Good morning everybody! I had a good day today. I came off a night shift and was debating whether I should jump on this morning. Let's just say I am glad I did. As always, I have the 1 and 2 min charts open during the open and look for a 2 min ORB. If I do not see anything, I switch the 2 min chart to a 5 min chart and then look for a 5 min ORB. I then use my 1 min chart for confirmation. Once I am in a trade, I then switch my 5 min chart back to a 2 min chart. I have also decided to use a hard stop loss but I did move it lower than previously. I have also learned (from listening to Carlos and Brian this morning) that using the 20 MA is a good resistance as the stock usually likes to bounce off that MA. Therefore, if the risk allows it, I have moved my stop loss at or just below the 20 MA on the 1 min chart. Took 2 trades today. MU and AAPL. MU Didn't see anything in the 2 min chart but I did like the 5 min ORB. Took it long with stop loss below VWAP at 47.60. Started to scale out at 2R and then 10% as it climbed. Saw the pull back on the 1 min chart. Was debating on adding but I opted not to. I will definitely try it out next time. Kept scaling out as the stock rose. I was eventually stopped out. But this was definitely the longest I have been in a trade. But the patience definitely shows how rewarding it can be. At the end, you'll see me buying stocks. That was a mistake. I had put my stop loss at 48.18. But when I looked at my open trades, I was short, 4 trades. I am not sure how that happened. When I put my hard stops, I don't touch the number of shares, so I am not sure why it sold more than what I had ordered. AAPL Trade 2 I took while in MU. MU wasn't going crazy and AAPL had a nice 5 min ORB with a nice ABCD pattern on the 1 min chart. I went long with my stop loss below the VWAP at 268.80. I was getting close to my max risk limit but I had just made it. I guess if I waited a little longer I would have been closer to VWAP but oh well. I may have been a little early with scaling out just below 2R. Continued to scale out and was eventually stopped out. On the last AAPL image, You'll see that I was stopped out just below the 9 MA. At this point, I had not yet heard Carlos and Brian suggest to use the 20 MA as a resistance. Learned my lesson and used that information with MU instead. Overall, good day. I did well and I learned a couple things. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated! Have a wonderful weekend!

