Starting Out Day Trading!

[leilajake 2]

Newbie here so please excuse the "dumb"questions..! Joined BBT about 3 years ago...life got in the way but this year l am focused and determined to do this...! SO i am currently re-reading Andrews beginners day trading book, finished reading Mike B's psychology book and bought Thors to read next. Am going to do the May bootcamp so want to get as much experience/knowledge behind me so l can really make the most of the bootcamp.  I am in Australia so try and tune in early morning when l can (i still work) to the afternoon sessions and plan to join in as many of the sessions at 8pm. I already have an IB account which l played with 3 years ago. I got a New Year special for Trade Ideas so have joined that for 12 months. So my question is do l need to now Join DAS Pro and TraderVue....or will l be doubling up on services somewhere along the line. Seems there are so many systems and because l am new l don't know if l need all or just a couple. I am only planning on SIM trading until l do the bootcamp so that will give me a good 5 months practice. Thanks for any advice....my poor brain is swimming at the moment,

[Martin D 27]

Hi, welcome, I'm also trading from Australia (Melbourne) so tend to trade the first hour or two of the market open till the volatility dies down a bit.

You're a member here so utilize the education center (strategy webinars but I think it's really valuable to watch all Thor's mentorships in there as you'll learn what everyone else is asking and so it'll likely answer a lot of your own questions or questions you didn't even realize you had), the books you've mentioned and can always recommend more if you like reading, also youtube has a lot of useful content if you find the right people (personally I watch BBT, Humbled Trader, SMB capital and Carmine Rosato).

I think initially you want to give different styles a try in SIM and understand what kind of trading style suits you/who's style resonates with you then you can really work on your choice in the bootcamp. When I first started I tried to trade like Andrew because I wanted to be done in the first 10 minutes due to the timezone, it was "easy" during COVID but now trading in the first 5 minutes is very choppy so I had to change approach. Now I'm probably a mix of part of different mods as well as some other stuff I've picked up, that's the beauty of trading there's no one way to do it.

In terms of service, I don't think you really need Trade Ideas, there's free scanners in trading terminal (run by BBT) and also the chatroom here  will give you a good place to start everyday. Yeah most people here use DAS so if you go along with that then DAS for Sim and also the replay function in there, BBT have a free replay but personally I use the DAS one because it's the platform I'm trading in so it keeps everything familiar. TraderVue is a personal choice, I personally just use Microsoft Excel because I use it all the time at work so I can analyze anything I want to in there easily. I think there's some Excel journal templates floating around on here somewhere if you want to keep the costs down.

Happy to answer any other questions if I can.

[leilajake 2]

On 1/10/2023 at 4:22 PM, Martin D said:

Hi, welcome, I'm also trading from Australia (Melbourne) so tend to trade the first hour or two of the market open till the volatility dies down a bit.

You're a member here so utilize the education center (strategy webinars but I think it's really valuable to watch all Thor's mentorships in there as you'll learn what everyone else is asking and so it'll likely answer a lot of your own questions or questions you didn't even realize you had), the books you've mentioned and can always recommend more if you like reading, also youtube has a lot of useful content if you find the right people (personally I watch BBT, Humbled Trader, SMB capital and Carmine Rosato).

I think initially you want to give different styles a try in SIM and understand what kind of trading style suits you/who's style resonates with you then you can really work on your choice in the bootcamp. When I first started I tried to trade like Andrew because I wanted to be done in the first 10 minutes due to the timezone, it was "easy" during COVID but now trading in the first 5 minutes is very choppy so I had to change approach. Now I'm probably a mix of part of different mods as well as some other stuff I've picked up, that's the beauty of trading there's no one way to do it.

In terms of service, I don't think you really need Trade Ideas, there's free scanners in trading terminal (run by BBT) and also the chatroom here  will give you a good place to start everyday. Yeah most people here use DAS so if you go along with that then DAS for Sim and also the replay function in there, BBT have a free replay but personally I use the DAS one because it's the platform I'm trading in so it keeps everything familiar. TraderVue is a personal choice, I personally just use Microsoft Excel because I use it all the time at work so I can analyze anything I want to in there easily. I think there's some Excel journal templates floating around on here somewhere if you want to keep the costs down.

