Thought I would share my journal template with those interested. It's still a work in progress and I would appreciate any feedback or suggestions. Each day I capture the DAS Trades log and closed P/L. Also add a few notes about emotions, health, state of mind, etc. Then for each trade (in/out), I log the detailed entry, stop, target, strategy, etc. There are additional comments where I jot down my thoughts and areas of improvement. I have a summary sheet which contains a running total of all trades to date: And from this I can graph an equity curve: As well as calculate statistics things such as: Average Risk/Reward by Strategy Number of Trades by Strategy Win Percentage Etc, etc. Here is the data presented graphically in another post. I'm still learning in the simulator, so I haven't really found any use for the statistics yet. However, the data is there for when I am ready to analyze and review my performance quantitatively. Let's see your journal templates!

Ladies and Gentlemen (you know who you are), Many of us recently went live in February and are experiencing some challenges trading with real money. I'm starting this post so we can motivate each other and share our experiences in hopes of improving our current situations. I feel that writing and speaking with others can definitely put things in perspective. It also helps to know that you're not alone. So I'll go first: I went live on Valentine's day but the market showed me no love. My account is currently down 15% from my starting balance. After seeing how poorly I was trading, I've made the decision to alternate between real and sim. Going back to pure sim for 2 weeks feels like punishment and a step backwards. I'm hoping this structure will allow me to develop the psychology of trading live, while also training my emotions to return to the 'carefree' state it was in sim. My day trading journal provides the following insight as to where I am going wrong: 1. Revenge trading - After a big loss at the open, I find myself trading the same choppy stock(s) in hopes of getting my money back. This is the definition of madness. 2. Over-trading - On day 2, I made 15 trades (not tickets). On day 3, I made another 13. This highlights the fact that I am taking very poor and low probability setups. My reward-to-risk average is nowhere near what it was in sim (~1.5 vs ~2.0) I believe my emotions are getting the better of me, and I am trying to make back prior losses (point 1 above). 3. Jumping the gun and chasing - Of my 32 total trades, 11 I have categorized as 'impulse trades'. These are where I don't wait for a candle to close at a certain technical level, or I end up chasing a stock where the risk/reward is not favourable. 4. Holding on to losers for too long - Back in sim, I wasn't afraid to exit a trade before my stop if the price action was telling me to. Things like engulfing patterns and lower-highs/lower-lows were signals that I actively watched for. In live, I seem to ignore these signs and just hang on until I am stopped out. This results in my losers being bigger than my winners. 5. Not stopping when I hit max loss - I had no problem walking away from sim when I was down big for the day. With real money, I can't seem to let those losses go. I keep trading until the close, only to realize that I would have been better off just taking a nap. Here are my goals for how to improve in the coming weeks: 1. Be in a mindset to process the information that the market is providing. This means to stop being fearful of being wrong or losing money. Have laser-like focus and ignore the chat/Andrew if necessary. 2. Forget about P&L. I am trading with such small sizes that the dollar figures are really immaterial. If I can stop worrying about $25 here, or $50 there, I can pay attention to price action and trade management. What I make or lose in the beginning is irrelevant and I shouldn't beat myself up over it. 3. Focus on the process and execution. Profits are a by-product of good trading discipline and risk management. The money will come once I reduce the number of trading errors. 4. Lower share size when losing. I always get tempted to up my position size to recover losers. This is the gambler's fallacy! The other day I traded 400 shares of FOSL, which was twice the size I would normally take with this much buying power. 5. Only take A1 setups. Back in sim, I could finish my day by 10:30 AM with two or three really good trades. Instead, I am trading garbage for the full 6.5 hours and letting a series of small losses slowly eat away at my equity. 6. Ignore time-based profit goals. Having a daily profit goal this early on can be dangerous because I am putting too much pressure on myself. This leads to taking poor setups in hopes of hitting the target via quantity and not quality. If anybody is reading this, I hope that the above was useful or helpful to you. I'd love to hear from the rest of the Feb 2018 cohort--again, you know who you are! Now hold hands and repeat after me: I am a consistent trader. I know this for a fact because I've traded consistently before. Kumbaya My Lord, Kumbaya...

Guys, I got an email that ask a very important queastion. Let's share best practices here. Becuase I think this is VERY important. Email: My short answer is as below: Hi XXXX, that is a million dollar queastion! I think you need to trade small to build the confidence and grow your account to have a shield on your capital. It is much easier to trade if you have already made some money on your account. First loss on your original idea is much more harmful and it will put you in a big emotional distress. What do you think guys?

