Any advice would be appreciated

[Dylan irish 0]

I went live in October, I have watched all the webinars, read all of Andrews books and nothing I do works. I have less than a 20% win rate which is obviously terrible. I am about to throw in the towel but figured I would reach out for advice. My main trades are opening breakouts of 1 minute, 2 minute, and 5 minute and then reversals. For those trades I try to only take gap up stocks that are trading above the VWAP but I end up losing about 80% of the time. For Shorts I only take gap down stocks that are trading below the VWAP and obviously not to extended. This also loses about 80% of the time. For reversals I try to take bounces off of the camilla pivot point levels but I may be successful 1 out of every ten trades. I feel like this can't just be bad luck as if it was then I would be around a 50% win rate not 15%. I have tried watching 8 stocks at a time for opening breakouts and then only 1 stock at a time as well. I stick to whatever Thor, Andrew, or Brian is watching. I usually Risk $50 per trade, if I place my stoploss where it should be on a 1 minute i may make 0.1R on a trade and usually lose to commissions, If I place it just below VWAP if going long then I usually get stopped out to the penny and then it will usually go in the direction I originally thought. I work during the day so I can't attend any intraday mentoring sessions or trade review stuff with Aiman.  I use hard stops which I am starting to think is a horrible idea however thats what I thought you should do to start out. I don't add to positions and I did keep a journal up until last month. I stopped journaling as I noticed that my best couple weeks was when I stopped journaling due to work. Any advice would be appreciated. And yes I did do sim however it just wasn't realistic, there is no fear of losing money.

[J3Lda 7]

Hey Dylan,

been there, experienced that - 1 month ago 🙂 Things can turn good pretty quickly, and vice versa. Last month, I had 5 green days, this month so far 10 green days (and it's not even end of March..), not by accident but mostly thanks to making concrete changes, some of which you've mentioned. As long as you don't lose your capital, the main thing is to persist and keep improving. In light of that, my suggestions:

1) Sim would be best to learn and preserve your capital - I also had trouble motivating myself but what helped was that I set goals that I need to achieve to "deserve" going Live. This puts pressure on and I feel almost the same in Sim as in Live. Alternatively, if you really need real money to be able to focus, I'd suggest using a tiny R (e.g. 10 bucks).

2) You can't improve if you don't analyze your trades. Every professional sportsman in the world analyzes their wins and their losses. I'd say if you don't spend at least 30-60min per day on journaling, you won't get profitable.

3) Look at the best trades - not just in terms of R, but in terms of how you felt when trading them. Were there any that you particularly enjoyed? Don't do setups that you don't enjoy. Or tweak them so that you can find them enjoyable.

4) Try to get a feel for the market. A strategy is only a part of the picture. You should be feeling from price action that the bulls or bears are winning.

5) The win percentage suggests that the rules (gap up = long, etc.) haven't worked so far. It might be worth scrapping them if they don't help your trading. Your journal should tell you why the trades are failing, whether you should have actually taken them, and whether your entry+exit were correct.

6) Personally I've found that looking at anything smaller than 5-min chart usually results in bad trades. Try if sticking to 5-min or larger helps. I only look at 2-min once I'm sure I wanna take the trade.

7) Focus on progress, not PnL. If you see progress in your trading, then you're on a good way. If you don't see progress, that's a problem.

8. Definitely stick to Hard stops, or you can lose a lot of money with one vicious move. Hard stops are not the issue - putting them in the wrong places can be.

9) Have a pretrading routine where you repeat all your lessons and try to apply them. Include printscreens of the kind of trades that you wanna do, and also warning trades. An example from my routine is below.

That's all that comes to mind for now, good luck! (although a trader doesn't need luck:)

JanJ


 

[Rob C 826]

Hi Dylan,

J3Lda and peterB covered everything extremely well so I have nothing I could add.

But I struggled with ORBs for about 1.5 years before becoming profitable, so I will mention what I have learned about ORBs.

I also work full time, so the ORBs made the most sense. So I understand the desire to trade them, even though they will take longer than trend trading to become proficient.

