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Hello Everyone, I just finished three months of live trading this past Friday, and about two weeks before finishing I came to the realization that something had to change if I was going to make it through the learning curve. After reading “Trading in Zone” and watching Mark Douglas’s “How to Think Like a Professional Trader” on YouTube, I decided I would create a 20-trade sample set to work on three areas of my trading. (1) Thinking in probabilities (2) Discipline to not give into FOMO (3) Holding my winners longer I figured since this is basically testing out a theory presented in one of the recommended Psychology books, I would make the results public so everyone in the community can see it. The desired outcomes I am looking for at the end of the sample set are: (1) Getting away from thinking trade to trade, and start thinking in a series of trades (2) Taming FOMO, so I do not get over excited and enter a trade too early (3) Confirm my profit taking plan is profitable over a series of trades. All of my indicators, confirmations, and risk analysis that defines my edge is based on information obtained in Andrew’s book and the lifetime Webinars. Edge Defined Strategy: 15 Min ORB – I chose this strategy specifically to force myself to deal with FOMO each and every day. I will caution that my edge does not appear every day, so there will be days that I do not take a trade. While tracking 5 Min ORBs and 15 Min ORBs for the last three months (total of 165 Stocks), I was surprised to see that 15 Min ORBs that meet my criteria appear more frequently than 5 Min ORBs. The percentage of them working is almost the same. 5 Minute ORB Pullback Met Parameters - 52 of 164 Total trades within parameters that have worked - 41 of 52 (78%) 15 Minute ORB Pullback Met Parameters - 55 of 165 Total trades within parameters that have worked - 41 of 55 (74%) Stocks for Watchlist: I select up to three stocks to watch based on the following criteria % Change – Gapped at least 2% but not more than 10% Catalyst – Needs to have fundamental news of sort. Vol – >100,000 Float – High or Medium float (> 50 m) ATR - .50 to 2.00 Trading – Must be trading higher than normal volume Exchange – I prefer Nasdaq over NYSE Edge Criteria: I have three parts risk analysis, indicators, and confirmations Risk Analysis: 1:2 or Greater Indicators: Must meet 2 of 3 Trades within the ATR Small share size with high volume Has a direction upward or downward (higher highs, higher lows, lower highs, lower lows) Confirmations: Must meet 3 of 4 ORBO closes above VWAP/ORBD closes below VWAP No large wicks/candles (wick cannot be larger than body, candles body not larger than ½ ATR) Closes near VWAP (needs to be within $.30) Has a pullback prior to breaking the opening range (cannot go past planned stop) Profit Taking Plan: As I am with CMEG, I have found you have to be very selective on when to take profits otherwise you are giving the money you make back in commissions, so I developed strict criteria for taking profits. Plan A – 1/3 out at just a little above 1:1 (this allows me to be at break-even if the stock moves back to my entry point), all out at profit target (+/- $.03) Plan B – 1/3 out at just a little above 1:1, 1/2 at profit target, all out at technical level or my first out Plan C – 1/3 out at just a little above 1:1, 1/2 out near the profit target if stock stalls near it, all out at the profit target or my first out. Share Size: I am taking share size based on a fixed dollar amount. Thanks to KyleK29 & fjmocke for the hotkey setup. Daily Trading Goal: My daily trading goal is to trade only within my edge, stick to my profit taking plan, control my emotions, and be disciplined. If I meet these then it is a green day regardless of what my P/L says.

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?

Anyone read “One good trade” by Mike Bellafiore, and in particular the chapter on ‘reading the tape’? Seems to be of major importance for day trading, but I’m a bit confused about this. Not described very well/in depth in this book. Any thoughts on the subject?

February 5, 2019 $AMD (3 of 20) - Stopped out Sample Set Results P G S 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Picked the wrong stock to enter today out of the 2 that met my edge. Not getting a full night's rest definitely made it hard to focus this morning.

