Trader Joe

Rob, I appreciate the encouraging words. I ran the numbers you advised and I am coming up with .17, so not exactly knocking it out of the park. Judging by what I've read, I believe the best course of action for me at this point is to continue practicing in sim with a focus on tightening up my setups, and to find a good trading buddy/group. Oh, also to take advantage of Aiman's trade reviews like Peter suggested. I wish I could have done the trading boot camp, but due to some outside factors it wasn't feasible for me this time around. I am strongly considering entering the boot camp the next time it comes around. I looked at DTA's website after you mentioned it, and I can't find anything about pricing anywhere. Would you mind sharing any info about your thoughts on their pricing, curriculum and style of education? Thank you.

Peter, I have been looking for a trading buddy or small group, but I have to admit I'm a bit picky. I've jumped into professional relationships like that too quickly before, only to find out later that it wasn't a good fit as one party or the other wasn't as serious about the task at hand. I want to be sure it's beneficial to all parties involved, as this is something that is extremely important to me and that I will be doing for a long time. You are absolutely correct though that I should take advantage of Aiman's trade review sessions. I will start doing that. I am only averaging about 4r a week in profit total, so less than 1r per day after 4 trades. It's better than when I started where every day was red, but obviously nowhere near where it needs to be. I attribute this to how most of my trades go green to the point where I get a small partial (20%), then they come back and stop out at my break even. While it's a green trade, 0.2r per trade is a slow way to make a living. Add in the occasional loss of 1r, and my p&l movement is somewhere around the speed of a napping sloth. When I exit a trade, yes it is per my plan. My plan is that once I enter a trade, I take my first partial at 1r and move my stop to break even. Most of the time, this is where my trades are exited automatically as the price returns back towards my entry. The trades that have gone further or been better, I exit when there are certain indications on the l2 (large orders against me), or when the candles break the 20ma on the 1 min chart moving against me. The reason I feel it is not good enough is because while I am consistently "green", my p&l has only gone up enough to buy a cup of coffee. I am happy with the progress I have made so far, and I have made that progress I believe by focusing on the process (tons of classes in the education center, journal review, reading the recommended books...). I feel like my progress so far is good. However, like I've heard said in the chatroom many times, your p&l will never lie to you. Mine is telling me that I've gone from terrible to bad, and then from bad to ok. Now I would like to go from ok to decent, with the end goal of one day being good (if that makes sense?). Thank you for taking the time to respond, I sincerely appreciate it.

I'm looking for some advice/direction. I've been practicing in sim for 3 months now, and I am to the point of being green consistently (22 of the last 24 trading days have been profitable). I trade using pivots, and I average 4 trades a day. My issue is the risk/return of the green trades. Of my last 50 trades, only 7 have made the 2r profit target. None have made 3r+. The rest I usually take a small partial when I hit 1r and then they go back against me and stop out at break even. I've studied my journal, looked at my stats, checked my spreadsheets, and none of them point to anything concrete that I am doing "wrong" per say. My only speculation at this point is that my stop loss is too large to allow a 2r move and I need to tighten up my entries. Being new to all of this though, I don't know what I don't know. Can anyone make a recommendation as to what I might need to do to continue improving my trades? Any books I should read, videos I should watch, or practice/trading exercises I could do? Is there a statistic or factor I am missing that I could start logging or could look back through my journals for? Am I just taking the wrong trades? If anyone experienced something similar when you were learning to trade, what helped you to break through that barrier and take your trading up a notch? Thanks in advance for any advice that anyone has. Thoughts, ideas, pointers, WAGs, constructive criticism, I'll take it.