Hey everybody, Today is quite an important day for me. I've finally managed to get back to break even after being in the red for 4 and a half years since I started day trading. I'll be honest, I was starting to doubt my ability to ever become a profitable trader at the end of 2020, and I thought about quitting. Investing so much time and effort for years, only to see money disappearing from your account is very hard on morale, of course. One thing that kept me going was the fact that, even though my account wasn't getting better, I felt like I was always making a little progress on both the technical side and the psychological side. I figured if I kept going, one day, I would finally turn the corner. Well, I turned that corner at the end of 2020, when I changed my approach, strategy and tools all at the same time. It took me 4 years to lose 25000$, and only 6 months to make it back. And frankly, I'm pretty excited to see what the next couple of years will look like as I'm only starting to ramp up my size. I wanted to share this with you guys because this chatroom is one of the reasons why I was able to make it work for me, and I figured it could help motivate and inspire anyone that is still struggling to find their marks and make it work for themselves. As you can see from my total realized P&L of the last 4.5 years, I had a pretty long and difficult journey. I just wanted to say this: As long as you feel that you're progressing at least a little, and if you like what you are doing, make sure that you give yourself the time and the tools to keep going because you never know when you'll be turning that corner. I surely didn't expect it, not more than a year ago I was about to call it quit, and it would have been a monumental mistake. Let this be an inspiration for those still struggling.

Thanks!! Sure, here we go: 1. the large drops in acct was "hulk" days ? Yes, some hulk days and some "deer in the headlights" days. 😄 2. Which tools u changed ? I went from DAS to TWS+TradingView for 2 reasons: 1- I wanted to trade options instead of shares, and TWS is much better than DAS for trading options 2- DAS is pretty expensive and I felt the monthly cost was pushing me to take trades to "make use of what I was paying for" and I wanted to remove that pressure. TWS is free, and TradingView is pretty cheap (around 300$/yr) compared to DAS, and I was already using TradingView for technical analysis anyways., I just love those charts and I find they are less taxing on my computer when calculating indicators in real time. 3. General or detailed info on strategy/setups and or risk reward as u profits are also very dramatic ? I used to scalp shares of stocks in play at the open using momentum, ORBs, engulfings, etc... kinda like what Andrew is doing. I was watching at least 4 to 6 different stocks every morning. I was also watching the level2 and Times and Sales for my active stock. I was using the automatic share size calculator by Kyle. It's complicated to explain exactly why it wasn't working for me but anyways... When I almost gave up in December of 2020, I decided to give myself only 5k$ for the whole year of 2021, and if I lost it all in the first week, just too bad, no trading for the rest of the year. And so, with such a little account, I had no choice to try options trading. I figured I would try to do the same thing as before, but scalping options instead of shares, and watching only 1 stock instead of 4 or 6. Since TSLA was and is still my favorite stock to trade, I decided to only look at TSLA every morning for a while and try to scalp options on it. It took a couple of months of setting up my new tools and adapting to this new strategy, and I almost blew up in the process (see the big drop to -27000 in early 2021, my account was less than 3k$ at that point), but I was able to recover and it finally started paying off. I also bought a macro keyboard to give me better control of my keyboard shortcuts and I feel like it made a big positive impact. I couldn't see myself trading without it now. So basically, I simplified my trading in many ways. I ditched the Level2 and Times and Sales windows, those were just too much information for my brain to process at the same time. I also went from watching multiple stocks to only one, which allowed me to really connect with the price action on the stock and feel what it wants to do a lot better. And I switched from shares to options and futures (I watch TSLA and MNQ for the market, so I will sometimes take trades on MNQ when I don't see anything on TSLA that I like), using only 1 contract on any normal day. Sometimes I will take more contracts when I'm absolutely certain of a move (I know there's no such thing as 100% probability but some moves can get pretty close to that) and I'll go up to 5 or 10 contracts which allows me to have those bigger green days. I also reduced my trading time to only the first 15 to 30 minutes most days, on rare occasions I will trade for the entire first hour but I try to avoid that as much as I can. Once I'll have a little green cushion (let's not forget I only reached break even yesterday), I will slowly increase my standard position size to 2 contracts instead of 1, then 3, 4, 5 etc. I'm hoping I can get to 5 contracts standard for the end of 2022, but we'll see. Right now I'm aiming for between 200 and 1000$ per day, and my max loss is around 500$ but its all good as long as I keep it under 1000$. I usually have 3 or 4 red days per month at most and they are usually more between 200-300 than 500-1000. Part of the simplification was also letting go of the chatroom, so I don't come in anymore, I trade alone, in silence. I can focus better and read the price action more accurately without the distraction. I hope that answers your questions, if you would like any other info, let me know! 🙂

