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Hi All, I created this topic so that Trader's can share their real time experience/journey in the world of Live Trading or with Bear Bull Traders. I find myself fortunate to be able to share my story as well as my 2 cents on the learning I have had from the mistakes till date. To start with, a brief about myself : My name is Paras Jandwani, 29 yr old, basically from India but have been settled in Washington DC, USA for the past 5 years. I have been working with a Tech company named Accenture (Yep, not a full time Trader yet) as a Solutions Business Consultant for the past 9 years. From a very young age itself I was interested in Stock Market, following tickers and watching business programs etc. However, for some reason may be social pressure could never make a career in finance (no regrets though). Anyways long story short I opened multiple trading/Investing accounts back in India and invested money based on the FURU alerts or speculation. I eventually blew up my account 2 times leading me to take a break from Trading. Trading Journey with Bear Bull Traders (then "Vancouver Traders") It is always said that you can suppress your passion but can never wipe it out from your life. Since I had already moved to USA, the passion of making a living out of the stock market led me to look for options available to me to learn and explore the US Market. It was around August 2017 when I found your book on amazon with the title "How to day trade for living" which I thought exactly met my need. I immediately bought it and was impressed with the simple concise way the book was written and detailed about everything that needs to be performed step-by-step to become a Stock Trader. Currently, with the huge amount of options, with data available on google, the beginner's struggle a lot with what needs to be performed and are really confused if anything offered to them is genuine or not. The book written by you clarifies all of these confusion and give a very clear head start for beginner's trading career. After I read the book, I immediately joined the Bear Bull Traders (then Vancouver Traders) community in September 2017 and followed almost every small suggestions/guidance provided by you in the chatroom. I traded in SIM for 4 months and went live in Feb 2018. It's been almost 9 months live (every trading day from 8:30 am to 12 pm EST) and looking at the past where I was down with more than $ 6k in losses around the mid of June 2018 and gradually coming back to break even in Aug 2018 and currently sitting at a net profit of $ 3.5k.The figures might not seem big as I have always been a very risk averse Trader and when I started I used to trade with a volume of 20-50 shares for high priced stocks such as TSLA and 100-200 shares for mid-float stocks (I never traded low-float stocks, till date). Currently, I easily trade 500 - 750 shares/trade for mid-float and 200-300 shares/trade for high priced stock. I think every trader has to pass through a learning curve and should respect the process. I have made my own mistakes and learnt from it. I am still learning every day and happy to be able to lead my passion. Hope to be successful one day and trade full-time. Below are some of the items that I learnt during the process : 1. You just need to master 1-2 strategies to be able make consistent money. (I tried multiple different strategies (not just from the book) to create an edge and ended up with being more confused) 2. Volume sizing should be a privilege and should be increased gradually in 10-20% every time when you are confident enough.(At the time, when I started making consistent profits with small volume of 100-200 shares I immediately started trading with 500-600 shares at a time which led to a lot emotions taking over leading to consistent losses) 3. Say NO to Averaging Down ( This type of trading saves you almost 90% of the time but would wipe out months of profit in a single day when it doesn't work. Been there and learnt it the hard way) 4. Higher number of tickets DO NOT guarantee higher profits. (I have a rule to Stop trading once I achieve my profit target or my max loss or 30 tickets/day. Number of tickets/day have saved me rule has been a very important for me to take selective trades. I remember my reckless/revenge trading having 223 tickets on one of the trading days which cost me hundred's of dollars in losses.) 5. Rules are meant NOT to be broken. (Almost every single time I broke my rules I paid the price for it) 6. Being patient with the winners and impatient with the losers. ( Almost every single trader faces that. I was very impatient with the winners and patient with losers which made my losses bigger then my profits) 7. Setting the stop loss right to either an indicator/support/resistance level (Had a very bad habit of setting the stop loss at the level based on the loss I was willing to take) 8. Importance of Journaling. (I use a software named Edgewonk for Journaling. My past chunk of trades gave me the indication that my win rate between 9:30 and 10 am is 76%, between 10 and 10:30 is mere 24% and 10:30 to 11: 30 is 64%.This was an eye opener for me. I almost immediately stopped trading between the time where my win rate was the lowest. This really helped me in maximizing my profits) All the above mentioned experience wouldn't have been possible without a person who is a guide and a mentor, none other than Andrew!. I hope to continue learning from him and find myself fortunate to be a part of an amazing trading community.

