This is picture perfect mate! Great trade and well done, this is professional grade stuff!

I have some questions which I am hoping will spark discussion and get some ideas and input from people out there in the BBT community. My questions here relate to psychology and basically how our brains functions when under pressure. For the past several months I have been practicing in sim at trading the open, trying to learn how to do it successfully. I have been focusing on only the 1 & 5 min opening range break out strategies and trading only these strategies. I have been gathering a lot of good information about these strategies when I journal and look back at what I did. Overall, I have been profitable, in sim, on these two strategies, but I still want to improve certain things before I feel comfortable going live with them. In order to tee up my questions, let me give a basic summary of my morning trading routine. I get up each morning at 4 am since the market opens at 7:30 am for me, Phoenix, AZ time, and that’s how long it takes me to get ready, eat breakfast, and tune into Carlos’ and Norm’s premarket show and do my morning premarket prep along with them. Then, as the clock starts ticking down to the open, my adrenaline starts ramping up just a bit more the closer and closer we get to the opening bell. Eventually the bell rings and it's go time! I wait and watch for the first minute to see what happens. Once I see a stock I want to trade, when it breaks out of the 1 min opening range, or sometimes on a pull back after it already broke out, I take the trade. I use KyleK29's hot keys to dynamically manage the amount of shares and set my stop. Once that trade is done, which usually happens pretty quick, I either make a quick profit, or I stop out, I then quickly change modes and start looking at the 5 min charts and look for a good set up on the 5 min opening range breakout and repeat as similar process on the 5 as I did on the 1 min opening range. These trades all happen very quickly. Once I am done trading the open, I always go to Chartlog and journal the trades immediately after. I normally spend about 4 times as long journaling the trades as I do actually executing the trades (about 15 min trading, and an hour journaling). In the journaling process I often gain valuable insights into mistakes I made, things I missed, or things that can be improved, etc. These things I notice while journaling are often patterns that repeat and which, with fairly simple solutions, if remembered to implement, could increase my win rate and overall profitability substantially. The problem I have noticed, is that I only tend to recall these valuable insights once the fast pace of the market open is over and I go back and reflect and journal my trades. Even if I write them down, I tend not to remember until after it is too late and I notice that I repeated the same mistake again. My first school of thought on fixing this problem of forgetfulness is that I simply need repetition in order to commit these lessons to muscle memory, or, in other words, until they become habit. That way, I can devote my conscience mind to concentrating on other things related to trading while many of the lessons and rules I learn from journaling simply become second nature, which I can do in my sleep without even thinking about it. Making a new habit requires time and much repetition so I would want to keep trading in sim until I always (or nearly always), follow certain rules and trading patterns out of habit. Then, on the other hand, another school of thought I have is maybe I need to focus more on relaxing and getting mentally loose in the morning at the market open so that I have more brain processing power available for recall and I do not have a mental freeze and forget basic things that I should know. Maybe it’s a combination of both. Maybe both of these solutions go hand in hand, one feeding into the other. In other words, as I start to commit lessons learned to habit and memory, I will build more and more confidence over time and thereby be more relaxed and looser while trading. Does anybody have any opinions or thoughts they could share on this topic? If so, please share. Thanks in advance!

@Justin, this hotkey would be perfect for how I'm trading right now. Even though it isn't rubber-stamped yet, are you able to share?

Yes, I think he's saying have this hotkey instead of the range. Like manually selling at 2R. This will sell 50% of your position at whatever the current price is. It will cancel your current stop, and move it to break even with the remaining shares (so you can't lose any more than you've gained), CXL ALLSYMB;Route=SMRTL;Share=Pos*0.5;Price=Bid-0.05;TIF=DAY+;SELL=Send;ROUTE=STOP;StopType=Market;StopPrice=AvgCost;Share=Pos-share;TIF=GTC;SELL=SEND

@James00trades You can definitely do a 2:1 range order in the same "part-2" hotkey, but it would be a full exit at the stop loss and 2R. There is an alternative... But it's not great. In a 3rd hotkey (after you've entered a position), you can have it recalculate your position and place multiple range orders down at different price levels. Have a look below - one hotkey takes your full position (118 shares) and splits it between 5 range orders at 1R-5R. It's hard to see (as they are stacked on each other) but all 118 shares should stop out at the same price of 123.48. Now I said "should"; here is the real problem with the script (also the main reason it's not released). Because your stop is actually 5 separate orders, in more volatile stocks you can have some bad slippage. It also can increase your commissions a bit (mainly on smaller positions). I know Kyle has been working with DAS, I've been working with DAS.... If they simple can provide us with a few more variables, this stuff would be easy.

Hi Charles! I've been using CMEG for a while and ever since I switched to them I modified all of my hotkeys to contain ROUTE=LIMIT in order to utilize that pdq route and benefit from the discounted rates. Provided you already provided the promo code when you signed up and you change your ROUTE to LIMIT, it should work just fine. Hope this helps.

Thank you. Hopefully others will see this if they are ever wondering.

0.004 per share (minimum $0.5 per ticket) including all ECN routing and regulatory fees.

Yeah you got it @miked! Yeah, it's not really possible as stop orders will not execute during extended hours I haven't but it's probably possible. You'd like it so the bottom portion of the range is where your stop should be, and the top part of the range is exiting at say... 2R?

