BBT Anniversary and October Month Summary.
Although this is supposed to be a monthly summary, I have also completed my 1 year with BBT, so I want to share my experience overall. (BTW, do the members get anniversary wishes from Andrew/BBT )
First off, thank you @Andrew Aziz and @Brian Pez for putting together such a wonderful community. If joining a Trading community was a trade, I hit a A+ setup by joining BBT. I could have lost my valuable time and money elsewhere, lucky I found BBT. The moderator team is awesome, I sorely miss @Robert H and @WilliamH 2 guys from whom I learnt the most, in this community.
Experience:
I can split my Trading journey in the last 1 year into 3 phases , and this is something I would recommend to the new traders too.
1. Simulator - I spent about 6months in Simulator. This was more to get used to the DAS platform, trying out few setups explained in Andrew's book and elsewhere. Get connected to moderators and other members in the community, observe and learn from them. More importantly learn how to do the routine independently and how to Journal and review.
2. Limited Live - It's very easy to be successful in SIM, but fail miserably while trading Live, and lose the capital early in the game. It's important to get a feel of how trading live is and learn to control the emotions. Set goals and stick to them. So, I went live under PDT (only 3 trades allowed in 5days) in Apr'19. That's when I started journalling in this forum. Now, this community is awesome not only because of the moderators but because of the members who are willing to share feedback and be helpful. After I created my trading plan, @Marek Liyanageand couple of other guys proactively reached out to me and passed on their feedback. It's confident boosting, when an experienced trader concurs your plan.
3. Fully Live - It's very important to know when you are ready to go fully live. For me, I took the Besttrader challenge #1 to evaluate my readiness. I was the winner of DAS besttrader challenge #1 under stock instument. I stuck to my rules and executed my plans almost perfectly for one month. So I went fully live in July'19 after 3 months of limited Live.
Once I lifted PDT in July, I enjoyed the freedom to take unlimited trades. As much as it is thrilling to take trades (and lots of it), sometimes I forget the ultimate goal in Trading is to make money. And if it comes from one trade then I should be happy about it. Based on 1 year experience, I have evaluated what my strong points are and my improvement areas are and how I am planning to address them. For me it helps to write down my plan and publish it in the forum. It's a commitment. I hope it helps someone else too.
My Strong points:
Trading is the best job in the world. Market is the boss and She treats everyone equal (from a Novice trader to the best minds in the trading world). The harder I work, the more I will get from the Market.
I always respect my STOP loss.
Usually my Entries are very good. I don't chase stocks.
I don't Average into my losing position
I stop trading after reaching my Daily goal (or close to it)
I manage only one trade at a time (unless I have a range order to cover my other trade).
I don't Revenge trade when I take a loss on a proper setup - I move to next stock immediately to avoid Revenge trading
I trade 8-9 setups successfully and I can find setups thruout the day.
I work on my own Premarket watch list, and hop on to the chatroom to see if any obvious misses.
My premarket list and my game plan for each of the stocks is mostly very good and accurate.
Recently I have started taking more risk on my A+ setup
I don't follow anyone to enter into a Trade, unless I am convinced of the setup.
I have started trading off higher timeframes (30/60min) in the last couple of months
I am learning everyday and I am happy and eager to learn more
If I was to begin my journey again, one thing I would have done differently is to focus more on L2 in Simulator itself. Andrew introduced it, Kurt taught in greater detail about L2 in one of his sessions. That was eye opening. It takes time to learn and trade off L2.
My Improvement areas:
WIP, will include it as working on a detailed list.