Trailing stops are a great tool for a trend trade when the price is moving slowly but inexorably in one direction for a longish period of time. A trailing stop acts as a moving stop loss to protect your profits while also allowing you to secure near the maximum profits of the trend when it reverses. I started using them in SIM today because I recognized that I tend to jump out of trends too early, leaving profits on the table. You can create a trailing stop on both the long and short side in the same way: 1. In your montage, set the order type to STOP 2. In the "Stop Type" drop down, select "Trailing" 3. Just below the "Stop Type" drop-down, the third field over from the left is labeled "Trailer Price", set the value to the amount you want the stop to move behind the price. 4a. If you're setting a stop for a long position, click "SELL" - You should now see an order sitting in your order window 4b. If you're setting a stop for a short position, click "BUY" - You should now see an order sitting in your order window A trailing stop always stays a set value below the current price, so for example, if the price is 4.20 and you set a Trailer Price of .20 on a long position your stop loss will be at 4.00. If the price goes up the trailing stop price moves with it, but only in one direction. So for example, if the 4.20 stock moved up to 4.30, the trailing stop would would move to 4.10. If the price subsequently moved down to 4.15, your trailing stop price will stay at 4.10. The trailing stop price will always be set based on the current price, so be careful to look at the current price and movement on the 1 minute chart, the stop will trigger the moment the price tics back to the stop price. For example, if you see the 1 minute candles varying about 10 cents per minute on the trend, a .05 trailer price will probably trigger too early. Make sure you're setting your trailer price to a value that protects your profits without prematurely closing your position when the trend would likely continue. I will update this thread with real chart examples. I also have a hotkey but I want to test it in SIM Monday before I post it here. Edit: How to create a hotkey to set a trailing stop.

Very wise post. Honestly I have since ditched this approach, because even if it does save money, it's not worth the headache, and my goal is not to never lose money, it's to be profitable overall. I'm going to focus on the main fundamentals of good trading, and take the normal losses that happen. But I did read through, and your points are definitely valid. Also agree with regard to the "secret", there is really no secret and no shortcut to experience and mistakes and learning from them. Looking forward to this week!

