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I just saw the results video and noticed quite a few people with some massive gains. Congrats to those traders, but I have a few observations. Some people appear to have traded risky low floats to get to the top spot with little regard for protecting their account. The results reminded me of how I traded in the sim. I had some big days as well, but that didn't necessarily carry over when I started trading live. There's no way that I would use 100% of my BP on a low float stock for the slim chance of hitting it big. How many could really stomach a -$10k swing? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the PDT rule was active for traders who dipped below $25k in the challenge (at least not the entire contest). I think there needs to be more risk involved. I suggest making the challenge as real as possible. Start with $30k ($5k cushion), and if you drop below $25k, then you're out (PDT rule) unless you have an open position that brings you back above $25k. I know what it's like to drop below $25k in a real account and I definitely wasn't up for taking huge risks when I was sitting on the edge of being locked out again. I know it's hard for the sim to capture how to feels to trade a live account, but we should strive to make the contest as accurate as possible. Your future live account will thank you for it.

Hi All, I created this topic so that Trader's can share their real time experience/journey in the world of Live Trading or with Bear Bull Traders. I find myself fortunate to be able to share my story as well as my 2 cents on the learning I have had from the mistakes till date. To start with, a brief about myself : My name is Paras Jandwani, 29 yr old, basically from India but have been settled in Washington DC, USA for the past 5 years. I have been working with a Tech company named Accenture (Yep, not a full time Trader yet) as a Solutions Business Consultant for the past 9 years. From a very young age itself I was interested in Stock Market, following tickers and watching business programs etc. However, for some reason may be social pressure could never make a career in finance (no regrets though). Anyways long story short I opened multiple trading/Investing accounts back in India and invested money based on the FURU alerts or speculation. I eventually blew up my account 2 times leading me to take a break from Trading. Trading Journey with Bear Bull Traders (then "Vancouver Traders") It is always said that you can suppress your passion but can never wipe it out from your life. Since I had already moved to USA, the passion of making a living out of the stock market led me to look for options available to me to learn and explore the US Market. It was around August 2017 when I found your book on amazon with the title "How to day trade for living" which I thought exactly met my need. I immediately bought it and was impressed with the simple concise way the book was written and detailed about everything that needs to be performed step-by-step to become a Stock Trader. Currently, with the huge amount of options, with data available on google, the beginner's struggle a lot with what needs to be performed and are really confused if anything offered to them is genuine or not. The book written by you clarifies all of these confusion and give a very clear head start for beginner's trading career. After I read the book, I immediately joined the Bear Bull Traders (then Vancouver Traders) community in September 2017 and followed almost every small suggestions/guidance provided by you in the chatroom. I traded in SIM for 4 months and went live in Feb 2018. It's been almost 9 months live (every trading day from 8:30 am to 12 pm EST) and looking at the past where I was down with more than $ 6k in losses around the mid of June 2018 and gradually coming back to break even in Aug 2018 and currently sitting at a net profit of $ 3.5k.The figures might not seem big as I have always been a very risk averse Trader and when I started I used to trade with a volume of 20-50 shares for high priced stocks such as TSLA and 100-200 shares for mid-float stocks (I never traded low-float stocks, till date). Currently, I easily trade 500 - 750 shares/trade for mid-float and 200-300 shares/trade for high priced stock. I think every trader has to pass through a learning curve and should respect the process. I have made my own mistakes and learnt from it. I am still learning every day and happy to be able to lead my passion. Hope to be successful one day and trade full-time. Below are some of the items that I learnt during the process : 1. You just need to master 1-2 strategies to be able make consistent money. (I tried multiple different strategies (not just from the book) to create an edge and ended up with being more confused) 2. Volume sizing should be a privilege and should be increased gradually in 10-20% every time when you are confident enough.(At the time, when I started making consistent profits with small volume of 100-200 shares I immediately started trading with 500-600 shares at a time which led to a lot emotions taking over leading to consistent losses) 3. Say NO to Averaging Down ( This type of trading saves you almost 90% of the time but would wipe out months of profit in a single day when it doesn't work. Been there and learnt it the hard way) 4. Higher number of tickets DO NOT guarantee higher profits. (I have a rule to Stop trading once I achieve my profit target or my max loss or 30 tickets/day. Number of tickets/day have saved me rule has been a very important for me to take selective trades. I remember my reckless/revenge trading having 223 tickets on one of the trading days which cost me hundred's of dollars in losses.) 5. Rules are meant NOT to be broken. (Almost every single time I broke my rules I paid the price for it) 6. Being patient with the winners and impatient with the losers. ( Almost every single trader faces that. I was very impatient with the winners and patient with losers which made my losses bigger then my profits) 7. Setting the stop loss right to either an indicator/support/resistance level (Had a very bad habit of setting the stop loss at the level based on the loss I was willing to take) 8. Importance of Journaling. (I use a software named Edgewonk for Journaling. My past chunk of trades gave me the indication that my win rate between 9:30 and 10 am is 76%, between 10 and 10:30 is mere 24% and 10:30 to 11: 30 is 64%.This was an eye opener for me. I almost immediately stopped trading between the time where my win rate was the lowest. This really helped me in maximizing my profits) All the above mentioned experience wouldn't have been possible without a person who is a guide and a mentor, none other than Andrew!. I hope to continue learning from him and find myself fortunate to be a part of an amazing trading community.