That's good advice from Vlad above. Also, I don't know if you will be affected by the PDT rule, but the PDT threshold is $25K, so you would need to be somewhere north of $27K to have some money to risk and still stay over PDT. But actually, in the very beginning your risk should probably be a dollar amount that is far less than 0.5% of your account and just a meaningful amount to lose for you that will not be damaging to your confidence and your overall trading plan. That might be something like $20 or even less. You want to zone in on that amount because if it is too big of course that can throw you off, and if it is too small it might make you push too hard to milk as much as you can out of each trade. When you have an amount chosen, you calculate how many shares you can take depending on the width of your stop for a given setup on a given stock at a particular entry. BBT has a downloadable chart for this to help you. You need to prove to yourself that you have an edge and that you can replicate it and govern your behaviour and emotions in such a way that it works over a sustained period of time. So even though you have $25K in your account, you can trade it like a a 2K or 5K account until you gain confidence and show yourself proof that your methods are working for you. There's no sense taking big losses if you haven't gotten good at taking (and keeping to a minimum) the smaller losses.

I will be there, Thank you

Welcome, Gjeret! We will strive to be on the interesting edge of boring....keep smiling and I look forward to seeing you in the chatroom!

Hello everyone! I'm 97.34% sure that I'm going to apply to the next PCT Bootcamp cohort. I heard that it should start at the end of April/ beginning of May. I always like to be a prepared panda. Do you all have any recommendations on how to prepare over the next two months? Cheers, Wayne

February Trading Review Statty stats I finished February with a total R of +22.5. I took a total of 68 trades on 18 trading days, an average of 3.8 trades per session. 31 were profitable trades (46%), 33 were losing trades (49%) with 4 recorded as break even (5%). My average winner was 1.63R, my average loser was 0.85R. The breakdown by strategy was as follows (LB = Lightning Bolt; MP = Mountain Pass): The average win and loss size by strategy measured in Rs was as follows: I either have a short bias, or simply that this month more short sets ups presented themselves (I do suspect I have a short bias, however, and feel more comfortable taking short positions): Analysis I need to relearn my ABCDs. A 37% win rate is not sustainable, even if ABCDs also delivered the best win rate by R size. One major goal for March is to take fewer trades, but better positions. I still think I have a tendency to over-trade. Beginning to focus on when an ABCD is an ABCD will help. My favourite strategy is the mountain pass. I find these entries the easiest to spot. A 58% win rate is very good and I hope will continue to grow as I continue to practice. An average R return of 1.84 on the winners is great. I need to relearn the lightning bolt strategy. I am becoming too eager when I see a stock trend and arrive at VWAP to take an LB, and I end up taking many sub-optimal positions. Unsurprisingly, I won only one of four trades with 'no strategy' and this was for only 1R. However this is not a problem - to now be down to only 4 out of 68 positions without strategy is a massive improvement on where I was a few months ago. More below. Overall, I'm doing much better keeping losing trades tight, and coming off losing positions when they're not going my way. Fixed risk hot keys have changed my game here, but even then I think I'm good at seeing a trade not moving my way or beginning to range, and then coming out early if I no longer have confidence of resolution. This is how I've kept my average losers below 1R, and I want to continue to do this. January and February goals review My overarching goals for January and February were around trading discipline. I came into the new year feeling I was a very undisciplined trader, prone to chasing entries, following chatroom call outs and not always having clear reasons for going into trades. I also wanted to work on risk management, which in January was a chronically neglected area of my trading. I'm pleased to say I am coming out of February having made progress in all of these areas. My trading is now much more disciplined and much more strategic. The fixed risk hot keys have helped me completely nail down risk management, and I now never enter a trade without a hard stop. It turns out setting a stop is an entire skill in and of itself. More below. At the same time, strategic discipline is going to be something I'll always have to work on. I have made very good progress, but I have a lot left to do, and I always will. Goals for March My goals for March are as follows: Take higher quality entries. This seems self evident, but I am still at times too fast to take trades. I need to take fewer positions but better positions. I want to begin to get my win % above 50%. Set more conservative stop losses. I often set stops too tight, and I am stopped out before a trade moves my way. This likely comes from wanting to allow myself the R:R to get out with a win sooner, also then due to a history of being used to trades resolving in 2 or 3 minutes. I've had winners this month where I walked away with +3R but it took 10 or 11 minutes to get there, and it felt like a lifetime! I need to learn that it isn't a lifetime at all, and setting more conservative stops and also then allowing a trade longer to resolve will help. Continue to develop strategic discipline. As above, this will take time, and it will be a long and ongoing task. Right now I have three core strategies: the ABCD, the mountain pass and the lightning bolt. I don't want to add new strategies to this trade book until I have understood these positions better. If I am trading these positions then in any session for 45 minutes after the open there will be several possible entries. I don't need more strategies than this! Overall: I am the happiest I have ever been with my trading, but I remain aware there is a lot to do. Progress is hard to see up close, but step back and I am doing well.

