Left my Job to Learn to Become a Full Time Day Traders Weeks 6/7 - Quick Update!
Hello, all!
This is the first time i shared my experience on this platform. As I spoke on reddit, things have become a little complicated so this won't be the typical update but I still wanted to inform everyone on what is happening with my journey.
Platforms
TradingView - I am completely done with this program. I was in the middle of an active trade and had 3 tabs open. It logged me out in the middle of the trade because I had too many tabs open. Mind you, I am paying for their highest service which allows you to use multiple tabs. I ended up losing the trade as I scrambled to log back in before the trade was over. I sent them numerous messages complaining asking for my money back. I will let you all know how that conversation goes. Thankfully, it was a small leverage trade because I decided to size down while I continue to learn.
TradeStation - This is now where all of my trading takes place. I am still learning it so again, perfect timing for me to reduce leverage while I continue developing my strategy and learn how to properly operate the software. There are still several things I'm not a fan of with TradeStation, one being that I cannot begin trading until 8am and truthfully, I would love to have the ability to trade full pre-market. Another thing is I very much dislike their charting software. This very well could be due to a lack of setup, so for now I will continue playing with it and if I could get to a place I enjoy then I will likely stay with them. ToS is on my radar for my next broker if TradeStation doesn't work out.
TradesViz - I will be using this as my new journaling software once I work some things out. The customer service is absolutely unbeatable. I opened up a chat window while I was on stream and the individual on the other end actually joined my stream and we had a huge conversation about the issues I was having with journaling software. Not only did they spend literal hours with me and answered questions for the stream, they also asked me to email them an excel file and edited their code to accept the files from my broker. Incredible experience, the software is fantastic, but the customer service is what made me really want to make the change.
While I am fixing these changes I won't be posting my traditional updates with my stats and trade reviews. I expect to have everything setup and ready to go for next week, so you will likely begin seeing my updates again in the next 1-2 weeks.
Trades
I lost money Week 6, I think around $250 however, a lot of this had to do with all of the program changes I explained above. So I scaled back my leverage and I will continue preparing to start fully daytrading again with statistics for you all.
I'm sure you all saw what happened with SPCE and most of you know I was holding a losing position on that for quite some time. I closed half of my position yesterday for a $2500 which makes back all of my losses from learning to day trade and then some.
I still have half of my position and I am using today to add to said position.
I am still long on ACTC and have no intent on doing anything with that position for potentially years.
The other long positions I am holding are very small leverage and speculative so not worth mentioning at this point.
Psychology
I feel so much better than I have in a long time. I feel that the psychological battle is done and the fear that was preventing me from trading is all but gone. The biggest struggle left is just the psychology of following my rules, but those rules become so easy to bend as you watch the market change before your very eyes. I know the market pays you to be disciplined and this is something I obviously need to correct if I want to be a profitable trader. I firmly believe I am on the right path and the consistency I am showing will make me successful.
Strategy
I decided to go back to low cap scalping again because of the incredible amount of money that could be made there. I was quickly reminded about the incredible amount of money that could be lost as well.
I decided that protecting my capital is more important than increasing it right now so I will be sticking with the larger cap stocks as I continue my training.
Here is the rough strategy right now:
Max Daily Loss: $100
Risk/Reward: 1:1 minimum but I am typically looking for 1:2 entries, I will however shamelessly close positions early if I don't have the warm and fuzzies about my position. I know that technically reduces my r:r, however, the realized profits feel so much better than the potential of larger gains.
Biggest mistake: It hasn't changed, I still cut my winners too early and hold my losers too long. Although, so far with Week 7 I have not fallen prey to this trap.
Trading: So what am I actually trading? Well, like I said many large/megacap but I still look for midcap to trade. The main idea behind my strategy is I scalp consolidation periods looking for 0.10 gains. I follow a 1:1 r:r and I am willing to cut winners at 0.07 if I think it might move against me.
As the consolidation period approaches the apex, I look to enter a trade on the correct side of the breakout with a relatively tight stop. If I am on the wrong side, I get stopped out. If I am on the right side, I don't scalp, but instead I switch to a more swing trading mentality and convert my stop to a trailing stop attempting to capture as many profits as I can.
That's about it right now.
I will continue trying this strategy and getting all the software functioning properly, once I have the software all functioning correctly then I will begin my normal updates again that include all of my statistics. Thanks everyone!
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