(nmarnson, Just finished writing this post, and realized it sounds negative. I promise I am not trying to be negative at all, and am only trying to give insight from my personal experience and the experience of almost every day trader I have known, talked with, watched on youtube or read about in books. I am not trying to disparage your idea at all and LOVE that you are becoming a day trader, and are so motivated to go against the grain and find something that works for you. I hope this can be an ongoing discussion where we can all learn from, including myself. Hope you reply :) My uncle has golfed his whole life, and when I was younger, I would often visit him. He would be in the backyard practicing his swing, calling me over, and telling me he "found the secret" to a perfect golf swing. After a couple times it turned into a running joke that he always "found the secret" to the perfect swing, but in reality he never did. . . Because there is no Secret to a perfect . . . anything. Nmarnson, when I was a new trader a few years back, I focused so much on reversals with strong candle reversal patterns that had really tight stops of $.01-.$03 which coincided with the actual bottom/top of a reversal candle setup. Basically if it broke and didnt reverse I would get out for the small .01-.03 cent loss, and if it reversed as my back testing had indicated I would take huge profits with risk/reward like 20/1 and thus I could make so many losing trades to find a huge winner. I had spreadsheets and notepads full of numbers. I looked at charts for hours upon hours days upon days and went back through candles of all different time frames analyzing everything I could. I was sure I found the "secret to day trading" . . . Reversals with tight stops and let the winners ride up to heaven for continuous profits!!! I never posted on a forum like this to share my idea so I never got feedback. My feedback was in the form of disappointment/frustration of $1,000's lost So lets go over your points So if you have 1,000 shares and stop loss of $.12 you are risking $120. And in your later example you are assuming you are able to exit at exactly your entry price for a break even trade and only have to pay commission of (I assume) $3.00 for entry and $3.00 for exit for a total of $6.00 1. Commission, so if you are paying a flat rate of $3.00 commission that is fantastic for 1,000 shares. For those of us on IB we get $1.00 trade on 100 shares, but anything over that we pay extra depending on the structure we choose. So no one gets $1.00 trades on 1,000 shares unless you are on some cheap/junk broker like robinhood. In reality on 1,000 shares IB we pay around $5.00 or so for each trade. Commission doesnt include the fees you have to pay. The fees are fairly small on 1,000 shares but since you are being exact, you need to include the fees on top of commission. 2. Spread, with a strategy such as yours, you will have to pick stocks with a very tight spread of $.01-$.03 that doesnt change much. This is very limiting. Especially if you want to pick stocks that are in play for that day. On a 1,000 shares, for each penny the spread is you will be down $10. many stocks have spreads of around $.05-.15 and thus you will be instantly down $50-$150, which throws off the plan immediately. So you will be forced to pick stocks with extremely tight spreads. 3. Now here is the real danger. If you are looking to make entries at breakout points, especially if you are seeing buying or selling pressure going in the direction that you want to jump in with, there can be big gaps up in your favor, or INSTANT gaps that go against you. . . . You have to accept that gaps go BOTH ways. Lets just say you are buying at an apex point for a long of a stock that is about to break $40. You see a green buyer at $40.01 so you hit your hotkey for 1,000 shares on the ask for the break of 40 and get filled at $40.04 because the spread changed the instant you hit your hotkey and price was moving up. So now you got filled at $40.04. But this was a fakeout, and you bought at the highpoint of this potential apex, and there was some huge hidden seller (which there often can be at a Whole Dollar apex point). Since you are a slow human compared to an algo computer, you are way behind on reading the time and sales And thus the stock drops $.10 instantly before you can get out. You try to get out asap, but because the gap down and increased spread you get filled at $39.93. And thus what you thought was a commission break/even trade, was actually a commission + fee + -.11/share trade so around -$113 loss or so. This is not even an extreme case. This happens all the time on stocks that are in play at apex points. 4. You also note that it might take only 2-3 entries MAX before a trade goes in you favor. I dont have an argument here other than to say you will learn through experience this simply isnt true. Someone like Andrew makes it look so easy. But for the majority of us, we get faked out all the time. The charts will be setup to make the average trader see something where the exact opposite is going to occur. Total fakeout. 5. I think if you ask any successful trader they will tell you trading is over 50% psychology and possibly more like 80% psychology. So we all know to "plan our trade and trade our plan", but in reality this will never happen. Even the greats like Andrew calls himself out all the time saying "what a garbage trade, Rookie Mistake, I cant believe I did that". Not even he is immune to going of his plan. When I was first starting out this didnt make any sense to me and I honestly didnt buy into it. I just thought I would trade the charts and my trading plan and nothing else mattered. Then every Day Traders enemy came to greet me, FOMO, revenge trading, Hulk Trading (RobertH), Averaging Down Losses, HotKey mistakes, desperation trading, letting losers ride and taking profits before your plan dictates, Deer-in-The-Headlight and many more . . . None of these trades are part of anyones plan, yet EVERYONE does them. I admit it is crazy. No one plans to fall victim to these, yet EVERYONE does. Please let me know your thoughts on all this and where you agree/disagree as I would love to continue to hear your opinion.

I'm a lifetime member, and have been with BBT since March. I went live in June, but unfortunately I am negative with my account... I know what my bad habits are but knowing and changing them are two different things. If any of you were in the chat lately, Robert talked about getting an accountability buddy - I'm making a post just for that. I can't trade every day, but I trade most days. I'm looking for someone to check me and I can check them - basically make sure that we aren't blowing up our accounts, sticking to our trading plan, etc... Traders at a firm are accountable to a boss, but we are accountable to only ourselves... I want to make it easier by having a buddy. I would prefer someone North America based simple so that we can talk via phone and text - what I really need is to define in the morning what my max loss will be, trading plan, etc, and then I need to report to someone if I held to my plan. You can be either live or sim, but please just someone who is absolutely committed to working to make this an income for themselves. I'll admit that it's hard to make this post here because I thought that I would be doing better than I am - most of my days are good days, but my bad days are BAD, like out of control. I'm down about 20% of my account value since I've went live, shame to say, but that's a hell of a gut check that is really humbling me and is making me realize that I need to do something differently.

+1 on the wanting to find a buddy in the community. This is pretty much why I joined the community in the first place and I need to follow up on it. The main thing for me is those "blow up" days. I really feel that I would avoid those with some sort of accountability system. Like you said, Ted, if you can't trust yourself...but somehow I can't. And Sawtooth, I agree, it's hard to post this kind of stuff in a group forum but we all struggle at times.

