My Plan to Trading Success: Background: One of my friends from German language class recommended Andrew’s book on ‘How to Day Trade for a Living’. After reading the book, I joined the BBT community in Oct’2018. I was on SIM for 3 months, completed the first BBT challenge. And finally I went live on 8thApr’19. I am new to Trading and hoping my journaling and feedback from fellow members will help me improve. My preparation before going Live: These are the books I read before going Live, apart from the BBT classes. It was very important for me to learn as much before going Live. Also, I read these books in the order mentioned below. I also listened to the Youtube audio version of Trading in the zone, the week before going Live and I must say that it helped calm my nerves a bit during the Live week. -How to Day Trade for a Living by Andrew Aziz - A Complete Guide to Volume Price Analysis by Anna Coulling - Advanced Techniques in Day Trading by Andrew Aziz -Trading in the zone by Mark Douglas -The 1 Hour Trade by Brian Anderson Strategy & Goal: During the first year(or 9 months) in 2019, I don’t have any target to make. My primary goal is to gain experience Live trading, to be emotionally stable when things don’t go my way and manage positions to my plan. And achieve all this limiting my loss. Good thing, I have control over how much I can lose, so I have decided to keep 100$ per week that I can lose (ie. 4000$ till end of the year). This is the max amount I will lose to the market, nothing more. This is not ‘Scarred Money’. It is something that I am paying for my experience. If I make any money along the way, then it’s good. It doesn't mean I dont want to make money, it just means, I am not in a hurry to make money. But I do plan to make a lot of money from trading may be a million $ some day. I also have the following measures to limit myself at the beginning of my Trading. Funding Account: I am not funding my IB account fully. I am doing it in 5 small transfers (roughly one each month). This limits my buying power during the initial months. Even if I make a DAS mistake I can’t buy more shares. As I improve my trading I start funding more. Under PDT rule: This also means, I am under PDT rule, and can make only 3 trades/5 days. This prevents me from overtrading. I am also extremely picky as my trades are limited. I think being picky is a very good habit in Trading. Stocks to trade: I don’t trade $TSLA, $NFLX which are very volatile. I trade $AMD, $MU and other Stocks in Play on a particular day within my price range ($15-$30) and not very volatile. I trade high priced, volatile stocks in DAS simulator or TradingSIM to feed my FOMO. Share size: I trade 50-100 shares per trade, depending on the Stoploss and volatility of the stock. I am not using my Margin from IB, but only Cash that I have funded. As I improve my trading skills, I will slowly increase the share size. Risk Control: Within my 3 Trades a week, first one I give it $50 Loss, 2nd and 3rd one $25 each. But because of my small share size and stoploss, I am well within my allowable losses during initial months. This is second level risk control. Rules: Only one trade at a time. This was my main issue in SIM. I get into multiple trades in SIM and end up in huge losses. Even if the action goes my way, I am unable to exploit it to my advantage as I am unable to follow my profit plan. Stick to my StopLoss: Many days in SIM, I had ignored my Stoploss and ended up in huge losses. Then I make some good trades and reduce my losses. End of the day, It gives me a feeling ‘If only I had respected my StopLoss I would have been green’ Don’t trade within 3 mins: My rule is not to trade within first 3 mins. But if the setup doesn’t exist, then I must wait till 5, 10 or even 15 mins from the open. Trading Style: I prefer VWAP trading (VWAP pullback during ORB, Reversal & False breakout after 10AM). I also like to trade 50/200 MA bounces especially on higher timeframes. I am not good at MA cross reversals. Quote I need to remember while Trading: "You will regret more about the STOP you didn't take than the one you took early"

Weekly Review: I traded very poor most of the week, and most of it was revenge trading. My discipline needs some major work. I also realized I need to do a better job of looking left and looking down at the 5 min chart instead of focusing so much on the one min chart. I'm excited to have the chance to improve, I'm currently listening to One Good Trade, it is reminding me that this learning curve is steep, only the persistent will succeed. I have given myself plenty of learning opportunities this week with the numerous mistakes I made. That's why journaling is so important. Sidenote, it did hail in STL area last night. There is a chance that I will be working now. If so, it is likely that I will not be able to trade until later in the year between storms, or when hail season ends late fall. If that is the case, I will have plenty of time to listen to more books, and watch more success webinars, and YouTube recaps. So members, start doing more recaps like Andrew requested. I may also consider buying the replay feature if I do go back to work, so I can practice in the evenings. But I really rely on L2 in almost all of my trades, so it would be a big change not having that as an option.

@fab has actually created a useful and extremely simple AutoHotKey script to automate exporting the Market Viewer window! You could easily change the script to adapt to the windows you want exported instead 🙂 You sound pretty savvy already, but let me know if you need help with it!

As a momentum trader, I don't care about strategies that much. I just want the stock to have direction, volume and order flow. I am more of a believer that for momentum trading, the value of trades ideas comes from it being able to tell you which stocks are moving more than usual and meets criteria that makes the stock tradeable. Why do i look at it that way instead of per strategy? Stocks that are in play will have multiple setups and strategies to trade off. Identify those stocks at premarket and during day and trade the strategy as it comes. Some stocks do an OR Breakdown and then reverse, reject vwap and then continue down. You have three plays there in the same stock. Another benefit that this scanner gives me is that it is just one scanner providing me the output. I don't like to have 5 different scanners for 5 different strategies, it just overwhelms me. I want to know what the rest of the traders are trading that day. Normally this scanner will not give you more than 10 stocks in day. Today it was 4-5. Trading only these types of stocks has helped me reduce my losses and avoid stocks with no volume or nor real direction. I want a stock that has a fast moving tape, this makes it harder for big fish to manipulate the price as the price is determined by more market participants. Scanner Strategy and Criteria: Anything that has a relative volume of 3 or more within the first hour of trading is normally a stock that has some catalyst. Strong Volume, High Relative Volume (RVOL) and Unusual Number of Prints. Unusual number of prints doesn't normally show up as much but it is a good indicator. I only trade stocks with a fast tape. if the tape is slow, I don't touch. Filters: 1. At least 1% change 2. Price more than 10. There are a lot of penny stocks in play every day and I don't trade these, that is why I use $10. 3. Float - 30M. Important to have a float minimum. There might be low floaters moving all day that are just pump and dump schemes where risk is hard to manage. 4. Volume Today, If it is in play, it will normally have at least 1m shares traded in the first five minutes. 5. Average Daily Volume (0.5m shares). This isn't much but it helps filter out stocks that never have liquidity but have a lot today only. I want stocks that have at least an average liquidity every day. 6. Spread - no more than 10 cents. Anything more than that is too much risk for me. 7. Time of Day - first 60 minutes. the stocks that move in the morning are normally the ones with high volume that will provide opportunities all day, even for trend traders in the afternoon session. 8. RVOL - 3x. I find that 2 times is too little, specially when there is a macro even that happens, a 2x can easily be triggered. I don't want to trade Beta, I want to trade Alpha stocks.