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I am almost at my 1 year trading live anniversary. Time to evaluate if it is worth continuing this journey. I was in SIM for 6 months, so I have been trying to learn day trading for 18 months. I always planned to access my progress and evaluate if I should continue at my 1 year live anniversary. It has been quite costly in time, so it is a serious consideration. Though I feel like progress has been made in my trading I don’t see any change in profitability, so it is not an easy decision. But with some reflection, this week, I realized it is better to look at this more holistically. The change in my personality (for the better) has been dramatic. I would even say transforming. Especially, the last few months. I see improvements constantly and I would not want that to stop. Waking up at 5am and forcing yourself to face your fears, endure stress and muster the strength to make changes in yourself to improve creates dramatic results. Let us say I went a different path and started working on starting a business. I would have worked on prototypes, a business model/plan, and presentations for funding. For the most part not stressful and no internal improvements would have been made. If I feel off that day, the worse thing is I program the 3D printer wrong and the part is thrown in the trash. If I feel off while trading I could go tilt and lose a large part of my family savings, permanently altering our lives. A much greater incentive for personal growth in the latter. I like this growth in myself and I don’t want to stop. That alone it is worth continuing. Now if someone walked up to me and asked if they were training correctly, and they showed me my training plan for the last 18 months, I would say no. So way am I training this way? If you get a couch potato and you want to start training him for some track/field event, would you spend 10 minutes a day practicing in each decathlon event? No. But that is what I did. I set up my platform, and started trading different setups every day. Hoping I would get good at one of them. I would have recommended to the couch potato to first put the mileage in running. Then hit the weights. Improve your flexibility and get on a sensible diet while reading up on the events. So why didn’t I do that? And worse why am I not doing that now? Yes, I am trying to improve on some of that, but looking objectively I am still training wrong. So first I listed what I should have done the past 18 months, find the deficiencies and then I will create an appropriate training plan. So here is my should have done list: 1 Education Read enough to know you have a serious interest. Read enough to learn what next to read. Read enough to know what platform broker/SIM to use. 2 Get fit Physically (exercise and diet) 3 Get Fit Mentally (Decrease the incoming stress, able to handle stress and methods/activities to alleviate the stress). 4 Business plan Do you have at least two years to learn? How many hours/week can you devote? How much disposable cash reserves do you have to cover expenses and losses? 5 Set up Trading equipment. You can be frugal, but don't be cheap. 6 Training Plan 6 months SIM. Training during market hours and training after market hours. Mental and physical fitness should be part of the training plan. Also reading, webinars, etc. 7 Trading Plan What time of day do you want to trade SIM, for how long? Chat on/off? Risk? Max loss? Max trades? These should all be decided in SIM 8 Learn the platform in SIM Make a trade, partial and stop. Don't leave this phase until hotkey mistakes are <10% of the trades 9 Exploration phase You need 3 trades in your playbook, though only one needs to be solidly profitable. 10 Dip your toes into live trading Once hotkey mistakes are reduced and you have at least on setup in you playbook, you should go live at least once a week with very small share size 11 Discover trades that fit your personality Nothing works? Or some setups do work but you are completely stressed when you take them? 12 Reread trading books, especially psychology The books will mean more after being in SIM awhile 13 Revised trading plan At least the last month of your trading plan should mimic your live trading plan 14 Choose 3 setups Not just the one's that have worked the best, but the one's you feel the most comfortable taking. 15 Refine trades You should be now taking trades like they are live. Once you do this you will see adjustments are needed. 16 Revised trading plan This is the live trading plan, risk, max loss and max trades need to be written in stone 17 Revise Business plan If not yet, trade losses need to be in your business plan 18 Go live 50% I assume, in the beginning, you will hit max trades quickly then switch to SIM. Also make sure you take some SIM trades on setups you are still working on. 19 Work on nerves Reread psychology books, they will make the most sense once you are live. 20 Test risk management Even if you lose every trade, your losses should be manageable. If not work on risk management. Do not go past this step until complete. 21 Go 100% live Once risk management is solid, go fully live. 22 Increase fixed R Find the risk you are comfortable and slowly increase. Stay within comfort zone. With that in view I didn’t even get through step 3. In the Van K Tharp course I am taking, they give you a test to check if you are ready to handle trading. There are essentially 3 parts. How much stress is in your life now (can you handle any more like day trading)? How well do you handle stress? Do you have methods to efficiently alleviate the stress? I failed this so badly I was below the bottom of the scale. So I should have known and fixed this 18 months ago. Now I have made progress and I do noticed my nerves are better when I trade. I have set goals to improve it and I have listed those in another part of the forum where I journal the Van K Tharp course I am taking. But this must be my top priority. I am so glad I created a business plan or I would have quit when I started losing lots of money when I went live. Because I assumed I would have losses and had it in my business plan. Though I spent 6 months in SIM, I never really made it through step 8 (know the platform) or step 9 (exploration phase). I use to make 2 or 3 hot key mistakes a day. It completely disrupted my trading and was a big impact in learning how to trade. I should have spent all my time fixing the issue before moving on. This issue is fixed now and my hotkey mistakes are low, but that was a waste and caused undue stress. As for step 9, I left demo without any working setups. I tried and nothing worked. Then I chose the 5min ORB and heavily practiced it on DAS SIM and tradingsim.com with little improvement. I finally left demo just to try another platform to see if it would help my hotkey mistakes. It did. I wish I did step 10. I do recommend it for new traders. Step 19 took a while to fix (nerves). Rereading Trading in the Zone and Daily Trading Coach after you go live has much more of an impact. I tried reading lots of other books to help, I found most not useful. I did finally find a couple that helped. Essentially, I was raised that being negative was good. We would be punished as children for acting to positive, like we are jinxing the future. If we enter a task to positive and we fail my parents would love to tell us we ruined are chances because of the positive thinking. “Laugh before breakfast, cry before dinner,” was my parent’s favorite phrase. So this was a lot of programing to change. But, I have known lucky people. They enter the situation positively and assume things will go their way even though the odds are against them. And I watch how things go their way. So this mind set can really help in trading. You don’t second guess yourself and the ability to find setups is improved. There was actually an experiment that showed this. To keep an open mind to different possibilities. If you think that something positive may happen, when an opportunity, though it may be outside the box, crosses your path, you would see it and act. I would be close minded and not see it. There is actually some data for this. I once read about an experiment where volunteers were gathered. One set of people considered themselves usually the lucky type and the second group considered themselves unlucky. Everyone was given a newspaper and asked to count the number of pictures in the newspaper. The unlucky group usually took 2 or 3 minutes to count all the pictures. The lucky group usually took around 10 seconds. Because the lucky group all noticed a big sign on page two stating, “there are 46 pictures in the newspaper.” The unlucky group were focused on just looking for pictures and never noticed the sign. You can imagine how that applies to day trading. So you need to make yourself luckier by using the power of attraction. Step 20 (Risk Management). Ok, I think I got this one. I have not lost any money in the last 8 months trading live. My trading is not very good so it must be risk management keeping me afloat. Step 21 (increase your fixed R). Definitely doing this one wrong. Essentially, I increase my fixed risk/trade, during profitable time, to the maximum I can handle without it affecting my trading. That’s not really the correct way to improve one’s trading. My fixed R is currently $30. If I go any higher the impact of a full stop out is too much to handle. Thus, I am at my maximum I can emotionally stand. But, it is still too high and affecting my trading causing bad habits. You shouldn’t choose the most you can handle you need to find a sweet spot in the training phase. If too little it feels like you are in SIM and you will trade too reckless. If too high you will trade to careful. So I need to lower my R. It will take a few tries to find the sweet spot. So I am trying to determine my new trading plan. I will need at least a week to plan and experiment. I will have it fully implemented by my 1 year live anniversary. I have decided to give it one more year. If I still haven’t seen steady progress I am pretty confident I never will and should move on. The one thing that is certain, as in all changes for the better, things will get worse before they get better. Once I step outside my comfort zone and change things up, I will take losses again. I need to prepare myself for it. I have gotten quite use to not losing money. Sorry this post was a bit long winded. Thanks for reading. Have a good weekend.

