Carlos M.

I just opened my account and when live today with COR. The biggest deciding factor for me was that ETC account does not have ACH Transfers, so every time you want to withdraw money it needs to be a wire transfers and I am sure that's not going to be free. ACH transactions are available with COR accounts for depositing and withdraws and is free, takes a bit longer but if you need something fast you also have the option to wire. Also you get the option of per trade commission that you do not get with ETC. Depending on your style of trading this can be more cost effective. Carlos

Has anyone here actually signed up and used ST? It seems, they get a great rep here but we have no reports from people successfully using them and taking advantage of all the advertised discounts to back it up. My application has been pending now for several weeks and with no word from them. I shot them a follow up e-mail today to see what is going on. I started my application with them last week. They emailed me my account "Go Live Date" which is May 2nd, and then I have to wait another 3 days to fund the account. The sign up process is very manual and takes time so if you are looking to move over stay trading in your current account until they give you the "Go Live Date" then withdraw your money. I withdrew my money from IB while on vacation in San Diego thinking that the account would be up and running in a week, but big mistake. I should had waited. So I have been trailing in simulation (which is driving me crazy as I am doing really good) in the meantime. Everywhere I have researched Speedtrader has amazing reviews so I guess is worth the wait. I will let you guys know how it goes when I am live for a few days. Carlos.

Waiting on final confirmation from event planner on the location we are booking. We expect to have information back no later than tomorrow, we will have something out to everyone ASAP.

Hey everyone! Ryan and I are working on the final details of the meet up and will send out to everyone soon. It will be on April 7 so save the date, looking forward to seeing everyone. Ethan, welcome to the team! Carlos.

Dima makes a good point. I am not a fan of automatic stops as it can get you stopped out of a good trade that might still be in play depending on the price action. Also putting a stop and updating at each position works if the stock is not moving very fast, I'm thinking it might be difficult to do that extremely quick. Don't think of it as trading without a net if you have a mental stop, you just need to be able to react quickly and not hesitate. If your mental stop loss, execute and get out. This is something that I have struggled with when first going live but as time goes by I am getting a lot better and more disciplined. I know some people do not like Hotkeys as it can cause costly mistakes if the wrong Hotkeys is pressed, but you can really get out of a trade very quick using them.

Sounds good Kash! April 7th is taking the lead as the date for our NYC meet up! Looking forward to meeting everyone! Carlos M.

This has happened to me as well. Overtrading never ends well and it is usually the situation you just explained by Robert. I have been negative and try to make my money back by trading into mid day even late afternoon. At that point I am just desperately looking for anything to trade. Taking poor quality trades and set up. I have gone from down $300 to down $700 trying to make my money back. I should had just left and taking a small red day at $300 and not make things worse by adding on. Is all about training your mind to do what you know you should do. You know you shouldn't try to make your money back but I still did it. You know you should trade stocks by chasing and trying to make your money back as it takes you out of the game but I still did it. Slowly I am braking these habits and training my brain to follow the rules and not act on emotions. Takes time a lot of discipline to learn how to take a small red day and still be able to trade tomorrow, next week or even at all, then to try to get back and take a lost that takes you out of the game... PS: And in some cases I have overtraded trying to get back to green and have been successful but that's a bad habit you don't want to build as it is not sustainable in the long run. I called those lucky moves and not really strategies you are following and good quality trades. Carlos M.

Im in whenever, just email me [email protected] Cool I got you down!

Ryan, ok cool!. Sweet Oscar, got your dates locked. If you need to make changes let me know. Carlos.

Hey everyone, I figure we start putting some potential dates for our NYC meet up. I am assuming everyone is probably going to want to meet on a Saturday. I have an excel sheet that my family uses when we want to plan vacation time together and easily know everyone's availability. I think it will work well for this also. The link below is a share excel file with dates of every Saturday from March 3 to May 26th. All the cells and formulas are locked, expect where you can list your name and YES or NO across each date on your availability. NYC Meet Up - Availability Sheet As we enter our availability the Top Dates highlighted in yellow will update to reflect in order the dates with the most availability. As members fill in their availability dates we can lock those cells in just to avoid a possible error change when others are filling in their fields. Feel free provide me with any suggestions that I might have missed. Again I just assumed it will be a Saturday but does not have to be so just hit me with your thoughts and ideas. Carlos M. Skype ID: c_moreta [email protected]