My honest opinion? I don't see either of them stepping in to make changes for something as niche as this. I'm not saying it's a bad idea - just basing that off my experience in product development. But of course you have nothing to lose by asking! Personally I'd tackle it from a macro perspective - have it open the browser, chat room, find a way to open the link from the chat room, have the macro "press" tab and then have it type out the ticker.

Hi there, As far as I understand from your post, you may have misunderstood some things about risk management. And that's totally fine, considering that when you start doing this there's a thousand new bits of information coming at you every day. Long story short, the theory is not that you shouldn't SPEND more than 2% per trade, but rather that you shouldn't RISK more than 2% per trade. Let's take an actual example: You have 25K so 2% of that is $500 risk. Say you want to long a stock at a price of $10 and you put your stop loss at 9.50$. This means that you risk $0.50 per share, and given that your max loss per trade is $500 (2% of your account), then the calculation you have to make to decide how many shares you can buy is 500/0.50=1000 shares. Now, one thing I'd add is that, in my humble opinion, risking 2% of your account per trade is way too much, particularly when you're just starting out. Think about it, merely 10 losing trades and your account is already 20% down. I would consider the option of only risking a fraction of 1% because risking too much per trade can throw your psychology off balance in the middle of a trade and make you focus more on potential losses that you aren't comfortable with rather than the proper trade management that you need to produce consistent results. Hope this helps 🙂 Vlad

Hey Vandesteeg, Thanks for the response. I have been to Amsterdam and London. Enjoyed both very much and that trip to Europe is what sparked this journey to begin with. I did not make it rich off GameStop today but it would be great if you did. Here are my Q1 goals. I don't expect you or anybody else to go through them, but if you do and want to give me some feedback it would be appreciated. What I am really looking for is the accountability. Q1 Goal: By March 31st, I will execute 5 strategic trades a day using DAS platform. Trades will be intentional. Trades will have a clearly defined entry, stop loss, and at least a 2:1 risk to reward ratio as defined by playbook. These trades will consist of ORB’s (1 and 5 mins), ABCD, and VWAP reversal. These trades will be executed using Hotkeys. Q1 Goal 2: By March 31st, I will be proficient with DAS, enough to answer questions within BBT chat room. Q1 Weekly Goal: By the end of each week, I will have watched 2 videos related to my strategies (ORB’s, ABCD, VWAP). Q1 Weekly Goal 2: By the end of each week, I will have touched based with at least one trading buddy regarding their trading journey. Q1 Weekly Goal 3: By the end of each week, I will have actively traded 4/5 days in SIM. Q1 Weekly Goal 4: By the end of each week, I will have reviewed 1 hour of past market date to practice strategies. Q1 Weekly Goal 5: By the end of each week, I will have interacted within chatroom at least twice within the week. Q1 Daily Goal: I will actively trade at least 30 mins a day. Q1 Daily Goal 2: I will actively take 3 trades a day based upon strategies.

Hello all, It's the Jimmy's time, looks like another one join a few hours before I did 🙂 Am in New York. I currently work as the Information Technology Director for a health center. Hold a Master degree in Cyber Security and have done fairly well for myself but I always knew there was something missing. In order for me to achieve higher financial goals, I had to work more and more hours and gain new sets of skills or take new responsibility. The more responsibility I take, the less am able to enjoy what I make. So I started searching for the unknown, and a friend introduce me to options trading. A week after some briefly YouTube videos I signup to Robinhood with $1,200 and started options-trading. Within a week I made 800 and was immediately fascinated by it. Soon-after I double my initial investment and soon-after I lost it all in the China Trade War 🙂. Then I stumble into Andrews book and was laughing the entire time, because I felt he was talking about all the mistakes I made. Then I bough Brian's book and other research and its been a marvelous experience. I've been joining every morning for the pre-market show and finally decided to come onboard and meet others like minded traders and novice like me attesting to catch this one in a life time opportunity in the market. Hope you are all well and keeping yourself save in this hard times.