Amazing trades man!! I really enjoyed your head and shoulders trade because I do not see that pattern and your entry was perfect. I also liked how you were patient with the setup. The ABCD pattern was great! I am glad that you took advantage of the whole move!

Maybe this? https://bearbulltraders.com/course/downloads/lesson/strategy/topic/trade-management/

I agree the consolidation was very concerning but once it broke the support line I became a little more confident in the trade .

Thank you very much. Yes, your trade looks immaculate!!!!

Awesome trade man!! This is going to be the trade of the day . Clean entry and great partials!

Hey @miked and @James00trades it might help if you attach some screenshots, but here is what is supposed to happen: This is an example of when you are trying to go long On QCOM I want my stop to be 164.13. So I double click on the chart at that price and hit the first hotkey: StopPrice=Price You will not see anything on the chart at this point. The price is currently at 164.25 and I want my entry to be from 164.29. So I double click on the chart at that price and hit the second hotkey: DefShare=BP*0.97;Price=Price-StopPrice;SShare=30/Price;Share=DefShare-SShare;DefShare=DefShare+SShare;SShare=Share;Sshare=DefShare-SShare;Share=0.5*SShare; SShare=Share;Share=Price*100; Price=StopPrice; DefShare=Price*100; Price=Share/100; Price=Price+StopPrice; StopPrice=Price; Share=SShare; TogSShare; Price=Price+.05;TIF=DAY+;Route=Stop;StopType=Limit; Buy=Send; Share=DefShare;Price=Share/100; StopPrice=Price; DefShare=400;TriggerOrder=RT:STOP STOPTYPE:MARKET PX:StopPrice-0 ACT:SELL STOPPRICE:StopPrice QTY:Pos TIF:DAY+; This will show on the chart (below) as a range order, as the hotkey is set to do a 5 cent range (Price=Price+.05) - you can change this to whatever you're comfortable with. You will not see the stop loss on your chart until the price comes up and this range order is triggered. As you can now see (below), the price has come up and entered me at 164.30 (as that price was in the 5 cent range of 164.29 - 164.34). You will also see that the stop loss has triggered upon entering the position at the original price I clicked on the chart - 164.13. Does this explanation help a bit? I think it might be seeing the range order that is confusing.

I was talking to my wife about this problem and it occurred to me that I think a good solution is to mentally role play through scenarios where I would have to follow certain rules or react in certain ways based on lessons learned in the past and go over and over these scenarios in my head and even in sim, not during actual market hours, just when it is slow and I have time to process and think clearly. That way I can start to make these behaviors become habit so when the market is open, I do not forget to follow them. I think of it similar to playing a sport, like basketball for example, you don't have time to change up your technique or analyze how exactly you want to do a layup right in the middle of an important game, that's what practice is for. During a game, for the most part, you must react quickly which is a lot based on muscle memory and instinct, learned habits. But during practice you slow everything down and analyze each detail and change patterns and try to change long learned bad habits and then practice the new way over and over until it becomes a new habit that you can execute upon in the heat of the moment during an actual game. It’s not wise to try to change and establish new habits in the middle of the game. I think that's the approach I need to take whenever I decide on a new rule or trading method I want to try out. I need to practice it repeatedly in my head and actually going through the motions in as realistic a setting as possible in addition to trying to remember to follow it when actually trading.

If it were me I wouldn't be putting time limits on when to go live, especially if you haven't developed your strategies and tested them yet. I did a few moths of reading and watching - 1 month getting stuff together and getting used to placing orders tweaking hotkeys / layouts etc. 4 months in sim (taking a few very small position live trade 2 or 3 per week in the last month) through another account. Then went 'live' at $10 risk per trade - but I'm not in a rush to go live big time. Probably going to stick with small size for a while. Sim is OK but it is not the same as trading live so once you do have some muscle memory in the entry and exit process and confidence in your strategies from Sim etc it's definitely worth trading live with a very small size. I have a $50K account I went with $10 risk per trade $100max per day as the rule (which I did break a couple of times at the start). Can you afford to take take say 20 losing trades at the start? Or are you absolutely certain that you will honor your stops, not double down etc. before you've ever traded live? AT $10 risk an account blow up FUBAR is theoretically still possible but highly unlikely, you can only really start your psychological training with real money; It only takes you to ignore your stop and an average down you don't get away once and very quickly it can become a $1000+ loss at $50 per trade risk. Target accuracy, profit targets, Risk to reward etc is somewhat strategy and very psychology dependent - you have a 50% target accuracy a $50 Risk per trade and a rule that limits you to $100 max loss - this doesn't seem realistic to me - pure Random chance is going to have you stop trading for the day way too regular for my liking, 2 losing trades and your done. If you only want to risk $100 per day - definitely look at dropping your risk per trade at the start. Also setting daily and weekly profit targets before you've even started in Sim risks setting you out trading your P&L from the outset - this is a pretty bad habit. It's fine to have an idea what you're looking for but I would wait until you've got your strategies in place before setting any of that as rules do this as part of your journal during sim. Profit targets not only require you being able to spot the set ups and entries and execute them but you need to do the same for the exits - that's a tall order for 1 month in Sim in my opinion. Peter Donnelly and Mike B have some excellent success webinars on trading plans and education development - It would be worth checking them out and reality checking what you've put together - but what you have is pretty good first pass.