Not sure if this is the right forum for this as I couldn't find one where it "fit" the criteria perfectly, so move it as needed. In the documents linked below is an example trading plan that I created many months ago from various sources, as well as my own thoughts. I've developed many business plans in a similar fashion and the way I get the most done is by typing up a list of questions, printing it out, and writing (or typing) thorough answers to those questions. You then wait a few days (reset your mind) and return, putting those answers into concise statements / paragraphs to form the basis of your overall business plan. For a trading plan, you may never do the second part (putting it into concise paragraphs), that's OK. The intended purpose of a plan (for business or trading) is to make you think and develop a vision for what you feel is success and how you intend to go about reaching your goal. Just like a business plan, you may deviate from it, you may go slower than you projected, and / or you may alter it along the way. It doesn't matter how you use it after you create it, it's just there to put you back on the tracks if you come off or serve as a reminder to the longer term goal if you're having a short term struggle. Some Tips: - I encourage you to really reflect on your answers, get granular with them, the more you get out of your head now is the more you'll be able to power through in the end. My last major business plan I wrote risk-aversion scenarios for coupe d'etat's (it was for the Middle East) and an assortment of what-if's related to the region - you won't need that here (although, maybe you have terrible in-laws and it's not out of the question), but it helps to think complex (possible) scenarios through as you'll be more prepared to react if it happens. - Set realistic goals. I took a few psychology courses on goal setting at university for my degree and they all seem to agree. Break the goal up into small obtainable steps and build momentum. So don't say "I want to be a billionaire in 5 years," reframe it as "In 5 years, I'd like to have my house paid off entirely, and I'm going to do it by ...". A goal too far out of reach or without structure is useless, even if there's a slim chance. The document has questions for the following sections: - Introduction --> Just a brief overview of what's intended. - Overall Goals & Strategy --> Questions regarding your intended trading goals and strategy. - Education / Evolution --> Questions about how you're going to gain knowledge and evolve to meet your goals. - Psychology --> Questions for how you plan to deal with the psychological aspects of trading. - Timeline --> Your intended timeline of milestones. How you plan to progress through it. - Future You Statements --> Prejourney Statement (message to yourself to be read after you've completed the journey, written in the future-sense like you're talking back at yourself.) - Time Statements --> Done at certain intervals, a quick journal of your progress so far. - After Completion Statements --> Area for you to reflect after this leg of the journey is over and you're about to start the next. Documents: Template File (with example data): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hKLkaPc4pYXNIpjv26ud3pFLWbeBogvL/view?usp=sharing Template File (blank, just questions): https://drive.google.com/file/d/14VL_ZVk1gBgqpKNeYwiNJDYwfWfSF2gS/view?usp=sharing

Hi, team. I can't figure out how to short during SSR using DAS + CME Group. When I try, DAS throws warnings: Short marketable limit order disabled due to SSR! Short market order disabled due to SSR! The only thing that works is setting a sell limit order at a specific price. But if the price is moving down fast, this is impractical. By the time I enter the order, the price has already moved below the order price. Any advice or suggestions? Thanks!

Thanks,Paras. I can resonate with a lot of what you’re saying,although I have much less experience than you. I started out about two months after being introduced to day trading by my financial advisor. Not liking the idea of trading fake money I started out trading 10 share lots and had some success over a short period of time. After that I decided to up it 100 share lots and then the emotions took over and I wasn’t following any rules as I was just trading impulsively.,causing a substantial amount of loss. So,I changed two things over the last few days 1. I’m taking journaling much more seriously,writing down the strategy and taking notes analyzing the trade I took. And,now I’m going to start exchanging my trades with a trading partner as we’ll view each other’s trades. 2. I cut my share size down to between 25-50 shares,depending on the volatility of the stock. And,so far so good, as I see some results. Although it’s small amounts of money,however,now I’m just trying to focus on turning around my losing streak and becoming consistently profitable. And,I’m also feeling much more optimistic about the future. All of this I couldn’t of being working and battling with the greatest and most helpful community in the world,Bear Bull Traders. Thank you everybody for being so helpful and supportive,I greatly appreciate it.

When you scale out at a .10c move, are you moving your stop (physical or mental) to break even? I ask because I changed scale-out strategies in August (SIM based) and took a huge hit (30% winrate, -$4000 on the month). I wanted to "let the runners run" and wait until it got near my price target. I was able to review the data at the end of August and noticed what was going on (what wasn't working). Like you, my numbers showed that my avg loser was way bigger than my avg winner, per trade expectancy was negative. I think the biggest (good) changes were the scale-out and the risk-based share sizing. Obviously, each person needs to develop their own strategy, but my current strategy is this: 1) Risk Based Share Sizing (see dynamic calculator in DAS area of forum) factored for confidence (e.g. if I'm not confident, I use smaller size than my max-risk allowable). My share size is based upon the stop distance. 2) When the stock reaches 1R (if my stop distance is $0.13 away, it'd need to move in my favor $0.13), I sell 25% and move my mental stop to break-even. I repurposed the Fibonacci tool (since I don't use it) to be a 1R, 2R, 3R levels indicator. 3) During the trade, I scale out some more where I see resistance forming or near known resistance levels (moving averages, half dollar, whole dollar), or at 2R, 3R, or the price target. Using my sell 25% hotkey. 4) My mental stop tends to float, so if a moving average that has been respected recently (bounced off of) is above my break-even point, I'll watch it as an indication for a change of direction (it can go past it a little bit to allow variance) and use that as a trailing stop. 5) Once my shares get down below 100, I usually measure the last two pullback distances, add a few cents to it (as long as it doesn't place it below the break-even point), and set it as a trailing stop order. Move on to the next trade. What really helped me refine this to my personality was a few data points that I record with every trade: - Highest Price in Trade (this is price related, not direction related, so highest price seen for either long or short) - Lowest Price in Trade Those aren't prices you executed at, but prices that the stock reached while your trade was open. From there, I can calculate the average R-movement, updraw%, and downdraw% for every trade. When I reviewed August's losses, the data told me that: 78% of my picks moved in my favor. I was simply not scaling appropriately and letting winners run against me. My position sizing and $risk was all over the place. For September, I implemented the new strategy listed above. Winrate is 76%. It has a lot of "small" wins. I'm working on releasing a few custom tools to the community to help people narrow down their strategy and refine their edge. One is a data-focused journal (does most of the work for you) and the other is a backtester (allowing you to automatically replay all of your trades with different scale out approaches you want to test).