Happy to answer any other questions if I can.

Hi Martin D, thanks for the message. Nice to have a "local" on here...! I am in Warragul, Gippsland. Yes l have been watching Thors sessions....and trying to tune in live to the 8pm USA ET sessions given there at lunchtime here. I have also been watching the different Mods with their individual strategies....and l have a couple l am really interested in trying. But as l am reading people keep saying even though l may like a strategy...I may not be good at it nor may it work for me. So l have started a book on what l like...then l will focus on one at a time and sign up for the DAS sim....as l agree..prefer to get used to one trading system, and try out my strategies. How long have you been trading/been a member of BBT?

Once again...thanks so much for reaching out. Maybe when l am no longer a REAL newbie...we maybe able to discuss some of the positives/negatives of trading from the other side of the world.!! 

[Martin D 27]

Hi, Nice! only really headed out that way when going to Wilson's Prom a few times, I live on Ocean Road side of Melbourne so tend to head out that side more.

Yeah people say that to mean people start and look at Andrew and he'll trade for 10 minutes and be up $5k and say he's done trading for the day, everyone loves the idea but most can't trade like Andrew.

I started with BBT in July 2020 I think, short version of my story is I work in Finance and had an interest in markets. Swing traded a bunch of stuff at the bottom in 2020 when things were stupidly cheap and made a decent amount (like a years salary), no real strategy just knew people were panicking like previous crisis's and things were crazy cheap. Decided to use that money to give trading a shot because I got tired of climbing the corporate ladder and the politics of it, worst case I decided I'll come out breakeven on money from the market, put a little over PDT ($25k) in the account and started directly with IB. Heard all stories of blown up accounts so I kept a lot back and was only ever going to let it get down to the $25k so I was able to top up my account a number of times if I needed to. Traded too big at the start but then really scaled back to $20 risk per trade to make sure the amount I set aside would last and give me the time I needed. A lot of time in replay and a couple of failed tradebook attempts later I have my style that I like and works for me, I still tweak it here and there to nail it down for the success % + Risk : Reward I want then I'll move onto maintaining that while scaling up.

Yeah no problem, just reach out if you have questions. I'm on here everyday working on trading.
 

[leilajake 2]

Sorry....for the delay getting back. Once again "life" got in the way!. Well you're not far away at all then!. I grew up in Geelong...great area.

We have a self managed superfund so l did a bit of swing trading during Covid on the US market and made some money....have some stock in the Aus market but not enough volatility to really do much.

Hence why l want to get into the Day Trading. Yes...Andrew does make it look so easy. Mind you he makes losing look easy too!!. I opened an IB account also...but it's just been sitting there. 

I am I the process of working out which trading strategy l like. Was watching a Mike B presentation this week and he suggests just trying anything and everything on the simulator and seeing what works and what doesn't. I want all this sorted before l join the Bootcamp.

I really like the look of the 9/20 one and the Mountain Pass. But as they say...what l like and what "works" for me could be 2 different things.

We have our own business (caravan sales) so l get quite busy with that which leaves only the evenings to learn. But l will get there. Hubby is about 3/4 years from retiring so l am "hoping" this will be a source of a bit of spending money for us then and something to keep my brain active.

I'd be interested in hearing about your strategy. How do you manage to trade and work full time? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Do you trade on The Australian market at all. I did see some people say they day trade it....but l can't imagine how it could really work.

Enjoy your weekend. Cheers Sue 

[Martin D 27]

Yeah he losses a lot more now than he used to when I started, Andrew needs momentum and the market is a bit choppy at the minute. He tries to still trade the first 5 minutes and often losses because it's choppy but then makes it back plus more when things calm down and picks a direction. In all honestly I mute the trading room now if he's trading, it triggers my desire to trade a lot, I can't listen to the "looks like its going up", "think its topping" etc even if they don't actually take the trade it's like "go, go, go, move, trade, hurry up" in my head. The psychology element I needed to tackle was patience so I only listen if it's Thor or Jarad at the open or I listen to music.