Friday 10/11/2019 I had a well-being score of 6.5/10 this morning. I was not able to trade yesterday due to power outages. Took 2 live trades this morning was with AAPL and BABA. I still like the daily charts and PM on both AAPL and BABA. I was long bias on both before the open. I essentially took the same trades I did Wednesday when I got stopped out on both. And today I also got stopped out on both. Volume was instant for AAPL and a large hammer was created and I went long when the price broke the 200MA-1min. The only target above that price was the 233.49 daily level. But that is an R/R~1.7. My stop was the PM level of 232.65. I set a limit order at 1.5R, which was just below the target. Two minutes later the price missed my order by a nickel and retraced back to B/E, where I had a stop order to exit the trade for no loss. A few minutes later AAPL started its run up. BABA had a really strong volume quickly and I really like the bullishness on the 5min chart with PM. I saw a L2 signal and a break of the 171 level that was resistance in the PM. I also liked there was a daily level 1R away that seems to pull the price up near the open. I had no good level for a target so I used 172, with my stop at 170.50. Wow, the price instantly reversed and I was stopped out in seconds. The one bad thing about the trade is I used the wrong share size. I saw the stop was 50 cents away but I used shares for a 35 cent stop. For some reason my stops coincidentally have been 35 cents for BABA for almost two weeks. So I think it was a reflex. But that stop now cost me an extra -0.5R. BABA did go for a run up later. Which is good because I have a swing trade on BABA. 5min chart when I took the trade: The total trade: Then I took a few SIM trades for +2R profit. Score cards (live trades). AAPL BABA 93% 90% What I did good today: I like that I followed my new B/E stop out when price reaches 1R on AAPL. That is not easy for me. It’s difficult to S/O at B/E unless I take a profit. What I am grateful from today? That the power outage didn’t last longer. What do I need to improve on: I think I may move my backtesting from weekly to daily. I think AAPL and BABA stopped being in play at the open by midweek, but I kept trading them at the open. I just have to be careful not to make decisions on one point of data. Need 5 min. So I have to use the backtest data as a moving average.

