My journey

[Stuart 16]

Hello BBT!,

I just wanted to send out this update on my journey as I will be going back to SIM after 5 weeks of live trading. I hit the shark bite rule, and must claim this victory! The reason I choose to look at this as a victory is, I still have an account that is large enough to day trade! I could look at this as a setback, but I won't! This is just another step in my growth as a day trader, and thankfully I have the simulator to re-tool my strategies. If not for the teachings of Andrew, and the incredible support from the entire BBT community, I'm sure I would have completely blown up my account. So please accept my deepest gratitude to all of you that have contributed to my learning.  All that each one of you have shared through the chat room and video recaps has helped me make the wise choice to stop live trading until I can show consistency in my trading process. I will be reevaluating my risk control,  journal entry method, trade setups, and trading psychology during the next few weeks before going back to a live account. I guess this post is really intended as an accountability check for myself to keep with the plan and make the necessary adjustments needed to become consistent.

Thanks again BBT!,

Stuart K

attached is a short recap of one of my good trades, I end the recap with my favorite A. Aziz qoute, and a picture of my faithful trading partner.

[Skye 28]

Good work Stuart! I did not follow those rules the first time I tried to go live and now wish I did. I'm doing fine, live again and for good now (I think - ha!), but it didn't do me any good allowing that much money go to losses. The long term view is definitely key. 

[Stuart 16]

Thanks Skye! It is a bit humbling to go back to SIM, but it is the right thing to do! I am seeing it through a different lens and realize some of the things I did wrong clearly. Just need to clean up my trading strategies a bit before going back live. I was green the first week in SIM.

[Skye 28]

Yeah well this whole exorcise is humbling. It's a giant humble pie! I went back and forth a few times until I was at the point that I wasn't reacting emotionally when trading with live money. I knew that if I was going to be emotional I would not have consistently positive results so no sense in going down that path. Part of that was also managing my individual losses and down days. Hitting max loss on trades too often meant that I was either not able to read price action correctly or in denial about what I was seeing or what I should do. I also made a rule for myself to stop trading after 3 trades and at about 10:00 - 10:15. That's my window. Whatever happens happens, then it's on to the next day. 

[Stuart 16]

So true! A big heaping helping of humility! lol So, here is my two week SIM P/L I did ok, but still need to control my losses better.

[Stuart 16]

Went back live today and hit max loss risk controls. I made some bad trades and miscalculated risk control on $BA. Had an OK trade on $MU, just didn't break VWAP as I thought. Ended the recap with "Ain't No Love (In The Heart Of The City)" by the Supersonic Blues Machine.

[Stuart 16]

Back to SIM. Still can't stick to my rules. I find myself over-trading after going red trying to make it back. Hopefully I will get to a place where I can stop after one or two losing trades. I see why all the references to crack are used!

[Skye 28]

Stuart, how much risk are you taking per-trade?

[Stuart 16]

Skye,

I kept reducing the risk per trade trying to keep from losing my account. I started risking 1% of my account, $300. That wasn't working very well as I was getting drained. I changed to $100, then $50, and finally $25 per trade. It seemed that the reduced risk just made me take more trades. I think what is really going on is, I really don't have a defined "edge" that I trade around. I have made all of the classic mistakes, obviously, and now have decided that I need to break my training up into smaller chunks. This week, I'm concentrating on opening range trades and want to see (in sim) if I can actually show some consistency. I don't think that my last foray in the sim was very realistic because of the risk I was taking on most of the trades. For example, I am not doing myself any favors by adding to my share size and taking on bigger stop losses while in sim, just to show a nice profit. I have heard it over and over again in my mind, Andrew's words....."Start small, slowly increase your share size over time. Build your account slowly". Need to work on slowing down my roll so that I can survive the learning curve. I'm still confident I can get there, but I just need to learn to plan my trades better. From reading the price action, recognizing who is control, (buyers, or sellers), calculating r/r and not taking profit too soon, or chickening out before my stop loss. And, actually knowing a good trade when I see one! You mentioned the following in a prior response, " Hitting max loss on trades too often meant that I was either not able to read price action correctly or in denial about what I was seeing or what I should do. I also made a rule for myself to stop trading after 3 trades and at about 10:00 - 10:15. That's my window. Whatever happens happens, then it's on to the next day".  That makes a lot of sense, and I am going to try and stick to similar rules.

Thanks for your responses!