Yeah basically that's the idea, if I had my time again I would start live trading later. I jumped in because I could do it in replay but what I could really do was the market conditions at the time, I didn't really truly understand what was happening (even though I thought I did at the time).

Yeah so with those two it requires a great deal of patience and potentially no trades in the day, so 9/20 being a trend continuation strategy and Mountain Pass being a trend reversal strategy. Key being you need a trend to be happening/have happened to get them and even then they don't happen 100% of the time there's a trend. It's not a bad thing if that works for you but I need something to be setting up all the time so I have strategies for different types of day.

Yeah the thing I would say is this requires a lot of time and effort, I have no idea how many hours I've put in at this stage but it's a lot. If you can get the hours in consistently then things start to become clearer and clearer, I don't know how many "aha" moments I've had now.

So it's difficult to put it in a forum post but I can try explaining high level. Ignoring gaps from news catalysts, fundamentally how a market moves is price and volume. Price being obvious and volume to see who's involved and what they are doing. You have the traditional candle charts and the volume at the bottom but you also can see volume profile (volume at price). Market makers and big players move markets and they do so in large volume so I want to swim along with them/avoid swimming against them, the volume tells us where they are and then we try and read the structure of the market to work out where they are going next. Market makers are after liquidity (Supply and Demand) so they will move from one high trading area to the next, building inventory and getting rid of it, testing prior liquidity zones to see whether there's any more liquidity there before they move onto the next, shaking out weak hands (false breakouts). It requires a lot of time to get the experience to understand it but it's where I feel comfortable and I keep improving at reading it. I then put trades around that view of the market. 

For example if we set a range and we break the edge then it's one of two things a breakout or a false breakout. On a breakout I want a retest and if it holds I'll go with that direction, if it fails the retest then I know it's probably going to the other side of the range and possibly further. I have other trades for trends (ABCD, trendlines), reversals (Parabolic, Head and Shoulders etc). Effectively no matter the market condition I have something that is potentially setting up or happening (as long as there is volume). That suits me as it gives me the patience to wait as something is always setting up and also allows me to trade without bias as I'm not reliant on a particular market type so I don't force it when it's not there. I've found this is what I need to 1) have the patience to wait for my setup and 2) hold winners longer because I have a fair idea what the failure of it looks like so I'm not anxious to take profit too quickly.

Obviously that's very high level so if you want to learn more then I recommend reading Thor's book (in general Thor's teaching of the market but I personally only somewhat follow the pivots, a lot of people use them completely as it gives them structure but I've found if I make indicators the main part of my trading I put too much emphasis on them. However, if I get correlation between what they're doing and what I'm looking at then it might increase my confidence in the trade or I might use them as a profit target). Anna Coulling (A complete guide to volume price analysis), Jim Dalton's books.

I traded full time for a period but when I was working in the city, it was very difficult in the summer as I just didn't have time for sleep, during COVID lockdowns it was easier as I got rid of the commute times and I could do it a night or all weekend. However, once they tried to force us to go back to the office, long story short I resigned and given what was happening at the time they allowed me to work from home while they transitioned away from me, in the end I did that full time for about a year and even now I still work part time for them (but completely on the hours I want to work to get the tasks done).

I won't pretend to know about your business but I used to run my fathers business which was high value/low frequency products, I used to try do all the business stuff (ordering inventory, tidying up, accounting etc) in the morning when there's wasn't a customer then in the afternoon I would go into the office and study (to become an accountant) if a customer wasn't there, if we had two of us working on the day they would take first customer and so I'd only need to go out of the office if we had 2+ customers in at the same time or if they specifically needed me. Not sure if it's doable for your situation but it's the only experience I have that might be similar..

No I haven't day traded ASX, only thing I saw was an interview on youtube of someone who did. They were basically trading an arbitrage style trading. I just wanted to focus on one market, one platform etc till I feel my learning curve is pretty much flattened and US market just has most material and best platforms to learn.