Hi Everyone, my name is Tom, I am 34 and from Pennsylvania. I have a bachelor's degree in Information Science and Technology. I am leaving my job as a network engineer because I am just absolutely sick of it. A career change is in order and I want to pursue a career in day/swing trading. I want a lifestyle that allows me to be my own boss and be independent of the corporate world. I have some trading experience researching and investing(read:luck) in small cap biotechnology stocks. The lessons I learned from small cap biotechnology trading were heavy and with that heavy losses. However, I was able to save some money doing this to be able to comfortably take a year off from work and try my hand at day trading. I am here to learn as much as I possibly can, and hopefully contribute back to the success of our group while making enough money to survive along the way. I can't wait to start trading with everyone and I wish you all the best!

Hello community, My name is Aznariy, but people in the chat get to know me as GordonFreaman (due to American habit not to memorize foreign names :-). I'm 33 now, and first heard about stock trading 1,5 year ago. I'm in IT field, working for one of the biggest financial institution in Jacksonville, FL. One of my former colleague shared with me his swing trading experience and how he makes additional $2K - $3K a month from it. That event really lighted the fire and I started looking for any helpful materials online. I really wanted to get rid from 9-5 job as it has so many limitations on your personal freedom and life style. Thankfully I found Andrew's book on Amazon, which probably saved me thousands of dollars on other unnecessary classes or courses. While reading the book, a feeling was build that the guy just sits home, wakes up and 6 am, and until around 9 am local time he is up several grands. That's exactly what I also can do 🙂 This was back in October 2017, and I was deeply mistaken with my thoughts 🙂 Later I started following BBT YouTube channel and trying to learn from it. One day I used promo code that Andrew introduced in one of his recaps and signed up for annual membership with the community. The community is great, especially with unlimited class access, live chat, Andrew's help with watch-list building every morning, moderators timely responses to emails and any other questions. However, currently the biggest impediment for me is that I can't lively participate in the trading session with DAS simulator as I have to be at work. As I'm the only breadwinner in the family I can't quit the job right away; I'm slowly looking for remote opportunity. I try to do backtesting with ThinkOrSwim platform every evening once I'm back from work and apply Andrew's strategies described in the book. My biggest goal now is to save the simulated deposit and not to drown it. Regards, Aznariy R

Hi guys, My name is Han. I'm from Toronto,Canada but live near Quebec City, Canada. I've been day trading since August 2017. My background is in IT and language teaching. I've been a life-long student of foreign languages. I know too well that it takes a lot of time and effort to be fluent in a foreign language but I didn't see trading that way at the beginning. I had some beginner's luck but gave it all back to the market and lost some more. At the beginning I had an unrealistic expectation about trading. I was chasing a pie in the sky, hoping to make $$$ and to start jet-setting around the world in less than a year. It probably came from my own ignorance, high hope and also not knowing any real trader around me who trades for a living. Also I was somewhat influenced by the people who are selling misinformation about trading while flashing their extravagant lifestyle (trader porn) on the internet. You know? The ones showing their fast cars, expensive champagne that they drink and model-like girls by their side while they can trade on a laptop with a parasol over their head on a sandy beach somewhere exotic. Also, like many beginners in search of hot stocks that will multiply their account size the next week, I subscribed to some paid newsletters that give stock picks. But I quickly learned that these people are mostly analysts and writers and not traders themselves. I guess it can be a lucrative business. If there is one thing I've learned during the last 6 months of trading is that we have to learn how to be a trader who makes his/her own decisions. You know? Learn how to trade independently, becoming someone who prepares and trades his or her own plans. When I read Andrew's book I was quite happy to find that he emphasizes this point as well. I think I didn't do too badly considering that I didn't fund my account by borrowing money and I haven't experienced a catastrophic loss (I feel really sorry for the people who mortgage their houses to buy bitcoin at the top in December,2017. That is a truly a sad way to go). Summary of the things I've learned over the first 6 months trading: 1. I've learned and practiced how to go both long and short. 2 . I've learned how to be quick with hotkeys on my platform. 3. I've learned some technical analysis and trading strategies and tactics 4..I've learned how to manage risk properly according to my account size 5.I've lost enough times to become more desensitized to being wrong and losing money. 6.I've learned that it's not what you know that makes you money but being able to manage your emotions and risk in live trading. Yet, I'm still a beginner and there's no guarantee that I will succeed unless I do my best to keep myself in check before I wreck my account. For me the hardest thing has been to reduce my shares size and trade as little as possible. Psychology (you can call it trading discipline) plays a major role and I admit that it's really easy to make excuses for over trading. Because of my reduced share size for trading, at the moment, I don't make much money nor do I lose a lot. My default share is 100 for now. Until I consistently produce bigger gains than losses, I see no point in upping my size. Fortunately, my broker Trade Zero costs very little for their commissions. My primary focus is to learn how to be a trader who makes good trading decisions even though I count my chips as soon as I'm out of my trades. I'm keep a journal of every trade to be accountable to myself and for recording my risk vs reward and how my emotions affected my trading. I do have a simulator account with TC2000. It comes with the package but there's no substitute for live trading. Simulator is good to learn the mechanics of trading and testing new tactics but I don't think it can psychologically prepare for live trading. Here are things I focus on getting really good at: 1.For my strategy for long I focus on getting good at ABCD and Cup and Handle pattern. 2.For my strategy for short I focus on inverted cup and handle and stock running up early in the morning and then putting lower high with lower volume. (trend reversal). 3.Reading level 2 and Time & Sales to have better understanding of the market direction. 4.When to take profit (entries are easier than exits) and not letting a winner turn into a loser. Usually I use tight stops because I mostly look for low risk vs relatively big reward (1:3 is the ideal ratio even though it's never this simple) but sometimes I know when to let my trades run without stops if the overall market trend is in my favour. I've gotten faster at getting myself out of losing trades with hotkeys. For my setup I use TC2000 Gold for charting, my broker is Trade Zero and Equityfeed is my scanner. If there are other developing traders or veteran who want to share ideas, please let me know. Because, we, day traders are lonely people in our job and I really do believe that putting few heads together is better than one. Thanks!