Let's start with the agreement that the career or activity of day trading comes with inherent risk. As noted in Andrew's book, a large percentage of the total people that attempt to trade will fail. This is due to the fact that it is a deceptively difficult activity. For example, anyone watching Andrew's many recaps on YouTube sees something that has become intuition and from an outside perspective, he is "easily" making large sums of money day after day in the market. What they are not seeing at first glance are the years of training, mistakes, and struggles that it took for him to get to that place. He persevered through the learning curve, as any successful trader has, in order to become consistently competent in his trading. I'm yet to meet or hear of a successful trader that said they did not experience a good sized draw-down of their capital (or complete blow up of an account) before becoming successful, yet most starting out think it will never happen to them. Proper education and practice can drastically increase your odds of success. In order to do the same and make it through this training period with minimal losses we take actions to protect us from ourselves, because in this field we are the only one that controls our destiny. There are many layers of protection for new traders; the most obvious that come to mind are sim trading, trading with small size, and risk controls when all else fails. While trading (especially the way in which we currently operate today) is a uniquely modern task, it triggers some of the most primitive brain functions we posses as humans. From "fight or flight" (losing money/exiting a position too soon), to the rush of neurotransmitters produced causing us pleasure (clicking hotkeys/winning trades). Trading successfully is often in direct conflict of these pre-programmed instincts common to all of us. It takes time and practice to fight these forces. We often use sports analogies to make our point, but I'll go a different direction: Learning to become a pilot has parallels to becoming a trader. While theoretically after months of study and work in a professional simulator, one could perform the tasks needed to complete a full flight on their own from taxi to takeoff, navigation, communications, and landing. However, one would never think it sane to allow a person to make this leap. In order to bridge that gap you must spend many hours with a competent flight instructor by your side ready to take over the controls in an instant (risk controls). Additionally, you don't go from ground school to the controls of a 777. Instead, you spend hundreds of hours in a 2-4 seat, simple airplane at first (small size). The reason is the inherent risk, which is in this case death. From the moment your wheels leave the ground until they safely touch down, you are fighting one mundane, insurmountable force - gravity. Markets work against a trader in the same way as gravity works against the pilot. Both are unchangeable forces far greater than that of the individual. At any given moment there are millions of participants in the market and each and every other person trading is working their hardest to take your money to put it in their pocket. You are doing the same to them. But, you need not be smarter, better, or faster than the entire market, just part of it. Similarly, if you and your friend are being chased by a bear, you need not be faster than the bear, only faster than your friend. Losing in trading, unless stopped early, results in a financial death. At some point you must leap from the simulator to trading real money. The only way to do this and maintain some control over the amount of risk your are exposed to is by trading in smaller sizes. Sizes smaller than what triggers your ingrained fight or flight instincts, while you work out how to deal with the primitive, natural response to a dangerous threat. Once you learn to deal with this stress, you can safely increase your position sizing over time to what your capital is fully capable of. Andrew, or any successful trader, has rewired his brain to diminish the fight or flight instinct that stress causes and in turn produces irrational thought. He's done this by building confidence in himself with the knowledge he is capable of producing positive results over time. This is only accomplished by a track record of hundreds or thousands of successful outcomes. Continue to safely notch those successful wins on your belt, with small size one at a time, until you have the confidence to trade to your full potential Now that I've described the reasoning behind why we feel this way, here are some thoughts on how to trade with a relaxed state of mind: 1) Trade with small size - This does not mean 10 shares, or 50 shares, or 100 shares. By small, I mean small size of risk. 50 shares of MU trades vastly different than 50 shares of TSLA. If you lock yourself into the mindset of a number of shares, this can be disastrous. You can lose $500 in a minute on a low float or TSLA with as few as 50 shares, this is extremely unlikely with MU. 2) Work from the bottom up, not the top down. - By this, I mean before entering a trade determine a reasonable stop with enough room that normal gyrations in price won't stop you out. Then ensure that your reasonable profit target has the appropriate 2:1 risk to reward. Once that is confirmed, decide how many shares you can buy based on the dollar amount of risk you have decided is comfortable to potentially lose. If my max loss is $20 and I need a .30 stop, then the MAXIMUM size I can take is 66 shares. No matter what, I know if I stick to my stop I will only lose $20. This will not hurt me. This enables a relaxed state of mind. **All too often, new traders base share size either on some predetermined number (as I discussed above), or they base it on how many shares they have to take to hit a profit target. Base the share size on maximum risk, not profit. 3) Know that you are going to lose and accept it - We are human, and as humans, we feel a need to be right in the decisions we make. It causes us emotional pain when we have to admit we are wrong. Disengage from this type of thinking and know that there is not a trader in the world that is right every time, this is just something you have to accept in this profession. Fortunes have been made by traders with win rates under 50%, but they had great risk mitigation techniques and exceptional risk to reward in their trades. 4) If all else fails, use external risk controls. - https://bearbulltraders.com/lessons/das-risk-controls/ I wish you the best of luck in your transition from sim to real money! If you find yourself in a bind, always feel free to reach out to any of us that have been trading real money for a while and ask. We are here to help.

