Throwing in the towel! (With a twist)

[wayneb 7]

So I have the typical day trading story. Bought Andrew's book, joined BBT, watched all the lessons, spent 7 months in sim full time, read several other books including psychology, watched every You Tube video on Day Trading and now have the wisdom of Solomon. I could get on stage and teach Day Trading. Now the caveat,  I can not do it. I have a great passion and love for it but have made no progress in 7 months.

Now for the twist:

 My wife comes in the room one day feeling sorry for me and starts jotting down a few things on paper. She has no knowledge or interest in day trading whatsoever and has actually been against me doing it but supportive nun the less. After watching me loose several hundred dollars she tells me all her trades went well. Just for fun she starts watching the board and literally paper trading next to me. After several days of this it turns out she is green 5 of 5 days. I give her a quick lesson on risk to reward, share sizing and nothing more. We are now 5 weeks into her trading and she is up north of $8000. I have lost 3X that in 7 months sim. Seems like she is a trading Savant. In 25 trading days she has had 3 small red days. She has been using Trading View and now learning DAS. I am thinking of putting her in the challenge but it would not be fair for the rest of the contestants. 

Our day is very similar to BBT's. I get up early, set up the gappers list, put in levels of support and resistance and prepare the charts. She walks in the room at 9:28, looks over the charts for 30 sec, literally puts tape on my mouth and knocks out 4 or 5 winners in less than 30min. (Remind you of anyone?) (Feel for you Carlos)

We have looked into other woman traders and find out they typically make better traders than men. I think it is about multitasking and the right / left brain thing. So I am hoping this is not just beginners luck and favorable market conditions but I have not been able to make a buck trading next to her on the same stocks.

My takeaway from all this is some people will never get it and others just have a natural gift.( Hence the huge failure rate) Andrew is obviously gifted in this and uses very few strategies to prove it. My wife uses nothing more than a 2min chart and buy / sell buttons. She also watches 12 stocks and is sometimes in 4 trades at a time. (It is quite amazing to watch.) BTW she only plays longs. I ask her what she is looking for in a setup and her response is "I can just feel it". WHAT?  One day I did not have time to put the levels on her charts and she said "Thanks for doing that but I really don't need them anyway"

I know it sounds like a crazy reality show but we'll see where it goes and I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for all your help BBT community, I gave it one hell of a try!

PS:  Guys, if your struggling let your significant others give it a try! Gal's, rock on!

Just kidding about the book Andrew, I have a weird sense of humor. My wife fished it out of the garbage and reading it now!

[KurtLoeblich 101]

I'm going to let my wife day trade for me next week and see what happens, hahaha. 

Hopefully she's just as good as yours!

[dodgedak 5]

As long as one of you can do it - I say go with the one who does it better !!

[wayneb 7]

48 minutes ago, NinjaTrader said:

turn her loose with real money (right now it's all paper wins, correct?) for a year and then have her show you how to trade like a pro.

Yes, all paper and I could never do what she does. I think Day Trading is more of an art than learned skill. My 7 months of trading has shown me that most strategies fail as often as succeed so in reality are useless. They work great in winning trades and make for a nice YouTube video but fail miserably in the losers and never get a second look. The only consistent reliable strategy is risk / reward. Unfortunately my accuracy is only 30% so I cannot be profitable. My wife averages 70% accuracy and follows one strategy. I tell her not to bother learning others because they are useless and may influence her trading. She is basically following Andrew and doing an opening momentum scalp. It seems simple enough but takes a special mindset to pull it off. This was actually my worse strategy. You are basically jumping on and off a moving train trying to catch the platform at the right times. Then to make things worse you need to do it in several stocks at the same time! Like I said, a true work of art. I tried working the Hot Keys for her but could not keep up. 

We are now combining this strategy with Robert H's 2:1 all or nothing approach. One day she hit a 30R win by chance but I told her this is so rare and just dumb luck that it's not worth trying for. With her accuracy 2:1 will work just fine and be more consistent. 

We need a few months in sim to make sure it's not a fluke. I realize early success can become a detriment to long term success. The good thing is I am a better teacher than trader and keep her in line as the outside observer. I am not allowed to talk about the trade itself because I am always wrong but can keep her in line with risk management. 

[wayneb 7]

16 minutes ago, peterB said:

i think you are overthinking it while she keeps it simple to the important things. Even the fact that she plays only longs means that she is more disciplined than you are. You need to be honest with yourself and try to see things you do not want to see. Are you having bad entries? Bad R/R ? Not honoring stop loss? Overtrading? FOMO? Too excited and you see a good trade on every 1min candle? You just need to see where you lose the money.

Like I said Peter, better teacher than trader. "Those who can't do teach" I am a very technical person and can never make something simple. Maybe I'll try following her on paper for awhile.