Hi guys! My name is Ali and I've been a member here for a few weeks so I thought i should introduce myself 🙂 I'm originally Egyptian but I've lived in the UK my whole life. I'm 19 and I got into stocks earlier this year after I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. After some research I purchased some FB stocks and held them for a few months and managed to make a little profit with the funds I had. During this time I went to a one-day stock market course near London and learned about day trading and the FOREX market. That day they offered us a yearly course for an insane amount of money that I didn't have, so I decided to do the work myself. I came across Andrews book, which then led me to BearBullTraders and I've loved day trading ever since. It's no walk in the park but I'm just glad that I've finally found something that I really enjoy. I'm going to Cardiff, Wales this September to study Maths but I hope I'll still have time to continue my day trading. I've been in the sim for about 7 weeks now and I'm happy with the progress I've made. Although I don't think I'll be ready to trade live within the next 4-6 weeks I'm confident I'll pass the learning curve and be able to trade live in 2/3 months time (I hope) 😄 Every night I look forward to the next day to start trading again and I dread the weekends. I'm very grateful for all the tips the members have given me and of course to Andrew for all his help. Ali

Howdy all, My name is Morgan but I go by Sterno most of the time (former callsign that has followed me around). Like most everyone, I started to look into day trading for the freedom it offered and came across Andrew’s book. It was well written, easy to follow and, to me, gave a clear path to success. After some research into other programs, I came back to Andrew’s and have never looked back. Luckily, I live in the Pacific Northwest and am able to trade for 45 min every morning before I have to leave for work. I started the sim a couple of weeks ago and am really enjoying the process. I am a former fighter pilot and, believe it or not, the processes are similar in a lot of ways. Both entail discipline, the need to read and react quickly under pressure and constant practice. Our missions consisted of planning and briefing, executing the mission then coming back and debriefing to see how we did executing the plan, was it a good plan, how did we react to changing circumstances, etc. Every single flight was a learning experience and most of the learning came in the debrief. I see day trading as very similar (minus the risk to life J) As traders we preplan prior to the open by looking for stocks in play, reviewing what strategies we are going to use, reviewing entry cues, reviewing our rules, etc. We then execute our plan after the market opens and when we are done for the day we review our trades to see how we did in executing our plan (or at least we should). Not just did we win or lose but where did we do well and where could we have done better. Anyways, I look forward to gaining experience and participating in the community. Everyone here is helpful, humble and it is because of the example Andrews sets. I hope to eventually create some checklists for debriefing each trade (again applying what I know from my past) and look forward to sharing them for feedback. See you all around chat!

Hey Sawtooth500, I like your idea and would be interested to find out more about how it would work. I started trading in Oct of last year and joined Andrew in March. Still trading small sizes but doing ok so far but discipline is key to my success. I put my goals in writing and I follow them on a daily basis. If you can't trust yourself who can you trust, is what I tell myself. I must be true to myself. This is my business and I will be successful in it. Its just a matter of time, discipline and patience. Im in FL EST where are you?

Hey Full Moon - I sent you a PM. Yeah I'm going to contact Speedtrader to put a hard stop on my account. I had a good day today, +$1000, but fundamentally my problem is that I don't respect a max daily loss. I have a few good days, but then I have a string of bad days that wipes out all my gains, and then some. When I'm down I have a tendency to double down - I take some of the trades that Andrew takes, and if Andrew is in it I tend to get really ballsy with HUGE portion sizes. But I need to remember that I'm not Andrew and I can't do what he does - when he's behind, he just keeps trading until he goes green - he just stops looking at his P&L. I did that yesterday, and as a results I had a multi thousand loss...

You in Idaho Sawtooth? You have a good idea to reign this in at this level. You can certainly build back up from 20% down but wouldn't want it to keep going like that. I was in the same situation for a while with mostly gains interspersed with bigger (sometimes very big) losses. All in the sim though. Anyway my response was to back off of all but simple ABCD trades, and only one trade at a time. Then I made an ABCD trading worksheet. I mark it up when I'm getting ready to buy so I have a plan already in place - no decisions made on the fly other than maybe some small variations in response to what I'm seeing while I'm holding the position. It keeps me from "trading like jackass". I'd be glad to share it with you.