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I do my best to treat it like it's real money. It's just a personal preference. I'm going to try Kyle's hotkey system Monday though.

Hi everyone! After plenty of research and reading Andrew's books, I have signed up as a lifetime member. I'm from the UK, Liverpool, and known by my surname 'Drew'. Andrew, his books, and this community feel like the perfect fit for how I want to trade. There's a long road of education and practise ahead of me but I am committed and it looks like I'll get the right support here. Look forward to getting to know a lot of you here. Drew

I do not try to predicted what a stock is going to do, instead I react to what the stock has done. Using your example above, I would find the two stocks and then develop a plan that if the stock rejects "x" level as support with increased "asks" on the level 2, and volume coming in at or above the "Ask" on T&S, then enter at "X" level. With this mind set you are no longer predicting, you are reacting to the price action of the stock. Just my thoughts.

I tend to stay away from ORBs that have a body larger than their ATR. I love to scan for small bodies (I don't pay too much attention to the wicks, some people do) and take the trade on those. I also like to find ones that are closer to VWAP for a good stop loss area, and a good technical target level. And again, I wouldn't rely solely on the 2nd candle breaking the body of the 1st. Sometimes, there's a struggle and it comes back a little and drops before it takes off. I like to see large orders on the level 2 and then I like to see A LOT of volume being met on the ask in the tape. That's generally when I can confirm it's a true break on the ORB and fixing to take off. I find I get better at this the more I'm in simulation. Here's what I enjoy doing to test trading ORBs. I change my DAS simulator to quote mode, find stocks in play from previous dates, and trade ORBs for an hour. There's no access to level 2 yet, however, there's access to reading the tape. You can spend time watching the tape and seeing what it looks like when a true break is occurring. I used to just trade the break of the body, but it's not enough (in my opinion) when trading ORBs. I believe reading the tape and level 2 reading are essential, because to me it's more of a momentum trade.

Quick Tip to having your custom desktop.dsk file open automatically when you login to DAS. Many DAS users, like myself just get in the habit of logging into DAS, having the DAS defualt Desktop load, and then manually changing to our own custom desktop we created by the following steps . . 1. File 2. Open Desktop 3. Selecting your custom.dsk file When you log into DAS, it automatically will open the DAS file titled "Default.dsk" that is preloaded with their software. So of course you can just open the original Default.dsk file and customize the file to your liking. But there is also another simple trick if you already have your custom.dsk file. 1. Access your DAS file folder located on your Hard Drive. For me it is in: C:\DAS Trader Pro For simulator it is in: C:\DASTrader DEMO 2. Select the "default.dsk" file and either delete it or change it to any other name such as "DASDefault.dsk" 3. Find your custom.dsk file and change the file name to "Default.dsk" 4. Move this new "Default.dsk" you just renamed, into the Das Trader Pro folder 5. Now upon logging into DAS the custom desktop you created and just renamed "Default.dsk" will automatically open

Well, no trades on Friday as the market was slow and I had some platform issues. Over the weekend I completed my 1 year of trading recap. well actually 13 months as I wanted to compared November 2018 to November 2019. So here it is a month behind when I originally plan on posting it. I hope you enjoy it. I am also posting it in the members only forum. 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. 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 lost money at some point in their journey. 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. 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

Tomorrow starts Sample Set 7. What has changed, nothing from Sample Set 6. I am going to repeat the process and see the results. I will than make changes from there. Although through Sample Set 6, I developed a playbook after William H's advice during his trade review session. I have added a link if you would like to view it. (Credit goes to Robert H as it is mostly from his template with a few additional tabs). I know a few other traders are working on a template for the community, so I will most likely adjust it after that, but I wanted to start with something. Trading Rules, Psychology, and Mantras credit goes to the BBT team and the authors on the book list. https://drive.google.com/file/d/16FJqSOWuFjTo-bVfKpiNwL1VEbKgQhOa/view?usp=sharing

As I am working my profit taking methodology, I decided to log all of my trades for 2019 and see where they ended up on a scatter plot. I take my share size based on $ risk per trade, so the R variable is the same throughout. The first 9 trades are the outliers as they were fixed share sizes, but I think it is still valuable to include. The goal now is to keep the losers in close proximity to where they are now, but increase the distance from 0 for my winners. I.e. get the winners to be closer to the 2R line instead of consolidated between 0 and 1R. I think I have come up with a method, but we will see at the completion of the month. Due to work I am only going to be able to trade tomorrow and possibly on Friday if all goes well. I will be back the following week though. Safe trading to everyone.

July 11, 2019 I am emotionally drain after today. The last time I felt this helpless an unable to control something was in a very different kind of environment. I am so glad I was able to breath and start problem solving my way through it. Well I hope you enjoy the read. I tried to take a long on $AMD around 9:41 mark. My plan was a little different today with $AMD as I figured it would sell off at the open pullback to VWAP and if it broke above would test it again and then try to test the 52 week high if it could break through 34. I got a send reject order similar to yesterday. No big deal figured my hotkeys didn’t save, so I went into the setup saw I was correct and changed my entry hotkeys like I did yesterday. At 9:45 candle I entered just below the 34. Extended from where I wanted to enter but I was willing to risk the money just to make sure my hotkeys worked in my live account. When it could not break the 34 level and drop below the 50 SMA I hit my hotkey to sell all and that is when all heck broke loose. My cover button that worked in sim yesterday did not work in the live account. I hit my panic button, rejected I opened my trade section in the montage and hit the sell button, rejected At this point the stock is dropping, I have no idea how to get out of the position and I felt absolutely helpless. Stock was past my stop loss, I could not get out and the only feeling of comfort was that I had the risk controls that would limit my loss on the day, which would have been triggered if I didn’t figure it out. At this point, I just took a breath and went into problem solving mode. I knew I had a problem and the only thing I could do is take it one step at a time. I identified that the issue yesterday was the “DAY+” had to be changed to “DAY”. I than realized that on the montage it had “DAY+” instead of “DAY”, so I changed the montage and hit the sell button. Finally, order filled below stop loss but still manageable. Problem was that I did not change the order template to “DAY” so all of my hotkeys that process through the montage were being rejected. Well at least I learned that lesson today. A tough lesson but still valuable.

June 5, 2019 - $AMD (Stop) $CRON (Stopped x 2, Partial 1) First, the greatest thing about today is tomorrow I get to start a new sample set, so today can be quickly forgotten about. Hulk 101 for me today. Terrible discipline Second, thank goodness that I had the discipline to execute my stops, otherwise today could have ended with me blowing up my account. Last, I have come so far from my first posting with regards to being able to be wrong and deal with losses. I am currently feeling actually pretty optimistic about trading. I know these days will come. The main reason from my sample sets was to help me with losing and being wrong. Today, I lost and was wrong, but I am feeling the same as yesterday when I won and was right. I am optimistic and love this career. I know the reason the outcome happened, because I did not execute the steps in my trade plan well. Sample Set Results, S P P P P S P P S G G P P P S P G 18 19 20

If it's something the community wants, I can look into it. I'd have to figure out some trickery to store the stop price (the double-clicked price) and retrieve it since I used up all the variables for the main part of the script.