10-11-19 Woke at 0740 with 7 hours of sleep and feeling pretty good...... SSS and a coffee.... A little meditation and away we go.... PAT: fine tune share size..... Notes: No pre 5min trades and all PB#1s will be Sim of SIM for at least the rest of the week... FAST PB#1 (A+ setup), this should have been in live with all the confirmation.... Made a beautiful 5min ORB with confirmation ABCD on 1min and 2min, also the price action, LVL2 and Tape were all positive confirmation.... scaled in to it to 4/5 position and took a 50% partial then out At BE as price action was changing... +48.00 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I will make this my break of SIM and Live account for my information.... but as I have been doing I will still use my P&L for all trades since I do not have a way to separate them yet....... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FAST PB#3 (A+ setup)... Trending the 9ema... the 9ema crossed the VWAP.... the previous down trend did not break VWAP..... ABCD on the 2min...... I added on the close of my entry hammer candle, I did take a little smaller share size one the first one and added into about 3/4 share size (probably a little too cautious here)... took small partials on the way up at key points and then all out on new 5min low..... +124.51 Cons: None today..... Yahoo.... Pros: Found and took A or better setups.... Favorite Trade: FAST both trades.... Notes: Just need to work on share size a bit.... Calling it a day, have family coming in..... R = 50.00: +172.51 / +124.51

October 10, 2019 $DAL, $JD I am still having some confidence issues but overall fighting through them. I started reading the VPA book Norm recommended and it is pretty good on explaining the relationship between price action and volume. I got a partial on $DAL with a little extra after inputting the wrong share size in the range order, and then a 2R on $JD. I left some to run but than the president tweeted about China and everything reversed, so I got out near my 1st partial. Overall a good day. Looking forward to ending the week on a good note tomorrow. Sample Set Results, S P G E E P P P P G 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Well now that I figured out to post again I post yesterday journal and today. I did not think I would encounter such a big problem after the upgrade. Completely self-incompetence about clearing a cache. Thanks to the BBT Support team for helping out yesterday. October 9, 2019 $AMD Not a bad day today after about a week of re-calibrating and get back into live trading. I was with you on the missed pullback on $AMD around the 5 minute mark. I kept watching $AMD and when it couldn’t push higher above VWAP, I decided to short it a little bit before the close of the 15 minute candle. I got in right as the big move happened, so I didn’t get right at the break of the candle instead a little bit lower. Still a good entry. I just did not get filled on the first leg down before a pullback, but on the second leg I got a partial at the low of the day. I eventually got before my breakeven point because the stock seemed to reverse and the volume started picking up. Eventually, I would have gotten stopped out at the break even point. Sample Set Results, S P G E E P P P 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

I'd second Eric's suggestion on IB. You can use MetaTrader, but it uses it's own syntax that you'd have to get accustomed to. IB offers their API in a variety of languages. Plus, another added bonus is if you play nice with the API, you can download market historical data without paying the massive costs data-brokers want for it. Other automated platforms would places like QuantConnect.com and TradingView.com.