- Only trade them in SIM until profitability factor >2. Yes I agree it doesn't feel real. But that is what I needed. After going back to SIM and even trading on DAS replay I found that ORBs are more mechanical then tactical. It doesn't matter how good of a setup, you must nail the entry. It makes or breaks a great trade and could instantly turn it into a stop/out. This took me a lot of practice. You need to predict where the price will be when the order fills and not where it is currently. You can only practice that in SIM.

- Video record all your ORB trades. You can look at the chart of your ABCD trade and know everything that occurred. I look at an ORB trade at night for review and I can't see what actually happen. You will learn a lot from the recording.

- Give yourself a bigger stop. Even a few pennies make a difference. I use to have this in my hot key. I would pick the most logical stop and the hotkey would add a few cents. It's amazing how many trades you will be stopped out by a penny before missing the 10R run. Essentially, all of us retail traders tend to pick the same stop. So a MM can swing the price down and gobble all of us up and then move the stock.

- Choose around 3 to 6 stocks and trade them every day. When one gets cold replace it with another hot stock. You need to learn the personality of individual stocks.

- A little over a year ago I was making good money on ORBs based on break of daily levels. But it stopped working for me last year.  But I see Thor make money every day on this so I kept trying and losing money. I finally had to drop that strategy. Same with Andrew's break of the 1 minute candle. It worked great last year and I still see Andrew make tons of money using them, but it stopped working for me and you may be having the same trouble.

- To restart just choose one strategy. If the stock is setting up a different strategy, let it go without you. Just trade one strategy. Yes the number of trades will go way down, but you will become an expert in that strategy fast. Like break HOTD or 1min ORB ONLY if the candle is a hammer, or 5min ORB only if the second candle pulls back to VWAP, etc...

- Yes I had a <20% success rate on ORBs for awhile. My stops were too tight, I always got a bad fill (my fault not DAS), and I always chased (now I only enter a trade on a pull back).

- Just after the open I do not look at prices at all only volume. I see which stocks get the volume, then I look at the price action.

- Practice watching L2 in SIM.

I hope there is something here that you find useful.

 

 

[Roberto 10]

"Give yourself a bigger stop. Even a few pennies make a difference. I use to have this in my hot key. I would pick the most logical stop and the hotkey would add a few cents. It's amazing how many trades you will be stopped out by a penny before missing the 10R run. Essentially, all of us retail traders tend to pick the same stop. So a MM can swing the price down and gobble all of us up and then move the stock."

 

This. Rethinking stops will be a big help. It's a Matrix kind of view of the market. Before moving a market, let's say down, the MMs want as few people as possible to have shorts. They want those stocks in their hands so they get the profit. So they set up a area where it would seem obvious to us amateurs to hide our money if we were going short(a stop is really hiding your money). And just before the move down they run a wick just beyond that level. I'll pm you a link of quick videos that might help your view.

You might also want to consider swing trading with Brian. Interestingly, a bunch of the TI guys were daytraders and now swing traders. Buy and hold is their view on making real money...

Edited March 23, 2021 by Roberto

[Dylan irish 0]

20 hours ago, J3Lda said:

Hey Dylan,

been there, experienced that - 1 month ago 🙂 Things can turn good pretty quickly, and vice versa. Last month, I had 5 green days, this month so far 10 green days (and it's not even end of March..), not by accident but mostly thanks to making concrete changes, some of which you've mentioned. As long as you don't lose your capital, the main thing is to persist and keep improving. In light of that, my suggestions:

1) Sim would be best to learn and preserve your capital - I also had trouble motivating myself but what helped was that I set goals that I need to achieve to "deserve" going Live. This puts pressure on and I feel almost the same in Sim as in Live. Alternatively, if you really need real money to be able to focus, I'd suggest using a tiny R (e.g. 10 bucks).

2) You can't improve if you don't analyze your trades. Every professional sportsman in the world analyzes their wins and their losses. I'd say if you don't spend at least 30-60min per day on journaling, you won't get profitable.

3) Look at the best trades - not just in terms of R, but in terms of how you felt when trading them. Were there any that you particularly enjoyed? Don't do setups that you don't enjoy. Or tweak them so that you can find them enjoyable.

4) Try to get a feel for the market. A strategy is only a part of the picture. You should be feeling from price action that the bulls or bears are winning.

5) The win percentage suggests that the rules (gap up = long, etc.) haven't worked so far. It might be worth scrapping them if they don't help your trading. Your journal should tell you why the trades are failing, whether you should have actually taken them, and whether your entry+exit were correct.