Jplev, This is an extremely difficult situation that I very familiar with. I was forced to work 12- 15 hour nights for 2 and a half years with a 40 minute commute and had 2 hours of sleep maximum every morning before I was able to trade. I became 50k in debt when the stock market crashed with a job that only made 50k a year. I was discharged from the military only a 3 months after this happened, so now I didn't have a job either. My relationships were falling apart and I ended up quintupling down on trading an ended up getting out of it. However, to get there I built a 25k account from 3k in 3 weeks. Blew up. Then I took the only 1k dollars I had left and used CMEG to get the account 4.4k in 1.5 weeks. Then I blew up. Then I took it a little more carefully and used my next months paycheck to take another 3k account to 5k, then to 8k, then to 10k. I slowly built that until I was able to transfer my money into Interactive Brokers. Then I took that account to 37k and paid off the remainder of my debts. If you would like a similar result, I would recommend relying on day trading 0%. In other words, do investing, or something more hands off. Almost half of that amount I built in the final account was from investments. It's just easier if you find a company that is undervalued and you can hold. Practice sim on the side and let go of trying to make money with day trading. It is very, very difficult if you need the money. Those weren't the only accounts I have blown up before I became consistent. It felt like a black hole and so discouraging the entire time, to the point I thought that all of this might be a scam. Now I make money almost every single day. Seriously, trust me, the more testosterone and desperation you have in your body, the worse you will perform. You need to not want the money if you want to succeed easily. As for anyone saying not to trade meme stocks, yes they are 'difficult' in the sense that a lot of people don't have a trade book for them. I love them. Money printers if you understand them. The get extremely directional which is what we want. However, if you want consistency, I would recommend staying to environments that you will see the most often. This is exactly what I would do if I were you and what worked for me: First, state your plan to your significant other of how you are going to conquer this hurdle, and see if you can accommodate them in some way to make trading seem less stressful in your lives. Ask them for any suggestions on what they think might be the best way forward to build up a positive environment especially if this has been effecting your personal lives. Close your live DAS account and switch to sim if you aren't already and be thankful you haven't lost all your money. Next, look up stable investments that you can put your money into to grow. This decision doesn't have to be immediate, but it does need to be quality. I recommend taking a look at the channel "Financial Education" on YouTube. This guy is weird, but he gets the job done like a champ. Now that your money is safe and growing, you can learn with less pressure. Third, watch Aiman's live trading video: Pull out a pen and paper, and observe how he does things. This was one of the major keys for my success. This video. Not kidding. Fourth, and this is VERY important, figure out your risk management ratio. If you look at my journal and weekly recaps you'll see this: RISK MANAGEMENT Risk per trade (RPT): $50 Daily Goal: $250 Max Loss : $250 Ratio: 50 : 250 : 250 or 1 : 5 : 5 This is a representation of how many tries I have per day to make money before I stop out. Currently, it is five tries. Before I would risk $200 per trade and try to make $400 per day with $200 for max loss. This is idiotic. That's only 1 try! Even great strategies need multiple tries to work! The confidence loss from just starting a trading day and stopping out immediately is horrible. Reduce your risk per trade sure.... But WAY MORE IMPORTANTLY, increase the amount of trades you can get wrong before you stop out on the day. Fifth, REALLY REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT. Go to DAS > Account Window > right click on your account name > Open Risk Controls This page will prevent your from making further trades after you hit max loss, and it has other functions as well. These are my current configurations, so just modify them to fit yourself. Max Loss $240. Total Loss $250. Enable Auto Stop. Count in Commissions. Submit. Doing this was a major catalyst to my success. Now you can only lose as much as you specify per day, you are emulating a proven trader's strategy, you have a forgiving amount of trades you can take in a day, and you have less pressure on your finances/emotions. Subscribe to me on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkK2SWIsYGuWm1gtlbD2C4w and follow my trading Journal If you are having difficulties with hotbuttons, strategy, or configuration and can't get the personalized response you desire in the BBT chatroom, join my session live on YouTube or Twitch in the morning and I will point you in the right direction. However, I get off of the computer pretty much immediately after I hit goal amount, so it will probably help to catch me within +- 10 minutes of the open. I am not a trading genius or anything, but if you are having a really difficult time with seeing results and it is stressing you out to exhaustion, think about reaching out to me. I've been there. Bailey Nevener