Monday 10/07/2019 I had a well-being score of 6.5/10 this morning. Back to a 2 trade/day limit. Took 2 live trades this morning was with AAPL and NVDA. I really like the daily chart on AAPL. Looks like it may make a break higher. Also good PM. NVDA was also in play so they were my two focuses at the open. MU, ROKU, BABA and AVYA were placed it on a side charts. AAPL immediately got volume, dropped and bounced off the daily level (226.08) and created a nice looking hammer. Volume was good and I liked the 200MA-1min ~1R away to help pull the price up. I went long with PDC as my target and a reasonable sized stop at the 226.08 daily level. R/R ~ 2.5R What the chart looked like when I took the trade: The price hovered around my entry for about 30 seconds then headed south with SPY. I tried to stop out at the daily level but got a huge slide making it a -1.5R loss. Then the price reversed an instant after my stop and headed back up. The price didn’t reach my target but did reach my 2R profit so it was a bit irritating. The chart below also shows my 2 SIM trades with AAPL afterwards, which I was stopped out on both. The volume for NVDA arrived not to long after the open but the price did not move for awhile then jumped after about 40 seconds from the open. When the price broke the HOPM I went long with 187 as my target with a scary tight stop (HOPM). I immediately hit my 1.5R limit order hotkey to try and help have patience. It was about a 30 second wait, then the price moved up and my 50% share order was filled. Then I took another partial (25%) at 2.5R with not the best fill. Then held the last 25%. I don’t have a stop at B/E hot key setup yet, but I will set that up tomorrow afternoon. If I waited to the exact B/E, the price would have reversed and made it to my target. But I am still happy with this trade. I tried a SIM trade afterwards and was S/O. I should have waited for a better entry. Score cards (live trades). AAPL NVDA 90% 91% What I did good today: Waited patiently for my 1.5R order to fill on NVDA. What I am grateful from today? My NVDA trade was slightly larger than my AAPL loss with a big slide. Grateful to trade something new. What do I need to improve on: Need to create a B/E stop hot key this week.

Interactive Brokers has an API that I use every day for portfolio automation. I did not write that code myself, but I find it very useful. That being said, I have repeatedly seen glitches from trying to make bracket orders directly from IB's menus, but never without bracket orders, or if a 3rd party API service is managing the API requests. In general, it has high quality fills at a very fast speed. IB also has some anti-slippage algorithms that I find very useful, and that, unlike bracket orders, are safe to use directly from the menu: MidPrice and AdaptiveAlgo (MKT). There is also a panic button option where you can cancel all orders and positions, whether in sim, live, or both. And in my opinion, IB has the best candlesticks, with the option to use as much magnification as 5-second candles, which is something that I personally find makes the opening less overwhelming by slowing down perceptual time a bit, while also telling a story that a bouncing candle cannot. But the biggest reason I would say to use IB is that they have an entire advanced course that they offer to members on how to use python to automate financial derivatives with their API. You might be uninterested in options or futures, but you should find all the basics right there. TD Ameritrade has some kind of API but I am in the process of running away from them screaming for giving me slow low-quality fills that would probably make Robinhood look good. Best charting platform on the market but do no recommend for live day trading money, unless it's 100% academic like you say, but I have no experience with their API so I don't know about that. Another option to consider is TradeStation would be because they have their own API language/community with a marketplace where you can buy API programs that will most generally automate options trading for you. But I do not trust them because, like TD Ameritrade, they like to offer free trade promotions, but the fine print says you would instead have to pay if you want direct access. If just academic, that doesn't matter, but I personally would not want to invest myself in something that I would not want to end up having as a system that can handle real money -- outside of school.

Yes my bad! Here is the Weekly DayChart 1w 4y; ZoomFit