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Thanks for identifying this @poczos @christophersteven @[email protected] Lets clear this up for all the challenge participants. Live Trading - Brokers charge commission and fees. Trading software platforms, such as DAS never charge fees or commissions. DAS tries to pass through the fees as a representation of what your fees will most likely be based on the broker you choose, but since different brokers charge different commission structures, DAS must be programmed in different ways depending on the broker used. IB only has two commission structures, Tiered and Fixed. Tiered is $.0035/share (minimum commission of $.35/trade) + other regulatory fees and ECN fees. Fixed is $.005/share (minimum commission of $1.00/trade) + other regulatory fees but NO ECN fees are ever charged You might choose either option depending on your trading style, but that is a discussion for separate time. Interactive Brokers does not have a $2.95 minimum on any of their commission structures, but other brokers do. Now onto the BBT challenge Paper Trading/BBT challenge - Since this was our first ever challenge, and we did not in theory pretend that everyone was on one broker, we had a slight issue with the fees in the beginning. Remember DAS doesnt charge commission or fees, but since this is a challenge and their is no broker we are linked up to for this paper trading, any of the fees are only representations of what Broker X might charge. Since not everyone uses IB we didnt choose IB structure. We will make sure to make this more clear moving forward in future competitions so it doesnt cause confusion. Hope this makes sense and please ask any follow up questions if anything is unclear.

Live trading summary for week ending 3/29/19. A good week, from a trading quality standpoint. Except for one trade, which I missed my entry but took the trade anyway, the rest of the trades were OK. They had a good setups, execution and risk management was good. My trade evaluation by week: Lots of good learning this week. This week I restarted trading the open with a scalp trade. I use to scalp for the first 3 months of live trading. But with a 1 trade/day rule, starting February, I didn’t want to waste my one trade on a scalp. I had issues successfully switching to SIM on one occasion so I did have an accidental 3 trade day this week. This weekend I will analyze my trades for this month and determine my game plan for next week and April. Have a good weekend.

Friday 3/28/2019 I had a wellbeing score of 5/10 this morning. My nerves were good. I didn’t want to repeat what happen on the last day of February. February was a good month but I traded like an idiot on the last day which mentally seem to make the whole month seem like poor results. So I decided last night no scalp trades today, since they can go real bad sometimes. So of course, like clock work both MU and AMD are in play and have a really nice scalp setup showing up in the premarket. So it was a good test of FOMO control to watch them pop without me and reach my target. I must have been really picky today because at the 2 minute mark I still didn’t find an ORB that I like, Finally MU came back down to test VWAP. If it bounced from VWAP and there was a really good R/R to the HOTD (which is also at a tech level). It did bounce and I went long. The price did pop up and missed my first target by 2 cents then came back down and I stopped out at my planned price. Since it was a loss, that is the only trade I allowed myself to take. The forming 5min candle when I took the trade: The stop out: What I did good today: Was pickier than usual on choosing my first trade. How did I challenge myself today? Fought the FOMO, stuck to my plan. What I did bad today: MU was setting up more for an ORB like AMD has been doing lately. It would have been better to take a partial entry and waited for a better entry or confirmation. What can I do better tomorrow/next week: Do my weekend prep work. There’s lots of charts I need to evaluate. I am also looking forward to analyzing my trades for the month.

March 28, 2019 - Nothing met my edge, but I did take a sim trade on $AMD working the engulfing strategy that I will be incorporating after this sample set.

One more day of the Challenge. Today I traded poorly just like yesterday. Fees and Commissions pile up when you are firing away trying to make up for your last bad decision. My FB trades got way out of hand. Later in the day I did make a couple of normal trades. Hopefully next week I will fall back into my normal trading habits. Pre Market Plans 2 Days in a row with a Christmas tree chart in my recap.....Not Good! Im going for a home run tomorrow in the open, I think that's my only chance to win now.

Good luck to you and I look forward to seeing more posts about this. I do think that developing your own style is really important and comes with experience most likely in a real money environment.

This is excellent, but my recommendation is to stay away from low float stocks. What we see in challenge is people who trade those, have a HUGE swing in their account. We want to have a steady increase. And be careful of HULK days!

Same with me, I was terrible on the SIM (until recently). No discipline and lots of hotkey mistakes. I traded much better when I went live (though still not adequate). Its amazing how few hotkey mistakes occurred when I knew that the button had real money behind it. I am better on the SIM now since I use it infrequently.

Yes I’ve heard of that many times......but I’ve never heard of stories of Trader’s that trade poorly in sims, then trade well with their live accounts. IMO if you can’t control your emotions to be profitable with a sim account, it’s just going to be worse in a live account. If you don’t have the self control to trade your sim the exact same way you plan on trading your live account, more self control practice might be needed. Again I’m new, maybe a more experienced trader would like to shed some insight. Thanks for posting this journal thread though, this should be interesting either way. Best Wishes

Im new, so maybe I'm way off here. But why not do this challenge with a simulator first. It's going to take time to spot his setup ideas and manage the trades the way he teaches. Doing this challenge without practicing his strategies first will not be a true representation of his teaching advice.