Martin D

It can be representative of everything except how you react when real money is on the line. Most people will react in some kind of way and so then it becomes difficult to gather accurate stats on your strategy which then spirals as you struggle to find your strategy issue without accurate data and your psychology issues about money make you do things because you doubt your strategy more and more as you lose and have no inner belief that it works because you don't have the data backing it up. If you deal with everything except the money aspect in SIM then at least you have the crutch of knowing the only thing stopping you is money psychology issues, if you don't then you'll be dealing with a wave of issues that all overlap and you'll struggle to dissect what the problem is. Speaking as someone who had patience issues, are you treating SIM like a game for learning (you don't need to take a trade to watch how the market moves) or because you're impatient waiting for your setup? If you're trading really small size (with a goal of only $250) then it's still a game to most, couple of dollars here or there who cares? (unless you're in such money situation that you need it which presents it's own issues), if you go higher then you have the issues I mentioned above. Trying different setups in SIM is fine, like maybe your trying Thor's pivots and Aiman's reversals and John' HOD etc to see what you like best. Those are genuine setups you can gather data on, if you're just pressing trade for the sake of it and not gathering genuine data then I'd question your patience. I did the same thing so I'm not criticizing just asking whether you're being honest with yourself (because I wasn't). You said slightly but what about comms when trading small size (it's a bigger proportion). It's a typical new trader mentality to think about the winnings, what about the potential losses? If you lose $250 (or more) a month instead what does that do to you? Can you afford it or will it take you out of the game? Many come in under capitalized take their hail mary shot and exit trading, that's why the statistics of failed traders are so bad. I can't speak for you personally but the typical trader experience is live too early, pay market tuition, either push through it because they have the patience and the capital or exit the industry. It takes some a year, it takes some 3 years (or longer - there was a post on here a couple of months ago that took someone 4 and a half years to get back to breakeven) to get profitable and so you have to be realistic about what losses would do to you as well. This is only my perspective but if you spent a long time in SIM and failed then you'll pay education of BBT/DAS or whatever and that'll be your cost. If you go live and fail then you'll pay BBT/DAS and market tuition. If you go live an succeed then you cover the costs but given the statistics against you then on average you'll increase your cost, why can't you for a period of time only take your setup in SIM (and just watch everything else or take mental entries and stops), you don't need live to see if your setup works you need live to see whether you have money psychology issues but for me that's the last step because I have my working strategy to fall back on so I know what I'm dealing with. If you can't wait for your setup in SIM then I'd question your psychological readiness to go live. If you can only treat SIM as a game then you'll treat immaterial amounts as a game, if you trade material amounts then money psychology issues will make life difficult (as I spoke about above) and imo that's asking for trouble on a "slightly" green strategy. Martin

It's quite personal because it depends on your strategy. Aiman did a video recently where I think he suggested 3 consecutive green months in sim though. However, in terms of win rate or certain R that depends on your strategy. For example Thor has a target of like 4R (although is mostly always higher) and his success rate is well above 70% I believe. Aiman has a lower success rate but his R per trade is quite a bit higher. In general terms there's two main things that will cause you to fail 1) a bad system 2) you don't follow your system (when it's good). Deal with the system first, trying to do both in live is what causes a lot of traders pain in the early days. Therefore you should be comfortably green but you should set that for yourself, like 50R per month 100R it's up to you. For me the biggest thing with going live too early is the psychology changes when real money is on the line so you really, really, really need to trust your system to help you not fall for the impulses of not adhering to it. If you don't trust it explicitly then you start stopping out early (or not at all and blow up), taking profit too quickly etc thereby the whole premise of your system falls over. The only way to do it is to prove it to yourself that it works. Imo it's one of the biggest reason new traders bleed money in the beginning, it takes a lot out permanently while other persevere through it and give themselves a chance to become successful. Martin

