Jena

Hi @gjeret, logging in after a long while to notice there are other members from the Milwaukee area. Curious how things are going for you and if you are still in the Trading realm.

Welcome @Creed. I love how open and honest you are about your journey. I too am working on overcoming psychological struggles. I think all traders have them- whether or not they are willing to recognize and resolve them is a whole other issue. It sounds like you've got a good plan laid out for yourself. I wish you the best.

Hi Zack, I do feel welcome here! I definitely know about the group, I'm just a professional social-distancer. I will force myself to join sooner than later, lol. I urge you to try recording yourself for a few sessions and journal off of that! The clarity that comes with it is amazing. And nothing helps me to overcome my struggles faster than watching myself make mistakes. It's painful watching yourself repeat habits you know need changing. It carries more weight than just knowing what you need to do. Knowing AND seeing/hearing what you are doing really drives the desire to actually change home for me. The psychological patterns become more of an awareness as well. I am also focused on ORB's right now. I'm on my second test set and keeping the time frames open until I have enough data. Good luck going live!

Hi @Trader2021 Welcome to BBT! I am also on TOS and am sticking with it until consistently profitable and scaled up in trading. My reasoning is to mitigate added financial pressure (fee's, I simply don't like trading in SIM) and I find my free platform to be plenty adequate *knock on wood. It definitely has had it's issues but seems to be fine since the Schwab merger. I don't experience any delays in fills, etc. *knock on more wood.* Make sure your overall settings are set to the fastest speeds. There's a cog wheel before logging in and then look at your application settings once logged in as well. By default, the settings are delayed. I traded for about a year before learning this. Best of luck!

Hello everyone, I joined BBT on January 1st of this year and it has definitely been an amazing decision! Prior to joining, I was subscribing to the YouTube channel and pre-market prepping with BBT on my Trading days (Thursday Mornings and Fridays) for about a good 6 months prior to pulling the trigger and joining BBT. October of 2019 marks the start of my learning journey. I have been on a mission for a few years now trying to find my way into entrepreneurship. I picked up some random books at the library after hitting some brick walls in my endeavor for some time. (The primary struggle being risk aversion due to my low income.) I had zero experience with the stock market and trading, but I keep a very open mind and decided to start reading a book on Trading Options. I was immediately enamored with this book and the newfound world of trading. The biggest draw being that one can learn without risking much or any capital. That concept was mind-blowing to me. I was in another trading group prior to this one and did not have a positive experience socially. I was essentially ignored or bullied for being a female. There was no in-between experience in which I felt like an actual member. Unfortunately, it is a common experience for other females in this field. In general, I have done a lot of work on myself to overcome social anxiety/low self-esteem issues so as you can imagine, the way I was treated was very damaging. I am very much a fly-on-the-wall here but am looking to change that. I know that it is essential to my success that I start socializing with like-minded individuals. I don't anticipate being bullied here but the hesitation to participate is still there. Thus far, learning to trade has helped me grow as a person. I have learned to put myself out there and take risks. In my previous group I learned to trade bear and bull triple leveraged ETF's for Natural Gas and caught on quite well, only trading the bearish ETF successfully (against the bullish trend). I was impressed, especially considering the fact I had zero structure or actual defined strategy in place. Those ETF's no longer exist, which is a blessing, because that has lead me to BBT and the concepts of finding stocks in play, structure, and probability amongst other critical things. I am currently testing my second strategy and hoping that this is it. The time and data will tell me the answer. I went into Trading with the idea that it could take me a couple of years to learn. I'm coming up on that 2 year mark, and loving and respecting the process of learning to become consistently profitable. Although I haven't found my strategy yet, I feel confident that I will. One idea I wanted to share that seems to be extremely helpful for me is recording my trading sessions. Once I started doing that a few months back, I feel that I am learning what works and what doesn't far better and faster. It is one thing to journal and look back at your trades with a snapshot and your afterthoughts but completely far more enlightening to essentially relive it as an observer. Although, I am only trading 2 days/week or less, I feel that reviewing my trading sessions via recording is really my game-changer. It truly has taught me that it isn't necessarily about the quantity of trades I am able to make, but the quality of my journaling and lessons from the experiences I've had.