Hello Abiel, It was wonderful information. Thank you... Tj

I actually started this sample set on January 30, 2019. I was able to take 2 trades within my edge on Wednesday and Friday of last week. Today nothing appeared so I had a no trade day. If you click on the image it should bring up a clearer image, so you can read it. $MU - January 30th $GE February 1st.

There is no customization. Your only option to assign hotkeys to the following commands: I don't use the hotkeys--I use the BUY/SELL buttons on the right.

As you probably know, Mike Bellafiore is also the co-founder of SMB Capital. The SMB Capital YouTube channel has some great videos. I did a quick search in their channel of "reading the tape." This link should take you to what I've found. I haven't watched these yet, but I have watched many of their other videos. They are a wealth of information. https://www.youtube.com/user/smbcapital/search?query=reading+the+tape

Hi Gordon, I have not read the book yet, but have heard good things about it. My thoughts on reading the tape are this: The tape shows what actual orders have gotten filled vs looking at the L2 which are the limit orders that are there waiting to be filled. So the L2 is a before picture and 'the tape' is the after picture. Let's say you are looking at the L2 and orders are stacking on either side, say 10,000 shares are at the top of the ASK side, you would see the number '100' sitting there. If it decreased to now 50...just by looking at the L2 you do not know if aggressive buyers were buying on the ASK or those placing those 100 sell limits orders jumped to sell on the BID side before the priced broke down. Thus the term Andrew uses in his classes 'Aggressive Buyers' buying on the ASK or 'Aggressive Sellers' selling on the BID side (not sure if he uses the later term). Now you can have sellers on the ASK that believe the higher price will come to them and are in the middle of the L2 and not aggressive buyers who believe the price will come to them on the BID side bringing the price down. I keep my tape color coded to show Buy and Sell orders filled AT, ABOVE, and BELOW to show if those are aggressive buyers or sellers. In short it helps show who is in control. Also shows that were is order flow with the ticks of every order. You do not want to trade a stock with no order flow, so look for a tick of an order filled every second or so (shows good order flow and liquidity). Hope this helps! -B.

This is an area I'm really interested to learn more on as well.

There are a lot of great trading setups!! Too many to reply to all individually, so nice work everyone! It is interesting to see what everyone is trading with. I built my station similar to Andrew's. I have six 23 inch ASUS monitors on the Vivo Hex LCD Monitor Stand ($104). I got a standing desk from Evodesk (about $700 great company, I love this desk and the ability to stand and sit with a push of a button.) Below are the specs, prices (at the time I bought it), and amazon link incase anyone is interested in building their own machine: Motherboard: MSI Arsenal Gaming Intel Z270M ($118) Processor: Intel i7-7700K 4.2 GHz ($329) Processor Fan: Cooler Master Vortex Plus ($29) Ram: Crucial 16GB Single DDR4 2400 ($149) Memory: Samsun 960 Pro Series - 512GB M.2 Internal SSD ($289) Graphics Card: PNY NVIDIA Quadro K1200 ($302 - installed 2 support 6 monitors) Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit ($125) Power Supply: Corsair CX Series 450 Watt. ($47) Case: Rosewill Micro ATX ($20, this case is small gave me a bit of challenge getting everything installed.) Optical Drive: Asus 24x DVD-RW ($21) Carlos M. Skype ID: c_moreta (Feel free reach out to me at any time via Skype)

Guys, thank you very much for the in-depth info, it really helped! And it is good to see that there isn’t anyone here playing around lol. Ryan, I will use your specs to guide me in acquiring the equipment, either off-the-shelf or through a custom builder. Actually, I am going to NY in a couple of months, maybe we can work something out. It would demand a lot more time for me to try to build it myself, and I want to focus as much time as possible to trading. In the meantime, I will be using what I already got, which is an iMac 27” that I dedicated to run DAS in Bootcamp, and a MacBook Pro 13” that I use for everything else, including the live chat. https://imgur.com/a/rV4j9