipster is telling you.  

3. Day trading is a job, not a hobby and a difficult one, you need to put in the hours, research, do your homework, keep a trade journal take notes and analyze what you have done etc

4. You are essentially trying to make cash like flipping a coin over the long run with one side weighted in your favour. 

5. Forget working on hunches or "I think  the stock price will go up / down" You are doomed to failure. A proper system is the only way  

6. Risk Management is the most important concept by far in my view. The generally advice is never risk more that 1 - 2% on a trade. I personally think that is too much . I would keep it at 0.5% max until you work what you are doing. 8 losing trades in a row at 1-2% and it starts to hurt and self doubt really creeps in. 

7. Demo always seems like a good idea but in reality it never worked for me. I put on trades forget about them, have no psychological connection to wins / losses. You need to use real money, even if it's just the bare minimum to see those  losing ££ . I have put on 4 trades over last few days.All 4 were up 2 x Risk but because I am a total **** I didn't cash out and all hit stops resulting in 4 losses. It was only £80 between all 4 but the fact I got greedy (yet again!) annoys me 

8. If your profitable with a year you're lucky.  My aim is to just break even by christmas to see if I can sustain a modest living in this. I have income from other sources anyway. 

9. The reality is that its a heck of a difficult job to make money day trading., Brokers  like IG, and all the others make money by continual flow of clients coming in losing cash and eventually leave, hence the large marketing. I don't blame them, it's a business model, not a hippy self help group, but just be realistic.

10. Most news, ideas is **** and pointless. I worked in investment banking on the trading floor for 15+ years. Every Monday we had to come up with a trade idea for clients , Derivatives / inflation, bonds, 90% of them were sh@t, I know I wrote them, we just had to do something. It's the same with market news, broker webinars etc, trading channels / ideas etc, the staff are tasked to do something. More noise, more videos, more website hits,  more trades = more commissions / sales.

11. Don't jump around from stock to stock, to FX, to crypto. I believe if you are not making money in two or three the problem is you, not the asset.  They all have their own personalities, e.g. Coca cola  barely moves, Tech stocks jittery as hell,  respond to news, others hardly at all, so you need to spend sufficient time on see what influences what. 

12. as above, don’t jump around  with different trading strategies, 200 different indicators etc. You need to limit all the moving parts and focus  

13. Best way I found to improve, (so far) , For every trade, I immediately write down why  I entered the trade (note 5) , for example

Long MA Strategy 
(a) Rising 200MA
(b) Rising 20MA ,
(c) 20MA crosses over 200MA
(d) price near 20MA

seems like a winner on paper but I still kept getting stopped out. Then afterwards write down what happened, e.g. after the trade exit I put  screen shots of 3 time frames (daily hourly / 15min) into a PowerPoint and detailed where I went wrong. Several things became clear such as
- 2min charts was pointless, you would never make the spread back
- The risk / reward (1:2) was to high, a 1:1.2 would have paid off > 50% of the time .
- I was fannying around with stops, for no reason. etc
- I'm putting on trades because I'm retarded, e.g. long trade,  on a bearish trend in larger time frame

The point being, you start to learn about your  technique and they way you trade which no book can possibly know.

Heck it's boring but I am starting to see patterns about the way I trade (= c@ck up). The best traders I saw in banks were the OCD ones. The wannabe Burberry wearing chavs all got pushed out or sent to Starbucks to pick up the coffee

 

The million dollar question:

can you make money? At this stage, I am still undecided.  I think there is light at the end of the tunnel but its going to require work, a plan and mental commitment for sure.

Anyway, long post but hope it's useful for some folks

(apologies for the obscenities!) 

 

 

Great post Davey - very honest and very helpful. I doff my cap to you sir.

[FranticFred]

I too have gone through a long learning experience, probably more about myself than the markets, and I was perpetually assuming that the next move in price will be a logical step from A to B.

Of late, I am starting to realise, as the previous contributor said, that the newsfeed from most directions is intended to influence the market not inform it, therefore I am more inclined to avoid focussed financial commentators and look for longer term movements and possible signs of a change such as ‘head and shoulders + necklines, double tops or bottoms, dead cat bounce etc.

Also, a Gann fan on a 4 hr timeframe & another on a 1 hr timeframe can be useful, as can a Fibonacci fan on these TFs as well.

This has helped to move the returns in my favour fairly regularly now, but I have a very long way to go as I am still prone to ‘impulse trading’.

Shalom, Salaam, Peace

 

 

 

[spartan666]

Interesting posts and comments.

Started trading (Tech) about 1 1/2 years ago by training my brain as a share dealing neural network i.e staring at screens day after day.  At the end of my first year I was up 101% making well into six figures, the following six months there was a correction and my return dropped to 75%, though the capital investment was higher. 