Uncle B, Thank you so much for this valuable information! Looking at APC now and I do see how Runtime makes a huge difference in prices. For my type of trading I don't need that much time, just a couple of minutes to exit positions and make sure the system can be booted down properly. Great call on the internet router something that did not cross my mind. Looking at APC BR1500G and BE600M1 Battery Backup Bundle on Amazon. I'll place the big one in the computer room and since my router is in another room I will have the small one there to make sure that's powered. It clearly never crossed my mind to do an actual simulation like you described, once I have it all set up I will take some time to do that and make sure I know exactly what to expect and that everything runs as expected. Thanks again for your this information, I really appreciate it and I am sure others will benefit from it as well. Carlos

This morning, prior to the market open, one of my power strips when out. That power strip only had connected one monitor, speakers and standup sit down desk. Not sure what caused it, but it made me think that is time to upgrade from a regular power strip to something more protective with battery back up. Especially for the CPU. Anyone using a product they can recommend? Carlos

I went through the same dilemma at the start at the end of last year. I was going live in January, TI was running a promo for a full year for $600, that was $200 off their annual fee. So I pulled the trigger. I personally like to have my own scanner for various reasons, I want to be fully dependent on my own in this career so let's say Andrew hits the Mega Millions and stops trading lol, I can depend on my set up for trading not dependent on that chatroom. Also at least once or twice a month I don't log on to the chat and do trading on my own. I can also put it in a place that is better visible to my main screen and then being confined to where the chatroom window is located. If you are still in simulator I would not pull the trigger as I didn't neither, but if you are live or when you do go live I personally would recommend it. Sucks to pay the higher price later but if you are still not sure about trading long term, hold off. Once you are sure this is for you just pay the yearly fee, if is in your budget, this way you don't have to worry about it every month and you are able to save some dollars with the yearly plan. Then just trade our good buddy XNET to pay for it! One more thing, If you do decide to get it, give them a call and see if they will work with you on a yearly subscription deal, ask them if they can match the promotion you missed end of the year. Tell them you were not sure about signing up since you were still in training. Hey, you never know. Carlos.

Hi Billie, I currently use Mint.com to track all my personal budget and finances. Since all my expenses for trading right now come out of my personal account, I just have a category setup for Trading. Under this category I have sub categories like Trade Ideas, DAS, etc. I can then pull up all transactions under "Trading" and export what I need or get totals of expenses. Very simple process but I am sure there are better ways of tracking this. I need to do a bit more digging on best practices for handling taxes for traders that are doing this full time for income. Carlos M.

Kurt nice work! I am definitely interested in getting some gear with this community on it. Let's get something going, count me in. Lee, great quotes, we should create a poll to see which ones are the tops sayings liked by everyone. Trading is stressful enough is nice to have a community that can also have a little bit of humor and fun. "I might regret that" "See, that is what I was afraid of" Carlos M.

Thank you guys! Jon, thanks! yes journal is a must, a pain in the butt sometimes but a critical part of the learning process. Carlos M.

This is great, we have a nice group of people in the NY Metro area! Looking forward to getting together with you all! Carlos M.

I finished the audible on this book about a week ago. I drive a lot so having the option to get through a book is pretty cool. It is a great audible, the narrator does a great job with all the short stories of the successful traders in the book. The books goes over how many different ways people trade different markets, using different tools, different strategies and different setups. It covers traders all around the world and how they found markets and strategies to trade that fit their personality. The struggle they went through and how they overcame them. There were two messages that were really clear for me in this book. First, is that no matter what market or type of trading you are doing, there is no skipping the learning curve. It can be really painful as you hear some of the traders who lost all their savings, plus their family members in some cases. Some took time off and came back to trading a few years later to then be successful. Andrew said it best in his book "you need to survive the learning curve", as a new traders that is our number one task. Second is how crucial it is to be disciplined when it comes to sticking to your stop loss. Almost every trader, regardless of the market, talked about how they manage their stop loss, and how critical it is to execute it and not stay in a trade expecting it to change. This is an easy way to blow up your account. This was a great book, if you are able to do the audible I highly recommend it. Please add your review of the book if you have read it as well, would like to see what others got out of it. Carlos M.

Abiel, that's a great method. I am still reading the "Mastering the Trade" stuck in Part 2 when he goes deep into strategy and explanations of other markets... I am still in my first month of live trading and as you can imaging there is no profit taking at this stage and I don't expect to be taking profits for probably a year or so. (Let's hope my girlfriend stays very supportive as she is now lol....)The goal right now is to grow the account at least twice its size. After the account is doubled I am thinking of probably taking out 50% to 75% of what profits are made that month. This way I can pay myself and keep growing the account. Long time away from that so things can change. Let's see how it goes. Carlos M.