I thought I would take after Rob C. and do a 13 month of trading anniversary recap about my trading journey. In this recap I am including the biggest lessons I learned, what I wish I had done differently before going live, and last but not least my recommendations for new traders, at the end I also added a comparison of November 2018 to November 2019. Hopefully, this help you not make the same mistakes I made, or help you prepare to go live. I figure, it will be best to start with recommendations for new traders, so here I go. Recommendations for New Traders 1. Develop a business plan that has a vision, an overview, a trade plan (Robert H. Template is great), objectives, and an action plan with monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals. If you would like an example, send me an email and I will send you a copy of the one that I use. 2. Trade every type of strategy until you find what you are good at, and then refine it and come up with a playbook before going live. There is a link in my daily journal on page 13 if you would like an example to build off of. 3. Develop a risk management plan, and then seek someone out that has been trading live to give you constructive advice on it. Take that advice and apply it as you see fit, and remember they probably have some past experience that the advice is built on. 4. Number one in my book is “Respect your Stop.” You are going to be wrong, have hotkey mistakes, and make bad trades. One of my criteria’s for going live was to go 20 straight trading days without violating my stop, because if I could not respect my stop in Sim, then how could I think I would be able to respect it when I was live. I believe this is the reason I have been able to not let a stock go past my stop this year. 5. Last but not least, and I am sure you heard it from a lot of traders, it is a process that will take time, so enjoy the journey as you develop yourself as trader and truly get to know what makes you tick. I know I have. Recap of the last year Personal – The one thing I was not expecting once I began my live journey was how much I would learn about who I was. Andrew and all the other moderators talk about how important psychology is in trading. It is not just the psychology while trading, but also getting to know yourself and understanding why you react the way you do in different situations. It took me a couple of months, but I eventually figured out that I hate to be wrong, because in my profession being wrong can have catastrophic consequences. That is why for the last 23 years I have strived for perfection in everything I do at my job. Now introduce a profession where successful traders are wrong 40% of time and you can see I have a lot to learn. Trading live for the last year has made me a more flexible individual, and is helping me to become a better overall person. Technical – My biggest fear once going live was that I would blow up my account and not be able to continue before I could get through the learning curve; therefore, I decided to take Andrew’s advice and treat this like a business. Prior to going live, I developed a 5-year business plan, and a career plan, trading plan, and metrics to achieve over a year. If any of you kept up with my journal, you saw that I approached the last year through baby steps. I would attempt to master one topic first, then move onto the next. Below was the path I took: Step 1: Risk Management Plan – Failed at this until July 2019. Step 2: Stop Loss Plan – Mastered it in Sim, I say this because I made it a whole year without violating my stop loss (full disclosure: 1 time I couldn’t get out a trade due to platform issues, but I did hit the button to exit). Step 3: Entry Plan – This took me a while to nail down on my Orb strategies but by May I was very happy with it. When I introduced an afternoon strategy it became a huge problem and my equity took a hit, because my entry plan did not work, 25% accuracy when I took it live. Thanks to my risk management plan I was able to survive with minimal losses and have been able to readjust the entry to acceptable win rate of 61%. Step 4: Profit taking – By far this has been the most difficult thing for me to deal with. I refer you back to I hate being wrong. I would be quick to take profits, so I could be right, but then would miss the larger move. If I held on longer; however, meant I would get stopped out more, resulting in the dreaded being wrong situation. I am still working on this but having a solid risk management plan has made it much easier to deal with. Monetary – Well, I know I am not the next great trader, nor have I ever thought I would be. I am perfectly happy being the 3rd string quarterback making minimum wage, so over the last year this has not been much of a focus for me yet. The only monetary thing I really wanted out of this year was not to blow my account up. In the end I accomplished that, so after I get a profit taking plan that works with how I trade, I will look at increasing risk. I know it is crazy trading stocks not to make money, but to develop my trading skills, I think I read that somewhere once. 😊 Biggest Lessons learned 1. I hate to be wrong 2. Thinking in probabilities is a must, and I needed a lot of work in that area. 3. I am really good at executing my stop loss 4. I have sufficient discipline to execute a solid trading plan. 5. My risk management plan I developed in sim was crap and caused me to lose more money than I needed to. 1st Risk Management Plan: November 2018 December 2018 - Took same share size per trade with no consideration for equity amount January 2019 – July 2019 – was risking 3% of my equity per day to make 1% of my equity, yeah makes no sense, right? 2nd Risk Management Plan: I now risk 1% of my equity per day to make 2% of my equity. 6. The more I focus on money the worse I trade. 7. Having a business plan prior to going live gave me a road map to follow when things did not go the way I expected. What I wish I had done before going live There is only one thing I wish I had done before going live. I wish I would have had my risk management plan focused around max loss per day instead of focused around what I needed to risk in order to make X dollars. This was a huge miscalculation on my part and I didn’t figure it out until 9 months into trading, when I started to focus on profit taking and why I couldn’t get my winners to outweigh my losers. Once I realigned my risk management into a correct ratio, I started having bigger winners and smaller losers and my net equity curve finally started to move up. Comparison of November 2018 vs 2019 Item 2018 2019 Total Days Traded 15 12 Total Trades 28 9 Average Trades per day 1.86 .75 Profit/Loss % (2.6%) 1.2% Rule Violations Average per day 3.5 .6 Trades outside Edge 5 1 Net Equity Curve November 2018 Net Equity Curve November 2019 I can't wait to see what the next year of trading brings. Best wishes and safe trading to all.

You can open a TD Ameritrade account and download Think or Swim software and trade in real time(you have to request real time data) and with the On Demand feature you can trade anytime in the recent past. No deposit required. The level 2 data is not as deep as what we normally use but it can be close. Its far from perfect but it can be a pretty good substitute for practicing the set ups etc. in real time. There is also a browser based trading simulator called Tradingsim that can be modified to be somewhat similar to DAS. They offer a trial for free, and like Think or Swim, it allows you to trade in the recent past for additional practice. Neither offer good hotkeys and they will only offer a less beneficial temporary substitute but are certainly better than nothing. good luck!

