If you are a losing trader and want start winning read this ...
If you are a winning trader this is not for you . This is for the losers who want to be winners written by a former loser , who has become a winner as what is probably his last post .
I am just starting my trading journey ( 5 years in now but that's nothing) . I used to publish all my trades on TV which actually really helped me to follow my strategies and it sort of made me feel like if I went against my rules you would all see but I have passed that period ,and now, have come to the realization that less outside noise is better ( for me , you do you ).
That being said, I just wanted to give one ,potentially last, update on my current stats and maybe just maybe help someone that struggling to get to the being consistently profitable trading stage .
First some stats and my path to date ....
2020 covid crash , decided I was going to trade for a living after making some money from trying to buy covid lows and then taking a udemy course , overall I lost close to half my 28k account by end of the year lol .
2021 I did my best to not suck , still lost money but I never stopped and invested hundreds of hours to try to figure our what i was doing wrong
2022 , bear market , but I came out slightly ahead , early 2022 I still had problems following my rules too ....
2023 my best managed account did 44% , my buy and hold less important account did just under 100% my all assets under management gain was just under 20% .
2024 , I am up a small amount , AUM something like 5% up at this time . Also day trades have been consistently profitable for over 1 year as well but that is a very small account at this point . I am constantly improving this is a lifelong journey .
I am not bragging and I know my results are nothing compared to some peoples accounts growth levels. But I wanted to give you the basics and personally, I don't care about other peoples accounts, all I care about is MY results and MY path to consistently winning , and you should be the same .
Basically I am managing risk right now , I have not gone against my strategies rules for over 2 years , and I have some strategies that are working for me showing me gains that I built and believe in and will follow unconditionally .
By the way, the last time I did go against my rules was Feb 24th 2022 where I lost 4.21% of my account in one day . I actually printed that days IBKR statement out and I will keep it for years. We must always follow our rules .
Anyways , you are reading this because you are losing money and have doubt and I want to help a bit with that .
Everyone's path to consistent profitability is different but here's what helped me . I am short term though so know this ,and I don't hedge whatsoever .
1) Fundamentals are not important , well they are kind of important , but price is #1 , fundamentals don't pay you price does .
2) Your core beliefs are probably the most important thing you have and you get to build them but they can also be wrong , so keep an eye on consistent winners in the market who hardly lose , they should help you form yours , but never just copy someone . You are basically a baby in your losing years so you should choose your mentors wisely , what's there annual performance and downdraw ? pick mentors that have good stats , pick winners to teach you .
3) We are unique , you need to put in years to find out what strategies you want to run for your whole life but once you are happy with a Strat I think you should keep it going its a representation of something you built in your path , believe in it , be proud of it, after all, you built it !
Also, you need to build your own strategies they should be somewhat original to you ...
4) Trade the trend , not your opinion , its ok to have an opinion but if the trend is what you use to trade with not what you think . Random made up example , The news and sentiment is negative , economic indicators even say we are now in a recession ... then the market goes up and gives YOUR system YOU built a buy signal , you buy it without a second thought .....
5) Winning is a choice , you can even win every single month if you really want to , you get to choose . If you are losing all the time you are actually choosing to lose in some way shape or form .
We do get to choose how we trade and thus we can certainly manage trades and risk in a way that plans for so much failure that we simply do not lose . Yes, of course, you will still lose trades, but, you can go month to month with no losing months on a consistent basis , this is a fact . I have only just started to figure that one out to be honest..... for me the key was scaling up and trader selection is still necessary which goes hand and hand with screen time . I actually don't recommend scaling up at first though , I do believe in it but its transaction heavy and too much for someone starting out , its too much for me lol and I have 5 years of order management behind me .
6) You suck , yep you do , realize that and plan success into it . Realizing you suck but making plans not to is all part of the process of consistently winning in the market and often life ...
7) Do only 1 thing , focus on being good at it first and then after a decent amount of history and muscle memory you can branch out . I like to think of it as mana ( anime fan here ) , you are basically a young magic learner , your journey is long and your just starting , you can't do complex spells yet and if you do you will fail , and probably die lol focus on getting good at something simple first and don't rush it .
8) I make all my money from trends and the stronger the trend the easier to make money , I buy late all the time too if the trend is super strong , way after conventional buy points . I think buying late is not for everyone , lost me money when I was starting out but with a proper gameplan that's where the " winning is a choice " part comes in .