6) Personally I've found that looking at anything smaller than 5-min chart usually results in bad trades. Try if sticking to 5-min or larger helps. I only look at 2-min once I'm sure I wanna take the trade.

7) Focus on progress, not PnL. If you see progress in your trading, then you're on a good way. If you don't see progress, that's a problem.

8. Definitely stick to Hard stops, or you can lose a lot of money with one vicious move. Hard stops are not the issue - putting them in the wrong places can be.

9) Have a pretrading routine where you repeat all your lessons and try to apply them. Include printscreens of the kind of trades that you wanna do, and also warning trades. An example from my routine is below.

That's all that comes to mind for now, good luck! (although a trader doesn't need luck:)

JanJ


 

Thanks for the advice my man. I am starting over my business plan and will be making some new rules for myself. I honestly only look at the 1 and two minute chart so that could be part of my problem. I have the 5 minute chart pulled up but I don't really ever use it. I have about 1 hour to trade in the mornings. What strategies do you use involving the 5 minute chart if you don't mind me asking. I honestly only do Andrews A+ set ups for the 1 minute however I realized that watching Andrew is a terrible idea as I was always told to go for trades that are two for 1 where as he goes for far less I believe. Obviously this is a guess but when I watch him trade he buys before a breakout and then sells about ten cents later but will hold through 20 cent dips. Obviously I can't be sure. I really do appreciate the feedback, thank you

[Dylan irish 0]

20 hours ago, peterB said:

throw in the towel for ORBS. They require a lot of experience. Just pick another strategy and stop trading ORBs for at least a month.

 

do you do proper journaling with screenshots? mind sharing?

 

it takes like time and requires experience too

 

go to $10-$20 range

 

absolutely ignore them for now

 

obviously do a larger stop loss and you will be fine if you continue trading the ORBs

 

it is the only good idea in your post 🙂

 

that is statistically not possible. you need to get back to proper journaling. If you want to work on your mistakes you need it. PM me here or on discord for more details.

 

that is fine. SIM is good for strategy tune up. you need to trade with less risk when on real money.

 

have a max trades per day limit

but first of all have realistic expectations

there are no shortcuts or quick wins in this job

Thank you for the advice. I am definitely going to lower my Risk. I was doing some research over my past trades and I actually had a very noticeable drop in performance when switching to Chartlog over my own journal. In my own journal I would show the timeframe I was trading off of for a particular stock, then a larger time frame as well as what the SPY was doing at the time. I switched to Chartlog and you can't see what the SPY was doing and a lot of the levels I have like premarket close or yesterday high you have to add in. I am going to go back to my previous journal. Thank you for your advice I truly appreciate the feedback

[Dylan irish 0]

18 hours ago, Rob C said:

Hi Dylan,

J3Lda and peterB covered everything extremely well so I have nothing I could add.

But I struggled with ORBs for about 1.5 years before becoming profitable, so I will mention what I have learned about ORBs.

I also work full time, so the ORBs made the most sense. So I understand the desire to trade them, even though they will take longer than trend trading to become proficient.

- Only trade them in SIM until profitability factor >2. Yes I agree it doesn't feel real. But that is what I needed. After going back to SIM and even trading on DAS replay I found that ORBs are more mechanical then tactical. It doesn't matter how good of a setup, you must nail the entry. It makes or breaks a great trade and could instantly turn it into a stop/out. This took me a lot of practice. You need to predict where the price will be when the order fills and not where it is currently. You can only practice that in SIM.

- Video record all your ORB trades. You can look at the chart of your ABCD trade and know everything that occurred. I look at an ORB trade at night for review and I can't see what actually happen. You will learn a lot from the recording.

- Give yourself a bigger stop. Even a few pennies make a difference. I use to have this in my hot key. I would pick the most logical stop and the hotkey would add a few cents. It's amazing how many trades you will be stopped out by a penny before missing the 10R run. Essentially, all of us retail traders tend to pick the same stop. So a MM can swing the price down and gobble all of us up and then move the stock.

- Choose around 3 to 6 stocks and trade them every day. When one gets cold replace it with another hot stock. You need to learn the personality of individual stocks.

