To start off, I did not see the word ''Journal'' in your initial post and I think this is where the problem is. Here is a list of things you can watch IF you have been journaling your trades : 1) Your stop loss : where are they situated ? in air ? on feeling ? on a technical indicator ? a price level? new 5 minutes high or low ? It needs to be somewhere for a reason 2) Your entry: Do you anticipate or enter when lvl breaks? On moving average ? Important lvl of Support and resistance ? 3) Your Sizing according to stop : Do you stop out BEFORE your actual real stop ? 4) Your trade management wich include the way you scale out. Wich can make or break your overall profit and Risk : reward 5) The stocks you decide to trade, Whats the float, did it gap up or down more than x% ? 6) What patterns are you trading ? Are you going with your mood, experiencing, or do you have ONE OR TWO pattern that you are trying to master 7) are you revenge trading ? Are you chasing ? are you averaging down ? 8 ) Whats your Win Rate % ? 9) What is your average winners $ ? 10) What is your average losers $ ? 11) Do you cut your losses ? If you Risk 1% per trade, aiming for 2:1 Risk:Reward, and your Daily Profit target is 1% , it doesn't make sens, your target should then be 2% daily AT LEAST Here is what I came up with : I calculate everything in ''R'' wich is What I risk per trade in $ (mine is 30$ for now with a 3.5K account) lets say 1% then RISK PER TRADE : 1R MAX DAILY LOSS: 2.5R ( Why not a round number ? Because sometime trade is just no going anywhere and I get out without it going to my stop) DAILY GOAL : 4R ( To me it is not to high because of my style of trading wich is more riding the trend for big bucks) A scalper/momentum could go for 2.5R or 3R WEEKLY GOAL : 10R PS: Daily Loss and Goal are calculated INCLUDING Commissions When I will be +10R for 2 weeks in a row, I will then up my ''R'' to 50$ instead of 30$ and so on my boy so stop thinking 1% a day is not high enough becasue it is only 50$, when this 1% be equal to 250$ instead of 50$. Thats some serious money. NOW My question to you is what is YOUR bread and butter pattern, where is YOUR edge in the market !? A) Do you prefer to ride the trend or take reversals ? B) Are you more of a ***Scalper ( in and out in seconds ) ***Momentum trader ( couple minutes ) ***Longer Term ? C) What pattern do you like the most, fits your personnality the most ? Stick to it, master it and inscrease ''R'' when you have concistency. Feel free to email me @ [email protected] and Congratulations on your english, it is pretty good Since I started to work harder, I started to be luckier! 🙂 See you in chat Monady

I'm a pretty heavy user of trading sim, and there only seems to be a bit of scattered info on it in the forums so I thought I'd post a detailed thread here along with some recent improvements they've done. For those who don't know, TradingSim (www.tradingsim.com) is a dedicated replay paper trading platform that runs in the browser. One can choose any date, setup a watchlist and playback stock data. There are buttons for play, pause, step to next candle, speed up, slow down etc. You can set your account size, buy, sell, short, limit and stop orders are all there. The advantages of using such a platform: Trade outside of market hours Drastically increase the amount of practice trading for a given time of day (for instance the open) Trade in different market conditions Use it as a research tool to study historical data, refine patterns and strategies, etc. One of the main drawbacks that people have commented here on the forums here is that it does not have pre-market and post market. They have since added this a little while ago. I'd say the only key thing that's still missing is level 2, although they do have order flow; and that also shows the current spread. There is obviously no premarket gapper scanner or anything like that. For trading practice I simply look up the respective recap from Andrew on youtube in order to get a watchlist. I spent quite some effort getting this das-like, and I'm relatively happy with the result. Take a look for yourself, and note that my DAS setup is slightly different than Andrews (I use green candles, different thickness MAs). Like DAS, there are a lot of options, it takes a little while to find everything you need. One rather critical option that vastly improved it for me was the 'Scale series only' under the 'Scale' of the chart settings. This stops the chart zooming out to fit the 50 and 200 SMA when they are out of screen. Just like DAS you can mark your charts with relevant levels from the premaket or daily, levels can be moved across charts via one by one via a copy-paste type functionality, but given the amount of clicking involved it's just as fast to draw them again. Some of the drawbacks the platform still has: Calculation of the VWAP in the pre-market is incorrect (I am currently in contact with them about this) No level 2 Hotkey functionality is a bit weak compared to DAS For active trades, it shows your average price on the chart, as well as relevant limit/stop orders, which