12-06-19 AIS 0755, 5 hrs, 6/10 PAT: Spread..... A setups ...... Notes: Careful after a couple small losses to not over trade, opportunity will present itself....... BIG Reason2Trade..... On Scanners.... RVOL at time of trade 60.0.... Dividend announcement.... PB#2...... A setup.... 1/2 size ..... After review this was a bad setup, maybe a B at best.... did not have an ABCD and the Wick on prev candle was too large.... I stopped out when the as price action was changing on me very early..... My original stop was below VWAP to which I would have been stopped out at 0945 for a larger loss anyway..... I only wish I would have kept this on my watch and reentered at 0948.... -.5R AUPH Reason2Trade.... 2nd day play.... RVOL at time of trade 1.75.... PB#2...... A+ setup.....full size..... Made an ABCD on the 1 and 2min which I jumped the gun on (If I would have stuck to my plan I would not have been in this trade as it never confirmed the ABCD on the 2min)...... stop loss was below VWAP and target was 15.45 PMH...... I stopped early with price action change.... .5R CLVS Reason2Trade.... previous in play .... RVOL at time of trade 4.0 PB#3...... A setup.... 1/2 size..... My entry had a .04 slip and my stop slipped .13 which destroyed my 1/2 size....... Trending the 9ema on the 2min and no new low on 5 or 15min..... no ABCD...... -1R Cons: In on BIG and AUPH without confirmation, Pulling the trigger a little too early... Pros: Got out on BIG and AUPH early with price action.... Fav. Trade: CLVS Notes: CLVS was the only trade I am happy with and I may end the week here.... Rs: -2R

Very interesting article, thanks for sharing. I love working out before the market open I feel more awake and alert.

Not to forget 60+% of the traders in the market don't even have hormones...not yet anyway.

Funny, ive never been in more self control since working out, discipline created by an exercise routine translate over to trading. Both require commitment, a plan, and goals. Information disseminates at lightning speeds today which causes the volatility, not hormones lol.

Hey JS! I cannot name one good trader that is still trading, that has not lost money starting out. Is what makes trading so difficult to continue. Nobody in their right mind wants to lose money or continue doing something that they see their money diminish. After a serious of bad losses is good to take a step back and review what is not working and why. Review your journal and see why trades are not working. You will find that some trades are perfect, all signals were present and you took the trade just right. Those traders are just part of the losers we will have in trading. With those trades just make sure that you did stick to your stop loss. Nothing you can do about a trade that did not work out but make sure you kept your stop loss and risk management. Now there will be another batch of trades were they were not great, maybe you chased, entry signals were not clear, or risk to reward was not in your favor. These are the trades you want to understand what you did wrong and put those top 3 things you find on an improvement list for the next trading days to come. Make it your job to make sure that these mistakes you will be on the look at for and avoid them as much as possible. While doing this reduce your risk and number of shares. The idea is now to start building up your confidence in trading again. It helped me in the past to know that the money that was lost in gone and there is no getting it back. The recovering thought process should be focused completely on trading well and following your rules. Make it your business and #1 duty to just trade well, that's how you recover. The actual money recover will come later. To keep at it you must trade very small and forget about the money. I can keep going on but will leave room for others to also join in on what has worked for them. Take care man and you got this!

