25.Jun.19 - DASTrader - BT Red Day. Today I was not in the right mental state, Tired, upset. I had $CRON, $AAPL, $NFLX and the usual suspects $AMD, $MU on the watchlist. $CRON - formed double hammer on daily, looking to pop $AAPL - A Hanging man followed by 2 shooting stars on the daily - indicating Bearish trend to come ($AAPL did drop a lot) $NFLX - A perfect shooting star on the daily indicating Bearish trend (although price range is not in my comfort - dropped a lot) Trade1&2: $CRON. Had lesser volume and moved slowly. Ì was waiting till 8th min, when the price poped above VWAP and all MAs, I took Long. There was still 50MA and YY levels, but I took it long as the volume increased. My mistake was I went full share size. When the volume is low and the action is slow/volatile, I should not take full size. Nevertheless, i got stopped out for big loss. I went Long again at 10AM, after the bounce off VWAP, got stopped out again. Very bad trade. Trade 3: $MU. Took $MU short below 200MA on 1min, it was also below many MA levels. But I got stopped out. $MU was strong at the open until 11, before it reversed. May be it was a Long, as a bounce off 200MA(1min). I missed the 3c setup on 1min. I was watching it when it happened, but the move was so fast, I couldn't press my hotkey fast enough. Trade 4&5: $AMD. 5min 3C setup (although I didn't like the top wicks on the 2 candles). I took Long at the break of top, Price moved 1R, then dumped as the SPY was dumping too. I was done for the day, I just took another micro size $AMD trade for the break of MA to test tradesetup. The moment the inside candle appears on 15min near the resistence, I should have got out. Note the reduced volume too on the inside candle and the long upper wick. Good: I learnt couple of things from trading this week. Even Best of stocks with best daily setups can chop you out.. In these market conditions, always reduce your share size and look to get 1R/2R instead of 4R/5Rs. Happy that learnt this on SIM and not with real money. Improvement: Market was too choppy today at the Open (i trade only the open). And most of the stocks traded with SPY today. Very difficult to find pattern. Need to learn to trade all market conditions. Today High RR setups didn't work, ($AMD today, $FB yesterday and $MSFT on Friday) should have switched to High Win-loss setups. That would have worked. I seem to be shorting stock into a support or Longing into a resistence for the last 3 days ( today $MU, Yesterday $ROKU and on Friday $CRON). Need to be watchful of this mistake.

Hello Fellow Traders, After reading the email from Andrew about “When to Quit Day Trading” I wanted to offer my perspective as I am in almost the same predicament as the trader Andrew referenced. My current trading career is (1) planned live trade, 2 unplanned live trades due to not realizing I was not in simulator, and about 4- or 6-months simulator depending on if you want to count the 2 months I spent just watching charts. I am an active duty United States Marine who is about to transition from the military after 22 years of service. I originally planned on becoming a Forensic Accountant upon retiring from the military. I have acquired my bachelors in accounting, Master in Forensic Accounting, and achieved a Certification as a Certified Fraud Examiner; however, after being introduced and reading Andrew’s book I have decided to invest all my time to becoming a day trader prior to my retirement from the military in December 2019. I found myself continuously asking the same question as the trader referenced, “Is there any criteria to determine when to quit trying to learn day trading?” I believe the answer to the Traders question is, “When you as a trader and your family no longer have the desire or ability to accept failure as a possibility.” As long as you and your family have the desire to learn, work, and sacrifice for this career than you should pursue it. During my time in the service I have been away from my wife, son, and daughter more than I have ever wanted to be. I currently work away from where my family lives. Monday through Thursday it is easy to focus on Day Trading and learning; however, due to connectivity issues in the hotel rooms, I spend at least 10 hours on the weekend watching the Mentorship webinars, classes, reviewing my journal, and developing the next week’s trading plan. I have found the best thing is to communicate with your family on why you are doing what you are doing and get their acceptance. My family views my time spent learning to day trade as a way that they will get to see me more in the future. They honestly have become more upset with me when I don’t put forth my full effort on the weekends to learning Day Trading, as they have bought into the fact that becoming successful in this business will allow me to spend more time with them. I could easily retire from the Marine Corps and become a Forensic Accountant Intern; however, this career path would still keep me away from my family, so we (My Family and I) have decided that $x amount is worth risking to learn to Day Trade. If I lose that amount, then oh well it was worth it and I will move on to something else; however, if I don’t then my family and I will have a great life day trading while getting to spend more time together.