Trading small is a must. We all know that the max you can risk in a trade is 1 or 2% of your account. But you don't have to risk 1%, even 0.5% right at the start of your live trading. For me it's better to risk a low amount of $ per trade, whatever you feel comfortable with ($10, 20, 30 USD, etc.). These hotkeys help you to calculate the # of shares based on risk on $ or %: DAS - Dynamically Calculate Shares on %Risk or $Risk - Hot Key + Configuration, Updated 10/30, v1.2 Choose your stocks: stocks with huge movements can be scary for new traders. Avoid huge ATR stocks like Tesla, BABA, SQ. In your early stages as new trader you need to learn and survive, stocks with decent ATR won't get you a lot of money but will help you to develop your trading muscle. Taking big loses at early stages of the trader career can be undermining for learning and mindset, so going small on not too wild stocks is the way to go for new traders. You don't climb everest as your first mountain, it takes a lot of training and preparation.

I noticed you describe your trades using the 1-minute chart. Do you also trade based off of that, or do you use the 5-minute for identifying setups? Just curious since the short duration trades reminds me of when I use to pay too much attention to the 1-min. Thanks for sharing.

Good rules! The keep watching for setups is a good one because usually when I´m stopped out I look for another stock just to return to the loosing one to discover I miss a good move… I just finished my 3rd month in sim and I reviewed my performance and revisited my rules. What I realized is that two factors made my sim account go down: keeping losing trades and adding to losing trades. After this review, Jason W shared this in the chatroom: 11:51 am Jason W : hey guys you know what i realize ? 11:51 am Jason W : if i dont count my losing trades, I'm a very profitble trader 11:51 am Jason W : i mean big losers 11:51 am Jason W : so if we just cap our losses, our winning will take care it selfs 11:52 am Brendon D : exactly right jason 11:55 am Brendon D : managing trades is simple by principle but hard to act out in real time, unless you are a robot So I ran a new calculation without all my losing trades > $100 (around 20 out of 300) and it was amazing how my equity curve goes up! So this hit me in the head and I made a commitment to cut my losing trades early. You can see by yourself how my capital behaved with and without big losses. The pattern in the first chart seems to be: big losses after a streak of mid winners, so I guess I became overconfident after these streaks. The second chart still shows losses, but they are small and with the winners they would allowed my capital to grow… amazing how stubborn I was… So thank you Jason W for your simple but powerful insight! Then I read an article about how all the best performing trading strategies had one thing in common: SMALL LOSSES. They showed numerous small losses mixed with a variety of gains, some small and some large. The small gains and small losses tended to cancel each other. What remained were the larger gains. There were no large losses in the loss column to cancel them. So a very important rule is to keep our losses small, and develop a mindset about how having lots of small losses its ok as long we avoid big losses and achieve mid / large profits. Also, keeping losing trades with the hope to exit breakeven or with a reduced loss is a waste of time, we are missing other opportunities in the market. The next rule that I´m reinforcing is not adding to losing positions. If I stick to the first rule (keep losses small) I don´t have to add to losing positions, but the rule is still there in order to grow the right mindset. Another rule I´m following is related with ATR and position size. My share size is more moderated with huge ATRs ( > $1 USD) and I allow more shares in lower ATRs (< $1 USD). Number of trades is another of my rules. I know I can have a winning day with 3 trades, and in lossing days I make 8 -10 trades, so I limit myself to 3 – 6 trades, or reaching my profit target (this one could be a rule by itself). Quit my trading day with a loss of .5% of my account is in my rules too. Don´t gamble: don´t trade IPOs and earning reports More recently, I´ve experimenting watching 3 stocks with good results. I can keep more focused really following three stocks than randomly watch 6-7 stocks and adding more as they are called in the chatroom. (this idea comes from Brian who watches 2 – 3 stocks every day). I´m trying to trade ORBs at the open, and watching 3 stocks and muting the chatroom has helped me a lot. I have a more comprehensive trading plan based on Adrew´s book and the Traders Business Plan from the book “Mastering The Trade” by John Carter but the above are the rules I´m reinforcing after my first 3 months in the sim, learning from my mistakes and stubbornness.