is pretty cool, however once a trade is closed, there are no triangles to show you your orders. This makes it difficult for reviewing trades. This also facilitates overtrading or scaling out too quickly in my mind as you can't see the array of triangles you are leaving behind. During my usage of the platform I have found some bugs or oddities and sent them feedback. They have been fairly responsive about addressing all the feedback I have sent them, and a number of things have been fixed thus far. A word to pricing and competition. I tried both NinjaTrader and ThinkorSwin in the beginning, both of which are free. Ninja trader didn't work at all, replay only seemed to work for futures and forex. ThinkorSwim is also free but requires an ameritrade TD account. Based on feedback I heard from others from the community that it was rather clunky and not really usable, I didn't bother trying it out. TradingSim is $300 a year, and they offer a 10 day trial. Compared to the cost of DAS I personally think this is totally reasonable, particularly for people with jobs, or in other time zones who need to practice out of market hours. To conclude I want to emphasize that whilst I am happy with using this software, it is clearly no replacement for the DAS trader simulator with real time data and participating in the chat. Personally, I find I take tradingsim less seriously than the DAS sim, something about the fact the things are not happening real time really takes the pressure off. Therefore it is essential to participate in the market daily to practice in realtime market conditions, and on the platform you will go live with. I'd be interested to here from other members using tradingsim and what they think. Anything to add or any questions?

When first starting out or learning a new strategy, I would suggest respecting your original stop loss. This way you can get a feel for the signals that appear when the trade falls apart. As Mark Douglas recommends during the 20 trade exercise: make it mechanical and limit decision making. As you gain experience, you will start observing the above indicators that reduce the probability of your trade working out. This is where intuition allows you to get out of a trade early. Remember that you can always re-enter as commissions are cheap. The danger when doing this as a beginner is that it leads to getting chopped up and/or revenge trading.

Here is my wrap-up for the 5th week of live trading. Weekly Overall Self Rating: Good Daily Goal Hit – 2 of 5 Daily Max Loss – 0 of 5 Goals for the month progress 1. I executed 2 days in a row trading only my edge. I took two trades outside of my edge. 2. Hit 5 days green days in a row, so I will be increasing share size to 150 starting on Monday 3. I have a 2:1 ratio 4. I have above a 60% average win rate Risk Controls 1. Did not trigger Max Loss control 2. Did not trigger Max Share traded in a day control Trading Methodology 1. Did not increase or decrease share size in the week. 2. GGGG Weekly Analysis of trading Focusing on trading within my edge has really brought everything together. I have been less emotional once entering the trade as I have gained more confidence in my trading edge. After my struggles the first two weeks, I decided to take time and analyze my trading edge while I was away from trading due to work. This gave me a solid 7 days to review my simulator and live journals to see if I could identify why my winning % had dipped so much. I found that I was entering trades outside of what I considered my edge. I then decided to clearly identify what my edge was and only trade within that for a sample set of 20. The past two weeks have highlighted the huge impact this has had on my trading. As you can see from the stoplight chart below I have had a huge improvement. Nov 29th I trade outside my edge and got stopped out at my entry point according to my edge. What I Learned I have learned that if I trade within my edge my probability for having a winning trade this week was 88%. If I trade outside of my edge my probability for having a winning trade this week was 22%. For me this has increased my ability to handle my emotions and control my ability to not trade when I am feeling FOMO. I did miss 2 entries this week, but I was able to stick with my rule of letting it go if I miss the trade. I know the trade is not going to work each time, but at least I know I am entering a trade with a high probability of going in my direction. Below you can see my analysis that I have started doing each day at the end of the day. For a stock to meet my edge it must be within risk/reward ratios, have 2 of 3 indicators, and 3 of 5 confirmations. I have done this for 5 and 15 Min ORB, but as of now I am only trading 15 min ORB. What I did not Expect I truly did not expect the profit taking management to be as hard as it is. Right now I am having issues holding a stock moving in my direction to my predefined exit rules. I have this urge of making sure I take some profit before it goes against me. This is going to be my next area of focus once I complete my edge analysis sample set of 20.