Tuesday 6/25/2019 I had a well-being score of 6.5/10 this morning. My nerves were fine. I took one live trade with MU. More issues with Centerpoint!!! See below for details. I wanted to short FB at 9:31am and Centerpoint rejected my order saying unable to short this security. This is FB!!! I tried again at 9:32am and again there were no shares for short. If you haven’t seen FB’s open, trust me that would have been my trade of the month. After my trading day ended I called Centerpoint and they said they had a DAS and Vision (the clearing house) IT issue and the easy to short list was not uploaded to DAS. Thus, nothing was shortable on Centerpoint today (unless you use their locator app). They said they were alerted to it and fixed it well after the open. Honestly, when I look at the FB,MU,AMD,AAPL,… I don’t look to see if the “S” is there on my montage. Looks like with Centerpoint I will have to add that to my preflight checklist. Very disappointed with Centerpoint. Luckily MU has a long setup so I was able to take a trade today. Back test data says that MU is good with the 3min ORB. I saw MU make a mini ABCD/pendant and really hold the 33.47 daily level. I went long at the break of that level. I did take 3 partials, all small ones (trying to work on my partialling). Then SPY started to drop and I was thinking about exiting or take another partial if it broke the 33.64 level which the price has been respecting. But my subconscious thought, “you have already taken 3 partials, let it ride to B/E in case it’s a pull back.” That’s fine but my subconscious forgot I took small partials today and I still have half my shares left. So I let it ride to B/E where I exited. Well that’s part of the learning curve I will have when trying to teach myself to partial better. My score card for today: What I did good today: Recovered quickly from FB shorting issue and took another trade. Very happy how I don’t feel any FOMO missing the great short I would have had on FB. How did I challenge myself today? Traded with $30 risk/trade and took smaller partials. What I did bad today: Should have partialled or exited MU when it broke the support with SPY falling like a rock. What can I do better tomorrow: Checking short availability, on all stocks, will be on my preflight checklist.

I will be interested as I am staying in Chicago.

Yep

Miguel, Are you guys still planning on having a meet up this summer?

June 24, 2019 - $CCL (Partial) I waited and as expected the market was choppy at the open. I was looking at $AMD, but the stock was way too choppy right at the open for me to take an entry on an ok setup. $CZR did not have moving averages in a favorable position for me. I saw $CCL pullback towards the VWAP and noticed it met my trade criteria, so when it broke above the moving averages and made a new 1 minute high I entered. I took my first cover at the break of the high of the day. I figured it would either continue to my profit target from here, or it would fail and go below VWAP. I exited when the stock failed to continue higher and hit my break even point. Sample Set Results, P P P S P S P P P P S G P S P P 17 18 19 20 

Very nice trade management and Exit at LOTD. That's why I like Range orders instead of sitting nervously and watching.

Monday 6/24/2019 I had a well-being score of 7/10 this morning. My nerves were not as good as recently, so I decided to trade at $25 risk today not the planned $30. Also, I changed my DAS setup to help with partialling, so maybe it’s not wise to change two things on my DAS setup on the same day. I took two live trades with FB. FB premarket action and volume was good. It sold off immediately at the open and I was waiting for the rebound and bullish hammer. One did form about 2.5min after the open and I went long. The candle was still slightly red when I took the trade but still quite bullish looking. My target was the high of premarket at 193.39 with a stop out level at 192. It tried a couple of times to break the 192.50, but couldn’t and retraced to my stop out where I exited. Now why did I not use the 200MA-1min I am not sure. I probably thought the 192 level, which coincides to the 200-5min, was strong enough. Any way I was wrong and the price instantly reversed as I exited the trade. What it looked like when I took the trade: FB bounced at the 200MA-1min and I went long again at the VWAP. Same target but the 200MA-1min as my S/O. It took quite a bit of self-control to hold until the new 1min high before I take my first partial. I also reduced the size of my first partial. I took my next partial at the 50MA, then I lost my nerve and took two bad partials. At that point I told myself the next partial is at my target (high of premarket) or S/O level. It took 3 minutes but it reached that level. I decided just to partial not exit since it may run once it breaks that level. It didn’t and I exited when it made a 1min low. My score card for today: What I did good today: Recovered quickly from the S/O and quickly took another trade without feeling the need for revenge. How did I challenge myself today? Used a smaller first partial. My first and last partial I waited patiently. What I did bad today: Partials 3 and 4 were still bad. What can I do better tomorrow: Over all partialling was better than usual. Still need more time to improve on it.

Yes, I think that's a good thing to do. If all of your losses are 1R it's good in the sense that you're not letting them grow, but you can get better results by keeping it less than that whenever you can. Of course, on the other hand you are likely to have more trades where they end up going in your favour without you. This is where you can be prepared to get back in if the setup is looking good. I noticed that Andrew bails on trades pretty quickly if he's given them a few minutes and they aren't doing anything and he'll take the 0.6R loss or whatever it may be.

If you want to start with simpler script that calculate share size based on your planned risk, I have been using a simple one for a year and it has worked really well for me. Though it takes a little bit of explanation so I can't just simply paste it. Kyle's scripts are way better than my simple one and I will be migrating to his. I just grew use to my setup (I haven't had a hot key mistake in 3 months - knock on wood) so it will take some time for me to train myself to use them efficiently in SIM. But if you want to start with a simple to understand and implement script, let me know and I will post my DAS setup.

Days like this.. Market openend, around 9:40 some delevery guy bangs on my door.. by the time I'm back, $MU sold off, rejection candle, + under VWAP, as soon as the 5 mins openend again bellow the previous one, the 15 mins was breaking down too, got in short. Again, thought I was late, got everything out instead of partial on the big green candle on the 1 mins chart. No reason to not stay in looking at the 5 and 15.

Mark, this is my well being calculation from this morning. In general I don't score well in Winter. The cold and short days impact my work outs and energy levels. My Garmin informs me of the first 6 categories on the table. Fatigue level is self determined. I did have a headache this morning but that is unusual. I won't see a good score >7 until late Spring. My resting pulse doesn't drop below 50 all Winter.