Hey, Read this couple days ago and thought I'd give newer traders or someone who uses chartlog first chance to reach out. I don't think the forum is really active unfortunately. In terms of going live, don't rush it. Many traders just end up with a downward equity curve going live to quickly (me included). Test things out and prove to yourself you're profitable in sim first. I saw your post separately on chartlog, I don't use it personally so I can't really offer specific advice. There's a video in the education center about journaling so maybe give that a watch. I'm no longer a newbie but if you have any questions then fell free to reach out or the mentorships are also a good place to ask questions also. Martin

Yeah without running a bunch of backtests vs my visual experience I can't say. It's 5am my time so my brains not working full speed (joys of trading from Australia) but I'm not really understanding what you've written, hypothetically lets say [$100 PDC (likely to be minimum) + $5 ATR] / [$106 as it's had a huge gap up on news - VWAP $105] so it would become $105/$1 = $105 which doesn't make sense? I assume what you're trying to say is if the stock runs it's ATR then you'd hit 5R if you didn't partial? I'm not going to say it won't work because I haven't tested it but a couple of things to think about: 1) On a gap up it'll most likely be the PDC that's the minimum. On big enough news it could've easily gapped it's ATR or like 10c away or whatever, that doesn't stop it being an ORB target so you'd have to cater for that scenario. 2) Lets say a stock like Tesla (wide ATR) gaps 0.2%, this would be most likely to pass your formula as it has a lot of room to it's ATR. However, what is going to make that a strong ORB candidate? with a small gap which potentially means people are jumping in with no strategy following the price or someone is pushing the price trying to trap people going long before flushing it. Granted it might not be on your watchlist for an ORB but just highlighting you'd need to be careful of it being biased in that type of scenario. 3) Stocks in the current market don't often ORB and run it's ATR without probably stopping you out (assuming you will move to breakeven like most traders do). 4) Targets are not necessarily an ATR, if you end up back in a value range or hitting a strong daily level it'll probably struggle to run through it quickly. I'd want to input my target into the formula based on something I pick out on pre-market. 5) While you say 5R, that's assuming you don't partial. It's not really a 5R trade as most will heavily partial on an ORB strategy, it seems like you're trying to turn a momentum based thing into a hold for an hour or two strategy. It can happen but if it runs quickly and gets extended then you get the situation of heavy profit taking and parabolic reversal traders (like me) which can end up pushing at back to VWAP and below, while it wasn't from an ORB see Tesla yesterday just before 10am as an example of a stock that moved too much too quickly and gave me a lovely short from all the trapped longs who chased it (most of those types of trades for me do come in the first 5-10 minutes from ORB style trades). Trending stocks tend to be slow grinding movements rather than momentum. Once you get it sorted try it on todays QQQ though, that was a bit extended for me from memory. Just some personal experience though as I approached trading from a formula standpoint initially (although I wouldn't have listened to me either as I back myself to accomplish anything), I'm an analyst/finance guy by trade and thought I could mathematically break everything down and take trades based on formula. My answer would give me an X probability and I'd grade the answer which means I'd put on Y size and then once I got it working I'd build a trading bot and go travel the world. I built automatic pre market decisions and levels based on daily/weekly/monthly pivots etc, highlighted confluence levels (all pulled automatically). In my practice testing I had all sorts of data recorded like wick length % and it's impact on the ORB, had probabilities based on X,Y,Z combination of criteria for different strategies. Ultimately I spent about a year on it part time, in short it didn't work, there's too much nuance to markets unless you have the size to push everyone around like hedge funds.

It's at the bottom of here https://bearbulltraders.com/education/

If you asked me to write a trading Bot ATR is where I'd start. However, personally no, it's easy enough with experience IMO. It's not an exact science, some will work extended some won't there's not an exact cutoff line. It's where it tips into bad risk:reward trading is the key which is of course determined by where you think it can get to and the space you have to give for risk. Order flow and reading the tape experience will keep you out of more bad trades at that time that trying to draw an exact line of extended or not extended.

