Going Live

[BrandonB 4]

Hi BBT,

I've recently added another 3 months to my DAS simulator account. I was 3 months in and contemplated on going live, however I just don't feel 100% ready yet. For those of you that have made the decision to go live as a new trader how did you know when it was the right time?

 

Thanks!

[Jose Rodrigo Escobar 2]

Hi Brandon. 

I recently went live, and the most important change I've noticed is how sometimes in the sim you simply "don't care" if it goes very bad because it's fake money. I went live in september, and since then I've came back to sim 5 times because my mental struggles get in the way while trading live. I guess the most important thing you should have is to be aware of the amount of money you are willing to risk per trade and have that risk in control.

The first time I went live I did not have that risk matter under control, I thought I had, but I didn't. I ended up losing $3k in the first two weeks, but going back to sim has helped to correct some heavy issues.

Be aware that the sim is always going to be available, but it's crucial that you go live, at least one day in the week, so you can experience the thrill of risking real money and start developing the mental skills to handle it.

Also, don't look at going back to sim as a failure. The first time I decided to go back to sim I was feeling defeated but it's far from a loss, in fact, going back to sim has given me new skills to improve my performance in live.

[Abiel 475]

You can follow some simple performance indicators like: 

PnL ratio: $$ earned in winning trades / $$ lost in losing trades 

Accuracy %: ## winning trades / ## losing trades 

You also want to have some performance indicators by setup / strategy: top winners / losers, accuracy,  average winning / losing, etc. 

In the process side, do you have your rules and playbook? How is your discipline following your rules / tradebook? 

You want to grade your trading days not only in $ (you can make $$ averaging up / down and breaking all your rules) but also grading your discipline following rules. So a green day in $$ can be a very bad day in terms of rule compliance, and a red day in $$ could be a great day in terms of discipline. You don't want to go live because you had a lot of green days ($$) in sim to discover you built bad habits that will put in danger your account trading live. 

[BrandonB 4]

@Abiel

Out of curiosity do you use a service such as chartlog/tradervue for your trade metrics? If so how do you incorporate your playbook or do you use something such as Microsoft One for that?

 

Thank You!!!

[Abiel 475]

12 minutes ago, BrandonB said:

@Abiel

Out of curiosity do you use a service such as chartlog/tradervue for your trade metrics? If so how do you incorporate your playbook or do you use something such as Microsoft One for that?

 

Thank You!!!

Yes https://www.tradeinsights.net/ + OneNote. I import trades into trade insights and OneNote for charts screenshots and notes: What did I do well / bad, what could I improve,  what did I learn and how I will implement learnings. I also have a daily table for mistakes / broken rules to make sure I improve my discipline in the most frequent errors / broken rules. I have a page for daily summaries and a calendar where I use colors to grade my days so in a glance I can see how my month is going. (Each month is a Notebook and I use the sections (like tabs) in the top for each trading day, summary, errors and final performance at the end of the month.

[Christopher 129]

What up Brandon! After 3 months in SIM I remember feeling like I was ready to go live (definitely was not) and thankfully the few trading days before my 3 month subscription ended I did horribly and decided to re-up for another 3 months. Then after 3 MORE months in SIM I thought I was ready (definitely was not still) and had a rough couple weeks prior to my 2nd 3 month subscription ending, then I re-up'd for another 3 months, and after that 3 months I KNEW it was time to go live, for better or worse. 9 total months in SIM, I had months of journaling and data on my weekly R counts. I was pretty good at all the main strategies and decided to focus only on parabolic reversals. I was very confident I would at least not lose money (I did lose money 😛 ) after about 4 weeks I was down 10R with commissions and it became obvious to me I had to go back in SIM. So I went back in SIM and re-read Ana's book on VPA, but this time REALLY read/applied the concepts and a lot started to click for me. I went back live after about 2.5 weeks in SIM and I'm on my 3rd week live right now doing WAY better than my first go around. I might crash and burn again, but I'm improving everyday, and that's what this whole thing is all about. It takes time, SIM is such an excellent resource, don't rush it. 

So to answer your question... you'll just know. 

Message me anytime if you wanna chat! GL!!!

-Chris