So many great post in the forum just saw this one! This is really dope! Going to look into it as well. Carlos M.

WP that's a great plan. I did my entire simulation and trading with Parallels. Let us know how it goes a few weeks from now. Carlos M.

I wake up about 6am EST, I have a pre-workout and hit the gym at 6:30am. I usually get about 45 to an hour workout depending what I am doing. I hit the sauna for about 15 mines after my workout to relax. I leave the gym around 8am by then I am all ready and fully awake. I have a shake for breakfast and get to my station around 8:20. First thing I do when I get to my station, before I even look at any stocks or scanners, is read the previous trading day Journal recap. Especially the notes where I highlight what I did well and what improvements are needed. After that I start my journal intro for the day explaining how I feel mentally and physically. At 8:45 usually I start building my watch list off Trade Ideas and the top gainers. Say hello to the chatroom folks and compare my watch list to Andrew's watch list when he come on. Carlos M.

Sean, I had the same exact issues you are listing above when I tried to use my MacBook Pro with Parallels. It works great for all other windows software but it just does not play nice when using Das Trader Pro with multiple screen and multiple Montages. When I was using just one screen (the laptop screen) it was more stable. Once I added other screens it just didn't perform well. The default template would sometimes not stay on the multiple screens so I would have to set it up to fit correctly. In rare occasions the software would freeze or not respond. Once this happened several times when I was on the simulator, I called it quits. I did not want to go live with a system that was not stable. My suggestion is to invest in either a PC or a laptop. PC are cheaper and give you more bang for your buck, easier to set up multiple monitors and easier upgrade in the future. I took some of my capital I had saved up for trading and invested in a good PC system. Hope you find a good stable system! One less thing to worry about when you are 100% focus on trading. Carlos M.

Hi all, Having a journal is a must. I feel like I have learned so much about my trading in just the 2 weeks trading live because of this journal. For anyone starting out like me, if you are serious about this business, take the time to have a detailed journal. How else can we improve something we are not tracking? I focus more on the details of the trade and what I was thinking at the time, IB has tons of report performance reports that I can pull later if I want to see the numbers crunched. Here is a screenshot and detail of my journal, I have 3 main sections on my recap: Screenshot Link: Click Here Section 1: In this section I record how I feel Physically and Mentally in the morning before I start my trading day. Comment if I was able to get my morning routine done as planned. (My mourning routine is gym, sauna, get to my station and write my Journal Intro, review previous day recap, then build watchlist) Section 2: Here I add a screenshot of my Das Trader Account Report, with the me a summary of what I traded for the day. At the bottom of the page I also have additional screenshots of the detail transactions. Section 3: In this section I track some information of the stock like float size and how I found the stock. I also note down details of the trade like the strategy, position size and details of the price action shown on the screenshot. The best part about this section is the “Well Done" and "Improvement Notes”. I read on “The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist” how important it is to track what you did well on a trade. This way your recap is not all negative but also highlighting the good things that you should continue to do. Software: Just some information on the software I use, I track my Journal on Microsoft OneNote. As you can see on the pages tab I track all my Trading stuff like highlights of the book I am reading and any training course notes. If you have not try this software please give it a shot. It has a lot of great features, syncs with all devices and is completely free. Thanks. Carlos M.

Hi All, my name is Carlos M. I am 32 and live in Northern Jersey, few minutes from the NYC. After 12 years of working as a Senior Operations Manager, I was laid off this past December. My company purchased GE Appliances and moved to their headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. I thought I would be more upset about the layoff but I had 12 amazing years, and I was ready to move on and try something new. The company gave us almost a year and a half notice, that was more than enough time to prepare. (Plus a nice $$$ for years of service and sticking around until the end :) ) As my work started to transition to the new company, I found myself having a lot of free time during the day. I always had an interest in trading stocks and this was the perfect time to start practicing and getting ready. I did another online course and trading that did not work out (that’s a story for another time), and then I found Andrew’s Book and Chatroom community. Signed up for the Platinum package, I did the simulator for about 4 months and when live this month (January 2018). Looking forward to possibly meeting up in the near future with others traders and continuing being part of this amazing trading community. Carlos M.