Hey, welcome! Firstly I'll say I don't trade 1 Min ORB in the current market generally speaking. The open is quite choppy a lot of the time at the moment. However: 1) Yes eyeball/experience, it won't be the same for something $5 vs $200 for example so can't say exact amount. Different stocks move different amount even considering price range so has to be experience IMO. 2) Yes for the 1 Min ORB it's the range of the 1st minute candle, another popular strategy is the 5 min ORB which would be the first 5 min candle. That's not to say you can't develop your own 2 Min ORB, just not what is taught here. 3) Yes engulfing candles can be a strategy as you might trap some people short or ride along with people buying the dip but bear in mind it's a momentum strategy so I would record that in your testing and see how it alters your success. In this scenario I'd more likely be trading the Fallen Angel strategy (Brian) for a better entry. 4) Depending on the direction of your 1 Min ORB. On a ORB long a bottom wick is fine as this is buying from the lows (bullish) but an upper wick would be bad as there's some selling. Obviously vice versa if you are taking ORB short. 5) Yes taking too extended from VWAP makes risk:reward more challenging. Experience again I'm afraid. 6) You don't, 1 trade at that time. Experienced traders might take more later on but at the open would be asking for trouble. Martin

Kyle is the expert on hotkeys, try posting in this thread as more people will be following it so higher chance of getting someone who can help you

Yeah he losses a lot more now than he used to when I started, Andrew needs momentum and the market is a bit choppy at the minute. He tries to still trade the first 5 minutes and often losses because it's choppy but then makes it back plus more when things calm down and picks a direction. In all honestly I mute the trading room now if he's trading, it triggers my desire to trade a lot, I can't listen to the "looks like its going up", "think its topping" etc even if they don't actually take the trade it's like "go, go, go, move, trade, hurry up" in my head. The psychology element I needed to tackle was patience so I only listen if it's Thor or Jarad at the open or I listen to music. Yeah basically that's the idea, if I had my time again I would start live trading later. I jumped in because I could do it in replay but what I could really do was the market conditions at the time, I didn't really truly understand what was happening (even though I thought I did at the time). Yeah so with those two it requires a great deal of patience and potentially no trades in the day, so 9/20 being a trend continuation strategy and Mountain Pass being a trend reversal strategy. Key being you need a trend to be happening/have happened to get them and even then they don't happen 100% of the time there's a trend. It's not a bad thing if that works for you but I need something to be setting up all the time so I have strategies for different types of day. Yeah the thing I would say is this requires a lot of time and effort, I have no idea how many hours I've put in at this stage but it's a lot. If you can get the hours in consistently then things start to become clearer and clearer, I don't know how many "aha" moments I've had now. So it's difficult to put it in a forum post but I can try explaining high level. Ignoring gaps from news catalysts, fundamentally how a market moves is price and volume. Price being obvious and volume to see who's involved and what they are doing. You have the traditional candle charts and the volume at the bottom but you also can see volume profile (volume at price). Market makers and big players move markets and they do so in large volume so I want to swim along with them/avoid swimming against them, the volume tells us where they are and then we try and read the structure of the market to work out where they are going next. Market makers are after liquidity (Supply and Demand) so they will move from one high trading area to the next, building inventory and getting rid of it, testing prior liquidity zones to see whether there's any more liquidity there before they move onto the next, shaking out weak hands (false breakouts). It requires a lot of time to get the experience to understand it but it's where I feel comfortable and I keep improving at reading it. I then put trades around that view of the market. For example if we set a range and we break the edge then it's one of two things a breakout or a false breakout. On a breakout I want a retest and if it holds I'll go with that direction, if it fails the retest then I know it's probably going to the other side of the range and possibly further. I have other trades for trends (ABCD, trendlines), reversals (Parabolic, Head and Shoulders etc). Effectively no matter the market condition I have something that is potentially setting up or happening (as long as there is volume). That suits me as it gives me the patience to wait as something is always setting up and also allows me to trade without bias as I'm not reliant on a particular market type so I don't force it when it's not there. I've found this is what I need to 1) have the patience to wait for my setup and 2) hold winners longer because I have a fair idea what the failure of it looks like so I'm not anxious to take profit too quickly. Obviously that's very high level so if you want to learn more then I recommend reading Thor's book (in general Thor's teaching of the market but I personally only somewhat follow the pivots, a lot of people use them completely as it gives them structure but I've found if I make indicators the main part of my trading I put too much emphasis on them. However, if I get correlation between what they're doing and what I'm looking at then it might increase my confidence in the trade or I might use them as a profit target). Anna Coulling (A complete guide to volume price analysis), Jim Dalton's books. I traded full time for a period but when I was working in the city, it was very difficult in the summer as I just didn't have time for sleep, during COVID lockdowns it was easier as I got rid of the commute times and I could do it a night or all weekend. However, once they tried to force us to go back to the office, long story short I resigned and given what was happening at the time they allowed me to work from home while they transitioned away from me, in the end I did that full time for about a year and even now I still work part time for them (but completely on the hours I want to work to get the tasks done). I won't pretend to know about your business but I used to run my fathers business which was high value/low frequency products, I used to try do all the business stuff (ordering inventory, tidying up, accounting etc) in the morning when there's wasn't a customer then in the afternoon I would go into the office and study (to become an accountant) if a customer wasn't there, if we had two of us working on the day they would take first customer and so I'd only need to go out of the office if we had 2+ customers in at the same time or if they specifically needed me. Not sure if it's doable for your situation but it's the only experience I have that might be similar.. No I haven't day traded ASX, only thing I saw was an interview on youtube of someone who did. They were basically trading an arbitrage style trading. I just wanted to focus on one market, one platform etc till I feel my learning curve is pretty much flattened and US market just has most material and best platforms to learn.

