Doing my second month of live recap. It did not go exactly how I anticipated, but I believe I learned a valuable lesson during my second week that made last week a much more enjoyable. Monthly Analysis of trading I began the month trading well, staying within my edge and only executing trades that I was confident in. When I increased share size I reverted back to taking trades outside my edge. This was fueled by the first day of increase share size when my first trade I got stopped out and then I entered a trade solely based on my gut and made the majority of the money back; although, I still ended the day red. I then took this strategy into the next day, entered late on a trade, got stopped out, and then revenged traded two more times in the day and ended almost at my max lost. I believe I posted a rant about this. The next day I was able to recover and trade well, but the final day before having to travel I ended up doing the exact same thing I had done on the two previous red days. Like I posted earlier I lucked out and had a whole week to reflect and analyze what I was doing wrong. I came back from that trip and began trading with my new goals and trading plan which focuses more on developing trading skills vice a money matrix. With the volatile and crazy week during Christmas, I met my goal each day. What I Learned for the month I learned that when my focus is on trading skills and executing sound trades, I do well and enjoy trading. When my focus is on making money or recovering losses, I do extremely poorly. The biggest thing I have taken from this month is that my edge when executed properly has between a 75-85% chance of working out, while if I take a trade that does met my edge I have between a 15-25% chance of working out. Thinking in these terms it has made it much easier for me to only trade within my predefined edge and most importantly, if I miss the trade I am not worried about FOMO anymore, I just look to the next time it presents itself. From a psychology aspect, I have noticed that I am not nearly as nervous entering a trade or holding a trade when I trade within my edge and trading plan. I do not get nervous during pullbacks, because I am confident in my stop loss, profit target, and entry. Even when the trade goes against me and I get stopped out, I do not get an adverse emotional reaction. Now if I trade outside my edge and trading plan, the complete opposite is true. I am nervous during the entire trade and usually end up exiting early when it goes in my direction. At the end of the day if I end up red, I am frustrated at myself for taking trades outside my plan. Monthly Overall Self Rating: Satisfied and looking forward to January Daily Goal Hit – 1 of 10 (First two weeks goal) 4 of 4 (Readjusted goal last week) Daily Max Loss – 0 of 10 Goals for the month progress 1. Met the goal of increasing share size once by having five green days in a row. 2. Did not meet my goal of trading my edge 5 straight days; although, I may still achieve this based on Monday's performance. I am currently at 4 days 3. I ended the month with a 65%-win ratio and a 1:1 risk/ratio which was a result of week 2's bad trading habits Risk Controls 1. Did not trigger Max Loss control all month 2. I did hit Max Share traded in a day, but I did not attempt to trade again so the control was not triggered. Trading Methodology 1. Did increase share size (Had two large red days right afterwards) 2. GGGGGRRGRGGGGGG Revised Goals for the Third Month 1. Trade only my 5 edge until a 20 set sample is complete. (No trade days don't count towards the total) 2. Increase share size once during the month after 5 straight days trading my edge. (No trade days don't count towards the total) 3. Have a 2:1 ratio at the end of the month 4. Have a 60% average win rate