The anxieties induced by volatility were too much for me, e.g. if i exited a position and it went up or entered and it dropped i would critisise myself and hence came to the conclusion that day trading/swing trading wasn't for me as my temperament is more as an investor than a trader.  Since taking that approach i am a lot happier.  Below is a summary of my experience

a) Share prices have no inertia and hence they operate in a manor that the human brain isn't suited too hence computers would be better for short term trading.

b) You are competing against computers and institutions that have a massive advantage over you, you are probably not going to win.  You therefore need to understand how they work or play in a enviroment they have little interest in.

c)  At first i watched all the news programs and took note of the 'experts', it took me 6 month to realise that news opinions are a waste of time, and most experts don't know what they are talking about (assuming their opinions where their actual opinions, of the 18 expert predictions i noted down not one was correct)

d) You need to find what type of time frame you are comfortable entering and exiting in. E.g. If you are predominantly a natural investor there is no point trying to predominantly day trade and if you are predominatly a natural day trader there is no point trying to predominatly be an investor.

e) Have little confidence in techicals, fundimentals are far more important.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SoldierTrading]

1000% agree with the idiots on YouTube, my advice would be to ignore everyone and everything you hear, that includes the news, its all herd following and fake news, Ignore it all, and trust you and your hard earned hours in-front of your preferred candle charts, once you learn your way, and look back at those YouTube videos, you can clearly see they have no idea what they're doing, just trying to sell a course (easy option) the course will be designed so you fail it, whilst they take your money. If its too good to be true, then its probably a scam, anyone who says you can get rich quick from trading is talking shite. Just hit them YouTubers comment section and show them up  stay safe traders.

[FranticFred]

9 hours ago, JediTrading said:

1000% agree with the idiots on YouTube, my advice would be to ignore everyone and everything you hear, that includes the news, its all herd following and fake news, Ignore it all, and trust you and your hard earned hours in-front of your preferred candle charts, once you learn your way, and look back at those YouTube videos, you can clearly see they have no idea what they're doing, just trying to sell a course (easy option) the course will be designed so you fail it, whilst they take your money. If its too good to be true, then its probably a scam, anyone who says you can get rich quick from trading is talking shite. Just hit them YouTubers comment section and show them up  stay safe traders.

I have also discovered to my cost that if you are using the excellent ProRealtime charts, then make sure that if using a back to back strategy where sometimes you want to hold station on a chart by taking a position in the opposite direction to an existing trade, repeat make sure that the ‘force open’ option is switched on, otherwise you will wipe out your original position with the new opposing position.
PRC does not adopt any instruction you put on the standard IG charts so be careful with this strategy. 
Its an interesting pastime if you do not weaken (or over-risk)

[KJM34]

I can give some advice on how to become consistently profitable, for me the hardest part has been drilling down to just 1 or 2 things that work because I am obsessive and I will want to learn it all.

1. review review review, every day you should go back and markup your charts, record your statistics and other relevant conditions such as, what was the market doing that day. example: pullback from prior day sell off.

2. journal, and build a strategy that fits your personality , I see a trading therapist to help work on my trading mindset.

3. keep it simple, If you have an edge in a particular area or with a setup, sharpen the edge, you don't need 100 things to make money, you can scale up your strategy over time as it is proven to be working.

4. take a series of trades approach, no one trade should be life or death.

5. Backtest, if it is a complex strategy do it manually, or use PRO REAL TIME to automate a backtest, which IG Markets provides free if you qualify.

6. have a trading plan! if its not in your plan don't do it! you need to be working towards something using limited variables so you can monitor performance.

7. learn price action, price is truth.

8. follow the right people and question everything, I can tell you from back testing 99.9% of indicator strategies are nonsense.

9. context: look to the left.

10. follow the prop traders who work or have worked in the industry.

11. record your screen, and re-watch your trades.

12. figure out where you have edge and on what time frame, we are all wired differently, noone can do what you can do and you cant do what everyone else can. find your style and protect your capital while you do it, trade "i dont care size".

BONUS TIP, watch trading in the zone, by Mark Douglas, available free on youtube.

at the end of the day, you have to do the work not just trade, in fact you can test most strategies for free. you are competing against the best in the world and they have more money and resources, and they are smart hard working people.

Edited November 2, 2021 by KJM34

[KJM34]

One thing I didn't mention is probabilities, you need to be focused on the traders equation. if you have a 50% chance to get 2 to 1 risk reward then you have a possible trade given the right context. It is most important to start to think in probabilities, if a price level has a 50% chance of going up 20 points or down 10 points then you have a repeatable trade that will make money over time. you need to do the work to build this into your mindset as it is an unnatural way to think. a good way is to start building a book of patterns and probabilities, and a playbook, and keep an excel of your results trading patterns or setups. I attached an image from my patterns and probabilities doc or playbook (i forget) that I have started building for myself. atleast if you are spending money you may as well use the data you recoded to improve your odds of success.