Stuart

[JD 49]

On 3/17/2019 at 7:12 AM, Stuart said:

Back to SIM. Still can't stick to my rules. I find myself over-trading after going red trying to make it back. Hopefully I will get to a place where I can stop after one or two losing trades. I see why all the references to crack are used!

Hey Stuart, the Das risk controls are really useful for protecting your account capital if you haven't already enabled them. If you set your Total Loss equal to 2R or slightly above it then Das will cut you off from trading for the day once you hit that.  

 

[Stuart 16]

Thanks JD! I have them set to $90 max loss per ticker and total $300 loss. I have hit  the max loss per ticker and was locked out from trading that stock for further pain! I have not hit the max daily loss with DAS risk controls in place yet, and wasn't sure if it closes open positions when max daily loss is reached. I think it does.

Thanks again!

Stuart

[JD 49]

I have the ticker max loss set too and seem to hit that right at the same time that I hit my daily max loss and it closes out my position. According to the YouTube video, as long as you have "Enable Auto Stop" checked Das will close out your positions when you hit your daily max loss.

[Stuart 16]

First, thanks to everyone for your support in my journey. Secondly, I do feel like I made some progress this week. I hope that maybe this could help other new traders that may go through the same thing that I did.

I am feeling a little more in control of FOMO, and the way I think I did it was defaulting my platform to the SIM account and manually changing one montage back to live for 1 small trade per day. This way, I can work on how a live trade feels mentally, and fine tune a specific strategy. Then I can feed my trading hunger with paper money afterwards. So far, my losses have been decreasing in both live and sim, and I actually made a small profit today. I'm currently trading only ORB's live, and working on ABCD's and then looking for trend trades later in the session in sim. It's just an experiment at this point, so time will tell if I can keep my cool during this learning process! I can't over emphasize the importance of starting small and slowly increasing position size and risk. I heard it a million times before going live, but thought I had this stuff down pat. Nope!

Thanks again!

Stuart

[Stuart 16]

What a difference listening to the pro's advice makes! I finally let the "start small, slowly increase share size, gradually grow your account" sink in and started putting it into action. My p\l last week was a very small red amount, and I think it is due to two things. One, I decreased my share size to 50 shares per trade, and two, I really did a good job of sticking to my stops. This seems so simple looking back on it, but the mind played tricks on me when I started trading live. I realize that I was really revenge trading myself into a hole in previous weeks, and have seemed to get a grip on those emotions with this tiny share size. It will take time, but at least I can live to trade another day! My focus, as I said previously is on just one or two strategies, and I am limiting myself to one or two live trades each day. The rest of the time I spend in sim, working on reading the price action and trying to determine who is control, the buyers or the sellers, and of course watching and learning from the traders in the chat room! I hope I can build on these small victories, and continue to improve my trades. Although I'm not in the "Challenge Competition", the pro tips and tricks videos are a great help reminding me of things I had studied in the past but didn't really implement in my trades. Thanks to Carlos and William, and all of the other mod's and traders for sharing thier knowledge to help the community grow! Hope everyone has a great week ahead, and good luck to all of the Challenge participants!

Regards,

Stuart

[WilliamH 67]

Stuart, Just read through the thread and started smiling when I got to the most recent posts! YES, you did it right! Believe it or not, BOTH Carlos and I have had to step back at times to small shares when we have bad psychology or on a poor streak and not feeling confident with our trading. For you to take that insight, and go back to small size is SO GREAT. It eliminates all emotions, FOMO, revenge trading. . . .And at the end of the day, even though I know we are all doing this to make money . . . oddly enough money needs to be the last thing on your mind to trade smart. And by going back to small size, it is an easy way for your brain to stop caring about the money.  Now the next step is to increase share size and risk very very slowly. In baby steps. Do not increase your risk by 50-100% because you are feeling great and confident and think you have a handle on your emotions. Only increase your shares/risk by 5%-20% per week and go very very slowly. Always be willing to take a step back, but never jump to far ahead. Always remember, this is a marathon not a sprint. The market will always be there, it is only us, the participants that will get exhausted in many different ways and have to step aside.  And as you thanked Carlos and I as well as the rest of the team for sharing with all of you, we want to thank all of you for listening! We share to help in any way we can, and it makes us so happy to know that people actually do get helped by our insights! So THANK YOU!!!

 

@Stuart @Carlos M.