Hey, In short no, just get your stocks from the trading room + there's the free scanner on trading terminal (BBT built). Here is the link https://tradingterminal.com/scanner

Hey, Ok it's a pretty big topic so can't do it any real justice in a forum post but let me try give you a start. In terms of some materials, Thor touches a little in his book and is just a good book for understanding the market in general, basically a lot of the stuff he teaches here if you like his pivot style of trading. Anna Coulling book "a complete guide to volume price analysis" is also excellent for volume/price analysis in isolation. Jim Dalton also talks about the whole principal of that style of trading, those are also excellent and widely recommended here. There are a number of Youtube people who also talk about the subject a lot but a lot of the main volume profile traders on it trade futures. Korbs, Tradepro academy are some I watch and cover volume profile specifically. Also some of the interview style channels like chat with traders or B the Trader have volume profile traders on there sometimes. Basically all supply and demand is, is where are buyers buying and where are they selling (and short sellers selling and buying back). What do their positions currently look like, did they already profit take? will they step in and buy more? will it pass through their buying area and they get stopped out? It's just areas where a lot of volume has taken place recently and so will probably do so again as traders have to make decisions. In volume profile the high volume areas you'll expect choppy price action because that's where fair price has been established and buyers and sellers are happy to trade at the price so is where positions get built. Once we are done in the range bound a traverse to the next area will take place through the low volume area as it is not a fair price for buyers or sellers (on an up move too expensive for big buyers and not high enough for short sellers to step in). An upcoming low volume area will pause price and we will trade/range in a high volume area immediately prior (and either get ready for the next push or big players profit take and opposite side steps in and we'll reverse), alternatively we'll pullback to get the momentum to push through the low volume area. Given this you therefore need to have strategies about how you will trade the exit from range bound markets and avoid (or trade) false breakouts. It is also worth noting that DAS doesn't calculate volume profile correctly (and refused to fix it when I asked them). Basically they put all the volume at the close of the candle so if you're looking at a daily chart for example the entirety of the days volume is at the closing price of the day rather than where the volume was actually traded. As far is DAS is concerned I therefore look at the prior day on a 1 minute chart (as accurate as you can get DAS to be) or you need to use an alternative source such as bookmap. I will ultimately leave DAS because of it, just need to get time to deal with a new platform.