- A little over a year ago I was making good money on ORBs based on break of daily levels. But it stopped working for me last year.  But I see Thor make money every day on this so I kept trying and losing money. I finally had to drop that strategy. Same with Andrew's break of the 1 minute candle. It worked great last year and I still see Andrew make tons of money using them, but it stopped working for me and you may be having the same trouble.

- To restart just choose one strategy. If the stock is setting up a different strategy, let it go without you. Just trade one strategy. Yes the number of trades will go way down, but you will become an expert in that strategy fast. Like break HOTD or 1min ORB ONLY if the candle is a hammer, or 5min ORB only if the second candle pulls back to VWAP, etc...

- Yes I had a <20% success rate on ORBs for awhile. My stops were too tight, I always got a bad fill (my fault not DAS), and I always chased (now I only enter a trade on a pull back).

- Just after the open I do not look at prices at all only volume. I see which stocks get the volume, then I look at the price action.

- Practice watching L2 in SIM.

I hope there is something here that you find useful.

 

 

This was very helpful thank you. What software do you use to record your trades. I feel like that would be very helpful as when I look back some things are very obvious but they weren't obvious at the time because the stock is moving in real time.

[Dylan irish 0]

16 hours ago, Roberto said:

"Give yourself a bigger stop. Even a few pennies make a difference. I use to have this in my hot key. I would pick the most logical stop and the hotkey would add a few cents. It's amazing how many trades you will be stopped out by a penny before missing the 10R run. Essentially, all of us retail traders tend to pick the same stop. So a MM can swing the price down and gobble all of us up and then move the stock."

 

This. Rethinking stops will be a big help. It's a Matrix kind of view of the market. Before moving a market, let's say down, the MMs want as few people as possible to have shorts. They want those stocks in their hands so they get the profit. So they set up a area where it would seem obvious to us amateurs to hide our money if we were going short(a stop is really hiding your money). And just before the move down they run a wick just beyond that level. I'll pm you a link of quick videos that might help your view.

You might also want to consider swing trading with Brian. Interestingly, a bunch of the TI guys were daytraders and now swing traders. Buy and hold is their view on making real money...

I am fairly decent at swing trading, Brians picks are amazing though, that guy is talented. I appreciate the feedback I will analyze a bunch of trades this weekend and see if a bigger stop will have changed my outcome though I think you are right due to the amount of times I was stopped out to the penny.

[Dylan irish 0]

Does everyone here take their first partial at 1R? I think part of my problem is I was so afraid of losing money that I had gained that I would take a 50% partial at 1R or a little less than 1R

[J3Lda 7]

No problem, glad to help! I add new rules / advice to my pretrading routine every day..currently it's 3 pages long and counting:)

I'm not sure I'm the right person to give actual trading advice, but this has been my experience:

1/2min candles are just noise when picking trades. 2-min are good for partials / adds, though.

My favorite trades are 5-min ORBs (with a twist), VWAP False Breakouts, VWAP Continuations, occasionally Reversals.

As for the twist in ORB, ideally I want to see a VWAP Retest (perhaps it's not a retest but a shakeout of the retail Stops...who knows). I want the stock to clearly stay on one side of the VWAP, and I want to always take it pretty close to VWAP on the 5-min chart. I've noticed that the 5-min chart almost always offers opportunities for entry really close to VWAP. One example of such ORB + "VWAP Continuation" from a few days ago on PLTR, and another similar ORB on INTC today see below.

Andrew's ORBs are just magic to me, maybe in a few years:)

[Rob C 826]

4 hours ago, Dylan irish said:

This was very helpful thank you. What software do you use to record your trades. I feel like that would be very helpful as when I look back some things are very obvious but they weren't obvious at the time because the stock is moving in real time.

I use ChartLog. I was surprised how much it helped since I was really thorough with my journalling before ChartLog. Somehow it makes it more serious. I take SIM much more serious now that I use ChartLog since those trades are recorded as well and I need Chartlog to say I have a profit factor >2 in SIM before I can move to live for any strategy. And I force myself to drop the live trading if I drop below a profit factor of 1.3 for any strategy.

I tried Traderview but it would not upload my trades correctly 100% of the time. Versus ChartLog always uploads them correctly.

I record the trades using OBS Studio. I had some issues with DAS record app.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Rob C