Greetings BBT's, My name is Steven Burke (AKA StevieB), as of today, I'm a new lifetime member. I am 55 years old and "semi-retired" entrepreneur living in Santa Fe, NM. I have a 15 year old boy and 19 year old daughter, and coming up on my 30th anniversary with my wife I met in college. Yesterday, I completed my simulator acct setup with Speedtrader. I will be in the simulator starting this Monday for 3 months or so and will be going through all of what Andrew's education programs have to offer, full time. MY HUMBLE PIE STORY: Since this October I have been doing real money equity trades on Ally's crappy platform. I got ridiculously lucky and within two weeks was up about $7,500. I thought, oh man, this is GREAT! We'll, as Howard Cossell said back in the day, "Down goes Fraser!, Down goes Fraser!" I averaged down pretty heavy with an SQ trade that plummeted like $9 bucks, caught falling knives along the way. I quickly did all the classic emotional trading mistakes, you name it, I've done them all in the last 7 weeks, revenge trading, FOMO trades, not committing to a trade plan, sloppy stop loss setups, not closing out positions overnight....and I did it ALL with real money! Needless to say, the $7,500 of what I beginner's luck made vanished in 2 trading days, and I then proceeded to lose $6,500. In the process, I did have a couple disciplined, well executed trading days after re-grouping, so I do have a sense of what that feels like. On those days I was patient and letting the trade come to me instead of the reverse, I was mostly ahead of the action with a well thought out technical trading plan, and good trade management ( scaling in/out, adjusting stops, etc.) THE UNEXPECTED SURPRISE AND POTENTIAL GIFT: I love the challenge of what day trading represents, and the surprise to me is that it presents an opportunity far more then money making: The technical aspects I think any reasonable intelligent person can learn with some good 'ole hard work, but I did not know that perhaps 90 percent of what this will require is "me learning about me", and changing neural pathways that not only give me a fighting chance to be a long term successful day trader, but can also improve my mind, body and spirit. Andrew did speak to this in his book, but it is one thing for me to read it and another to look it square in the eye with hard earned money on the line. I look forward to this challenge on a daily basis and I feel that BBT will be a safe and enjoyable community to evolve in and resonate with. MY BACKGROUND: This past September 2018 I sold a home environmental services company in Santa Fe, NM to a couple of my existing employees and now I am a part-time environmental consultant with ample time freed up. This change process is what made me look to the stock market over the last couple months, as I originally was looking at stock investment opportunities. Then the market began it's ongoing correction and volatility that started in October. That led me to seek guidance, and rather quickly led me to Andrew's book. Andrew's excellent, well written and honest book, along with the current market environment, changed my original thought of investment education to now complete devotion to day trading education. I researched several chat rooms and educators prior to taking a test drive this last week with BBT. I am impressed with the "quality over quantity" of the membership, Andrew's team members, and the sharing of talents from various members. From my research of many groups, this group stands out and is the one I look forward to resonating with as I now head into the simulator for 3 months. Warmest Regards, StevieB

Hello, I would like to add my experience so far going live (6 weeks so far). I am hoping by posting my goals/results it will help with the discipline I need in keeping to them. I was in SIM (both DAS and TradingSIM.com) for 6 months with very poor results. Saw no progress so I looked for a new platform. I felt my primary issue was hotkey and other careless mistakes. Though DAS is a very strong and nimble platform, I always felt like I was fighting it. I guess my brain is wired differently. Looking at other platforms I thought Etrade-Pro would have the best impact on my hotkey, etc. mistakes. Which it did. I went from ~2mistakes/day to only 2 total since I went live. I wasn’t planning to go live, but Etrade has no SIM so I kept my risk to only $25/trade. Here is my first month results: I am only striving to accomplish psychological goals. At the moment I am not interested in my P/L or my win% rate. I was quite pleased with my Winners($)/Losers($) ratio. In SIM it was 0.6 to 1. I was always cutting my winners short and having trouble stopping out. I have an over trading issue I need to deal with so I need to keep my trades to a minimum (~3/day) so I only choose good setups. Hulk days. I knew I would have an issue with this. It is not a coincidence that the number of hotkey mistakes is equal to the number of hulk days since that was the trigger for both. This was the reason I failed my goals the first month and I am still keeping myself to $25/trade risk until I have a whole month keeping to my min goals. I define hulk day as more than 7 trades, going past my -$75 S/L limit and consciously choosing too large of a share size at least once. Correct Stop Out % was my favorite