I expanded on The Process of Executing a Good Trade in this post. it takes a lot of practice to plan a trade in real-time (especially in the first 30 minutes of the market). At least a month and hundreds of attempts until you develop a process that works for you. Once you get good at planning and managing the trade, you will be able to do it faster and faster each time. Like muscle memory of sorts. Here is what works for me: Prerequisites 1. Stock is in play 2. Support and resistance identified in pre-market 3. Pre-market volume and price action is tradable 4. Know the float category (low, mid, high) and how many shares you plan to take While watching the stock 1. Spread is manageable 2. ATR/price swings accounted for (i.e, see how much the stock ticks. Is it going up/down in 0.01 to 0.05 increments, or 0.50 to $1) 3. Price action is clean and not choppy; related to above 4. Volume is good and not dying 5. Who is control: buyers or sellers? 6. What is the strategy/pattern that is setting up here? 7. Is the price getting extended? Finding an entry 1. Is the entry favourable (new 1-min or 5-min high), or will it be a chase 2. Did the stock pullback yet? If not, to which level will it test and will I survive that? 3. What's the target? Is it realistic? 4. Finding a reasonable stop at a technical level 5. Calculating the risk-to-reward 6. Executing the order; with conviction--no hesitation Managing the Trade 1. Is the live price action still clean? 2. Are we making higher-highs and higher-lows, or vice versa? 3. Are there are levels or tops/bottoms that I missed before entering that have now become a factor (i.e, a moving average on the 1-minute chart) 4. Is the market providing new information that validates or invalidates my original criteria? Is the Level 2 bullish, bearish or neutral? 5. Is it a good time to add more (if you scaled in initially), or should you take some profit off the table? 6. If scaling out, how much and at what levels? 7. Is the price action conducive to my original stop/target? 8. Is control between buyers and selling shifting? 9. Given the above, does it make sense to stay in the trade or exit at break-even, before stop, or before target? I know that is a lot to process in a short amount of time, but those thoughts go through my head during a trade. For others, it may be much simpler or even more complex.

Robert, I am right there with you on many points. I am now back in SIM because of heavy losses in my six months of trading as a new trader. In my early days I would have a couple good days in the SIM and then jump out and lose a huge chunk. Yes, I was stubborn and didn’t follow basic rules like trade for a couple of months in the SIM and when you go live, trade small share sizes. I am conquering my Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and doing an excellent job staying in the SIM this February. I want to share with you and the readers how I stopped over trading. I am a very hard worker. When I started trading I thought that the more stocks I traded the more I was working and thus would make more money. After data mining and reading my journal I found I would always make more money with less trades. Even though I found the connection of making more money with less trades I was still over trading. The loss of money did not change my behavior in this case. The cure, journaling every single trade. OMG, I was so tired of tracking every single stock with images and commentary that I found myself passing on some really good trades. I would see a great setup after my third or fourth stock trade and then say to myself, I don’t want to journal that. Lol I would say my average right now is about four trades a day. My profit each week has doubled or even tripled since I am now trading less. I would like to get my average down to two trades a day. In fact, who wouldn’t just want ONE great trade a day. One and Done! Thank you for your honesty with your post. You are not alone! Stan S.

Hi all, Having a journal is a must. I feel like I have learned so much about my trading in just the 2 weeks trading live because of this journal. For anyone starting out like me, if you are serious about this business, take the time to have a detailed journal. How else can we improve something we are not tracking? I focus more on the details of the trade and what I was thinking at the time, IB has tons of report performance reports that I can pull later if I want to see the numbers crunched. Here is a screenshot and detail of my journal, I have 3 main sections on my recap: Screenshot Link: Click Here Section 1: In this section I record how I feel Physically and Mentally in the morning before I start my trading day. Comment if I was able to get my morning routine done as planned. (My mourning routine is gym, sauna, get to my station and write my Journal Intro, review previous day recap, then build watchlist) Section 2: Here I add a screenshot of my Das Trader Account Report, with the me a summary of what I traded for the day. At the bottom of the page I also have additional screenshots of the detail transactions. Section 3: In this section I track some information of the stock like float size and how I found the stock. I also note down details of the trade like the strategy, position size and details of the price action shown on the screenshot. The best part about this section is the “Well Done" and "Improvement Notes”. I read on “The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist” how important it is to track what you did well on a trade. This way your recap is not all negative but also highlighting the good things that you should continue to do. Software: Just some information on the software I use, I track my Journal on Microsoft OneNote. As you can see on the pages tab I track all my Trading stuff like highlights of the book I am reading and any training course notes. If you have not try this software please give it a shot. It has a lot of great features, syncs with all devices and is completely free. Thanks. Carlos M.