Hello Mwarrior, Excuse me if I make some grammatical mistakes. English is my second language. I understand that day trading is different for everyone. I am not an expert but I have more than a year in front of the screens. I'll explain my experience so far and from there you take what suits you. The first thing I can emphasize is that day trading is a career, it's not something you learn in 3 months (with rare exceptions or maybe if you have a mentor with you all the time). Based on that prepare to last a minimum of 1 year learning as long as you maintain the discipline of a journal and learn from mistakes. You have to have some strategy but the most important thing is the following: 1. that your winners are greater than your losers. 2. Have good entries. 3. Define a maximum loss (2% of your account). 4. define a daily goal (1-2% of your account). 5. define a Monthly Max loss (6% of your account). 6. Stop doing trades if you have 3 erroneous trades in the day 7. Choose your trades well and don't do too many. 8. Stay away from low floats. 9. When you start live buy only 100 or 50 shares until you prove that you can be profitable. 10. Learn about the price action. As for the strategies. When I read Andrew's book and tried to use his strategies, I realized that I did not apply them well because there are several things that you only learn and realize from the time of experience in front of the screen, mainly you have to wait for the ideal entry and If you do not succeed, you just do not do that trade. I will explain 2 strategies that you can practice if they adapt to your way of doing trade. To use a strategy you must try it for a reasonable amount of stocks. Let's say, for example, 50 times and if it works 80% of the time is a good one. Regarding the selection of stocks, I think is not a good idea to concentrate on a specific stock unless you do scalping with many shares. For these strategies I use stocks in play with a good catalyst. (earnings, important news, etc). Sometimes it works with those who are every day in play as MU, SQ, AMD but I advise you for the moment and because you have only one screen that is better to concentrate on the gapper with a higher percentage and greater relative volume of the day. Strategy 1 (short). Stocks in play (gapper + 3%). Plan: Wait for the first five minutes. If the candle opens over the VWAP and closes under the VWAP and the candle is not very large. Seeing the 1 min chart, sell it short as soon as it rebounds in the VWAP, the stop loss is on the VWAP and the first target would be at one of the pre-market levels. The final targets can be defined by the levels in daily chart. Strategy 1 (long). Stocks in play (gapper -3%). Plan. Wait for the first five minutes. If the candle opens under the VWAP and closes over the VWAP and the candle is not very large. Seeing the 1 minute chart, buy it as soon as it rebounds in the VWAP, the stop loss is under the VWAP and the first target would be in one of the pre-market levels. The final targets can be defined by the levels in daily chart. Strategy 2 (short). Stocks in play (gapper + 3%). Plan. Wait for the first ten minutes. If the first candle is white and closes over the VWAP and the second candle is red, look for the best possible entry for short, with the stop loss on the previous candle and the first target on the VWAP (you must watch the 2:1 ratio). The final targets can be defined by the daily chart. LOD, etc. Strategy 2 (long). Stocks in play (gapper -3%). Plan. Wait for the first ten minutes. If the first candle is red and closes under the VWAP and the second candle is white look for the best possible entry to buy, the stop loss is under the previous candle and the first target in the VWAP (you must watch the 2: 1 ratio). The final targets can be defined by the daily chart, HOD etc. Please check the examples on the attached files. I would like to see comments and opinions from other user too, about this strategies. Estrategias 1 y 2.pdf

Hi 😄 I read all the comments but I don't know if you came across this. You definitely know that a stop loss should be technical, (a moving average, previous day high, low of the premarket or anything like that), the reason behind it is because traded pay attention to them, so if traders buy above some moving average, their stop loss will be below it. Now, if the price drops below the MA, a lot of stop losses will be triggered, so there's no point for you to hold, unless you had a better entry than those traders, and you should leave with them, but let's say you set your stoploss randomly, just let's make it 10 cents below your entry, you'll eventually get chopped and stopped out for every small pullback happens especially for a stock in play. I read a post here before about trading management, I was calculating my share sizes according to an excel sheet we've somewhere here, but I think Robert wrote this, the maximum shares you're allowed to take per trade is (your account size devided by your stop loss multiplied by the percentage you're willing to lose) let's say 25000$, your technical stop loss is 0.5 away(a moving average or previous day low + 5 cents at least below it to give it some room )* 1% of the account, you'll be allowed in this case to take only 500 shares, so use this formula and print yourself a sheet with the number of shares you're allowed to take if your stop loss is 10 cents away, 15,20,25,30 and so on, if you want I can post the link here, it's somewhere in the forum :DD . Most importantly is to take trades only if you've a great entry! My win rate improved so much after I got the advice from Robert, Brendon and Peter, (If you miss a good entry then just leave the trade and look for another one or wait for a pullback), a good entry will save you from losing and being stopped out on consolidations.))

(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.