Hello all, I'm David (Smith) so one of the three or four 'David S' in chat. I live in southwestern Connecticut. After a career of 30 years in IT, including consulting and development work, I had just grown weary of dealing with clients on a daily basis. I too have a finance degree as others have mentioned here, but after that fateful first job out of college, I was well down the IT path. Have always had an interest in the markets, and based on proximity to where I live have many friends that are full-time Wall Street types. Started reading and learning about day trading in the Fall of 2016 and began trading exactly a year ago today, so Jan 10th 2017. Would love to say I was a huge success, but had a couple of day trades that I turned into "investments" because I couldn't let go of the loss the day I entered the trade. Only to liquidate months later with much greater losses. By September, outside of my two big mistakes, I was more or less breakeven from a gain loss perspective but my p&l was bad because of commissions. Needed to change up things and looked around for some additional reading material and found Andrew's book. Really like how unassuming and down to earth his approach is and accessible to new traders. Signed up for chat, classes and sim where I traded Oct-Nov-Dec. Back live now in January and working towards consistency. My biggest enemy right now is overtrading, and that is my primary objective for the next few months, take only well thought out trades and don't jump into anything. Really like the chat community and look forward to hearing more about your successes and challenges as we all build our trading competency. Cheers.

Hi Everybody! My name is Ryan (Ryan W in the chatroom). I live on Long Island, NY and I'm an IT consultant with my own business. I have been in IT for about 15 years now (I'm 32 and got started when I was 15). I have Bachelor's Degree in Business Management with a concentration in Information Systems. I have always been interested in trading. One of my best friends is Jesse Colombo (look him up). He introduced me to trading and finance in general while we were in high school, but of course I was only concerned with girls at that time lol. As I got older, I realized how interesting the markets are. I love staring at charts and trying to understand the underlying sentiment and what is happening on the screen. I started swing trading more actively in 2010 and was basically just treading water. I wasn't a fan of the overnight risk and after having awoken to several of my positions being down due to news or earnings, I realized swing trading wasn't great for me. I started to look into day trading. I got involved with Trading Education company here in NY and provided IT services for them. I was exposed to day trading more and was really enthralled by what was happening. Of course, this particular company wasn't known for the most honest and realizable trading education, so I took what I saw with a grain of salt. I received some exposure to some really great traders and mentors though, but their strategies and styles never really worked for me. After almost 4 years of day trading and having whipsaw emotions and losses, I am happy I found Andrew. I bought his book and was literally on the verge of giving up, but seeing how he trades and understanding his style and strategy has helped me immensely! The IT field has changed dramatically from when I first got started, even when I was in school (seems like a million years ago) and I am just sick and tired of it. I have been wanting to switch over to full time trading for years now, but the strategy I was trying to make work never worked. The person that taught me doesn't trade this style (even though he teaches it) and it just ended up costing me a lot of time and money. Now that I am on the right track with Andrew, I really hope to move over to full time trading sooner than later. Since I work for myself, I am able to balance trading and my clients. Of course, some days that's not always the case, but it does give me the opportunity to have the exposure I need. I look forward to working with everybody both here in the forum and in the chat!