stat. This really helped me going from using hard stops on all trades to now using manual stops on all trades. By keeping this stat I know it is quite likely my chosen stop out price is correct and the stock will unlikely turn around and be profitable. Once I went to manual stops I started S/O before my predetermined stop when the trade didn’t feel right anymore. This was the primary catalyst to improve my W$/L$ ratio. I determine this stat by looking at the next technical level. If I would have used the next tech level as my S/O instead would the stock turn around and make it to my first profit target? The answer was no 77% of the time. Here are my results for halfway through my second month live: I am concerned my over trading tendencies are kicking in more. I need to control it. I am really happy with the W$/L$ ratio, but I don’t think that is sustainable at this level. I don’t know if the hulk days are under control or not. I will only know, next time I get a hotkey or other type of mistake. That’s all. Thanks for reading. Any insight you could give me would be appreciated. -Rob

Hi, For whats it worth, my going live experience. I've been in SIM since March 15. I work a full time job, so I took extra time to feel ready. Last month or two in the SIM were fantastic, probably upwards of 70% win rate. I was aware emotion was the big differentiator, but as much as you try and prepare yourself for that, you can't train emotion without trading real money. I went live in mid Sept. On the first two trade days, I had moderate wins around $100. Hey, this is easy, on my way to traveling the world in my private jet! 🙂 On the third trading day, I lost around $400 and on the fourth trading day I lost over $500 (trying to get the $400 back). I have no problem sticking to my stops, those losses weren't that kind of a problem. they were emotional (Hulk, revenge, over-trading etc). I stepped back, significantly reduced my position size, and instituted some live trading rules. Maximum trade limits, time of day and the best thing I did was eliminate my $goal (Too much pressure, green is good!). I don't have DAS enforced rules, I know I can control my discipline enough not to need that. Everyone is different so I think we all need to find what works for us. I played around somewhat through the rest of Sept, but I was so emotionally damaged over those losses (not that it was a lot of money, but due to the shake in confidence) that I couldn't trade effectively. I refused to go back into SIM, because for me, the challenge was obviously overcoming the emotional aspect of trading. I "started over" not trading in the first week of Nov, moving my account from CMEG to IB, and zeroing out my equity curve (starting fresh). That really helped because it got that loss out of my mind. The move to IB was also a game changer. VERY difficult with a CMEG small account and 2.95 commissions to be successful starting out, because you need to keep your position size small to gain confidence. I'm sure it can be done, but those commissions tend to have a way to sneak into your math head when you are calculating how much you need to make on 50 shares to make $20 AND cover nearly $6 dollars commissions (remember you pay when you go in, and when you come out!). In my first week and half back, starting 6-Nov to 13-Nov, my zeroed equity curve dropped another -$670. 😐 Since 13-Nov I have pulled my equity back up to -$568. It doesn't seem like much but I can feel my confidence growing. My win ratio is 73 wins and 74 losses for the month. I had an $85 dollar loss on NVDA on the 27-Nov that was a result of an order error on my part, but apart from that, since 13-Nov my biggest daily loss was $47. My wins are small, cause I NEED to take profit too soon; working on that (Hide the P&L and make the trade, have a stop, and a target, and stick to it). The other problem for me is to stop trading when I am green. Generally when I did take just "one more trade" that's when my profit for the day disappeared. I do that now by just taking the trade in SIM, to test my theory (Funny how they always win!). My current rules are simple, not a big list, but its working for me. I have learned over the years to keep it simple. keep the position size SMALL (for now). the goal for the day is to be green. Don't speculate, look for a setup. However, I will play a feeling, but with a pretty tight stop. Three losing trades in a row and call it. And generally three winners call it. And above all else, never, ever, look at your P&L. As Andrew has said, and most other you-tubers that matter, make the trade. If you do that, the money will come. I do peak at my net when I am not in a trade, and use that to decide if I want to take another trade, or if I am good for the day. But generally, if I have 4 or 5 trades under my belt, I will stop, win or lose. I think Andrew knows this, or why wouldn't he just keep trying to recover from a -$300 dollar loss. We have all seen him do it. The only other thing I do most days is turn off chat at 9:30 est. I do find myself occasionally influenced by those chat notifications, and quite often, they don't work out when I hop on the train. Lastly, a rant: traded AMD every day this week, and took a little loss on it every day. Piece of Garbage! It's a tough market right now, so I think its a great time to learn. Cheers Garry