Van Tharp Institute Peak Performance Course for Traders Vol 3: How to Control Losing Attitudes Chapter 4: How to use your brain We mostly receive low quality data from the markets. Psychologists estimate that 80%-95% of the information we pay attention to in our heads is total junk. So our thoughts are mostly junk we mistake as reality and the only info we get from the markets is vague concepts that adds more junk to your head. Oh boy! This means that traders do not have direct sensory feedback about their trading performance. Research shows that one of the most important attributes a trader can have is personal control. Only 10%, of the top traders, answered this question true: “I don’t have control over the direction of my life is taking.” 60% of the bottom traders answered it true. There is a large difference between the world and our experience of it. Investment success comes from internally representing events appropriately; it has nothing to do with the events themselves. You trade your beliefs in the markets not the markets themselves. Investment success requires that you develop an adequate internal representation of yourself and the market. Internal models develop through three processes: generalization, deletion and distortion. We generalize what we see or experience in the market. If we believe something about the world we pay extra attention to information that supports that belief. Contrary information is deleted. Deletion reduces the world to proportions we are capable of handling. An interesting experiment performed on distortion. A group was given playing cards and asked to recognize them In the deck there were a few abnormal cards (like a red spade). Many, in the experiment, identified the abnormal cards as normal. Some, even with a long exposure (40x what was needed to recognize a normal card) were still not recognizing the abnormal card. They saw what they expected to see. We see patterns in the charts that we want to see. We have to break through the distortions by analysis. The course now asks to take the answers from the DT (Distorted Thinking) test taken in the last chapter and the answer questions to help you evaluate your internal models. If I answered true on any DT Test question I need to answer questions listed in the course. I only answered true on 3 questions out of 15. That seems like a low number. Not fully sure why I don’t generalize much. I did notice on my trader’s inventory profile, one of the very few positive attributes I had was I take responsibility over my trading performance (or lack of it). Maybe that helps. The question I stated was true: After that one big loss, I’ve been afraid of that market. Q: How does that loss cause you to be afraid? Do not feel in control. Q: How specifically are you afraid? I feel that any trade in that market has a high probability for failure. Q: What is it about the market that scares you? I feel I cannot trust any stock (or the CEO of that company) in that market Q: Does that have to do with the market or you? Both I should always cut my losses short? I answered true. Q:What would happen if you didn’t cut your losses short? Their accumulated sum would be larger than my winnings. Q:Should you always cut your losses short? No. If you have a really good stop and indicators are still in your favor, you may miss the big move. Q:How should you cut your losses short? Ideally at break even. Whenever my account value drops by more than 30%, I get depressed. Q:If your account value did not drop by more than 30%, then you would not get depressed? Is that true? Not necessarily. If I am not seeing progress, or digression that would affect my mood negatively. Q:What specifically depresses you? Not seeing progress over a large time scale. Q:You would be fine if your account dropped by 20% or 29%? If I saw progress in my trading at the same time as the drop, that would be fine. Trying to learn how I internally represent a memory the course ask you to choose a memory that occurred yesterday. Then review it step by step with respect to the submodalities supplied in the course. My memory from yesterday occurred while my family and me were at a pumpkin patch. First the course wants to answer the questions from a visual memory perspective. Was the memory visual? Yes Visualize, did you see the picture? Yes Angle of view? From my eyes Brightness? Darker than I know it was yesterday Color? The memory is in color, but minimally Color intensity? Weak Contrast? Weak Distance from you? Closer than I know what really happen. Focus? A bit blurry Framed or panoramic? Framed Movie or still? Still Number of pictures? ~5 Self in or out of picture? Out Size of central objects? Correct human size Size of picture? ~3X3’ 3-D quality? Good Then you are asked to answer questions on how to remember while using your Auditory system. Did you hear voices? Yes Whose voices? My wife’s and daughter’s Where were the voices located? To my side and behind me Were they clear? Yes Loud? Yes What was the pitch? Realistic Timbre? Realistic Was the rhythm present? Not really Then you are asked to imagine you are on the ledge of a 40 story building, with the wind at you back. Then imagine looking straight down. What were the details from your memory on the ledge, were the feelings intense or weak? Surprisingly intense Was movement present? Yes Was it steady or intermittent? Intermittent Where were the feelings located? Heart pounding How much of your body contained those feelings? Just the chest Were your feelings warm or cool? Cool Did you feel texture? No Rough or smooth? NA Was it flexible or rigid? NA Was any pain present? No These details are called kinesthetic submodalities. Next ask to compare a time that you were stuck versus when you were resourceful. I compared when I was unable to get out of a trade on Etrade and another time I was stuck in a trade on DAS but figured my way out. My memory of both are just visual. Stuck, Resourceful Was the memory visual? Yes, Yes Visualize, did you see the picture? Yes, Yes Angle of view? From my eyes, From my eyes but a closer view Brightness? Darker than I know it was, Darker than I know it was Color? The memory is in color but minimally, in color Color intensity? Weak, normal Contrast? Weak, normal Distance from you? Normal, Closer than I know what really happen. Focus? A bit blurry, still blurry but better Framed or panoramic? Framed, Framed Movie or still? Still, Movie Number of pictures? ~3, NA Self in or out of picture? Out, Out Size of central objects? Correct, Correct Size of picture? Screen size, Screen size 3-D quality? Good, Good