In short they are pivot levels but depending on who you are listening to they may be different types of Pivot levels/calculations (there are quite a few different ones) As TC said in BBT people are generally referring to Camarilla Pivots which you'll find Thor explaining in education center or if you invest in his book. However, you may also hear him prefix it with Floor (Floor Pivots) e.g. Floor S3 which is another type of pivot indicator. The main one you'll here him reference from the Floor Pivots is the "Central Pivot" . If you're viewing Youtube or something like that then you just need to know who you are listening to and figure out which pivot set they are using.

Hi, Nice! only really headed out that way when going to Wilson's Prom a few times, I live on Ocean Road side of Melbourne so tend to head out that side more. Yeah people say that to mean people start and look at Andrew and he'll trade for 10 minutes and be up $5k and say he's done trading for the day, everyone loves the idea but most can't trade like Andrew. I started with BBT in July 2020 I think, short version of my story is I work in Finance and had an interest in markets. Swing traded a bunch of stuff at the bottom in 2020 when things were stupidly cheap and made a decent amount (like a years salary), no real strategy just knew people were panicking like previous crisis's and things were crazy cheap. Decided to use that money to give trading a shot because I got tired of climbing the corporate ladder and the politics of it, worst case I decided I'll come out breakeven on money from the market, put a little over PDT ($25k) in the account and started directly with IB. Heard all stories of blown up accounts so I kept a lot back and was only ever going to let it get down to the $25k so I was able to top up my account a number of times if I needed to. Traded too big at the start but then really scaled back to $20 risk per trade to make sure the amount I set aside would last and give me the time I needed. A lot of time in replay and a couple of failed tradebook attempts later I have my style that I like and works for me, I still tweak it here and there to nail it down for the success % + Risk : Reward I want then I'll move onto maintaining that while scaling up. Yeah no problem, just reach out if you have questions. I'm on here everyday working on trading.

Hi, welcome, I'm also trading from Australia (Melbourne) so tend to trade the first hour or two of the market open till the volatility dies down a bit. You're a member here so utilize the education center (strategy webinars but I think it's really valuable to watch all Thor's mentorships in there as you'll learn what everyone else is asking and so it'll likely answer a lot of your own questions or questions you didn't even realize you had), the books you've mentioned and can always recommend more if you like reading, also youtube has a lot of useful content if you find the right people (personally I watch BBT, Humbled Trader, SMB capital and Carmine Rosato). I think initially you want to give different styles a try in SIM and understand what kind of trading style suits you/who's style resonates with you then you can really work on your choice in the bootcamp. When I first started I tried to trade like Andrew because I wanted to be done in the first 10 minutes due to the timezone, it was "easy" during COVID but now trading in the first 5 minutes is very choppy so I had to change approach. Now I'm probably a mix of part of different mods as well as some other stuff I've picked up, that's the beauty of trading there's no one way to do it. In terms of service, I don't think you really need Trade Ideas, there's free scanners in trading terminal (run by BBT) and also the chatroom here will give you a good place to start everyday. Yeah most people here use DAS so if you go along with that then DAS for Sim and also the replay function in there, BBT have a free replay but personally I use the DAS one because it's the platform I'm trading in so it keeps everything familiar. TraderVue is a personal choice, I personally just use Microsoft Excel because I use it all the time at work so I can analyze anything I want to in there easily. I think there's some Excel journal templates floating around on here somewhere if you want to keep the costs down. Happy to answer any other questions if I can.

Specifically 1 share dark pool orders? The tape gives a story about what's going to happen but having watched AMZN do this before that's not what was happening, there were thousands of 1 share orders went through at that price for several minutes. As the price traversed up and down through it the orders went from above the ask to below the ask over and over, in other words just noise. Given the amount of shares that the market trades I'm not sure anyone can convince me that filtering out 1 share trades is bad. Like Thor I run 3 tapes that filter different size trades, I've actually been experimenting with removing FADF from my smaller 2 tapes (retail size). Given the size that participates in dark pools it doesn't feel like I should be bothered with 100 shares on it, doesn't feel like their true intentions. I keep missing Thor's mentorship live but have been meaning to ask him about it next time I make it, will try do it this week.