9) Don't look at profit % or $ , look at everything in R , What are you risking on a trade ? That's R. 1R is one risk . You should always risk the same on every trade . The trading view Long or short position calculator is really an awesome tool for this . I am always surprised to find long time traders that size trades without it . You probably shouldn't be risking more than 1%. I think 2% is too much .
This is probably one of the most important points , use R for everything . And if you become a successful trader and your account grows massively you can manage more and money while conditioning yourself to think in R vs $
10) I back test new prospective strategies back 14 years if I can use the daily chart or if its a lower timeframe I go back many months . This process takes weeks as I am also building rules and methodology . Then I live test them all while still recording data/results . The process takes a minimum of 6 months till use real money . If you cant do this you don't deserve real money and I know a lot of pro traders say they think paper trading is no good because your emotions are different and you need something on the line , IT'S COMPLETE BULLSHIT. Paper trading is a process my emotions are exactly the same with paper as real money I want to refine the process and know exactly what to do and when and a successful strategy , for me , takes at least 6 months . Then the live strategy is started with a fraction of what I have dedicated to it , and is rewarded with more money for every month of gain . That a sure way to manage your capital that will not lose your money if it works . And when you build these strategies , keep in mind you only have so much time , so are you willing to run the strategy till you die ? I believe that you should be willing to and so what's the rush ?
11)Ok last thing if you made it this far .....
Here is a simple way to manage trades that WILL make you money overall , especially used in trends ...having said that you need to risk the same per trade vs account or your fucked. lol
Here's the process , modify to your liking but this WILL make money ....
1) your strategy has a trigger ( could be a close under 21 ema )
2) your strategy has a signal ( could be first close above 50 sma, 10 ema , and 21 ema)
3) you buy , stop loss at 1R loss first thing you do , and you do immediately .
4) you place another order to sell 1/3 of your shares at 2R or 2 times your risk above entry price .
5) once you sell at 2R in profit ( assuming it works , you move your stop loss to break even )
6) you use something you choose as an exit for the 2/3rd of shares you still have ( a close below the 21 ema would be a good area in my opinion )
.
Ok last thing .
Stan Weinstein's Secrets For Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets
Then the following month read it again , and then several months later read it again .
And you get my drift . Re read the best books and that's one I've personally bought 3 times because I like it so much even as a gift and I only have just started to re read my trading books but I think that is also important . We don't need 100 trading books , we need one to five that give us good core beliefs and then we need to keep reminding ourselves and continually reprogramming our brains , re reading books that like stans are the equivalent of defragmenting our brains imo.
Good luck being a winner , never give up ...
I am just starting my trading journey ( 5 years in now but that's nothing) . I used to publish all my trades on TV which actually really helped me to follow my strategies and it sort of made me feel like if I went against my rules you would all see but I have passed that period ,and now, have come to the realization that less outside noise is better ( for me , you do you ).
That being said, I just wanted to give one ,potentially last, update on my current stats and maybe just maybe help someone that struggling to get to the being consistently profitable trading stage .
First some stats and my path to date ....
2020 covid crash , decided I was going to trade for a living after making some money from trying to buy covid lows and then taking a udemy course , overall I lost close to half my 28k account by end of the year lol .
2021 I did my best to not suck , still lost money but I never stopped and invested hundreds of hours to try to figure our what i was doing wrong
2022 , bear market , but I came out slightly ahead , early 2022 I still had problems following my rules too ....
2023 my best managed account did 44% , my buy and hold less important account did just under 100% my all assets under management gain was just under 20% .
2024 , I am up a small amount , AUM something like 5% up at this time . Also day trades have been consistently profitable for over 1 year as well but that is a very small account at this point . I am constantly improving this is a lifelong journey .
I am not bragging and I know my results are nothing compared to some peoples accounts growth levels. But I wanted to give you the basics and personally, I don't care about other peoples accounts, all I care about is MY results and MY path to consistently winning , and you should be the same .
Basically I am managing risk right now , I have not gone against my strategies rules for over 2 years , and I have some strategies that are working for me showing me gains that I built and believe in and will follow unconditionally .
By the way, the last time I did go against my rules was Feb 24th 2022 where I lost 4.21% of my account in one day . I actually printed that days IBKR statement out and I will keep it for years. We must always follow our rules .
Anyways , you are reading this because you are losing money and have doubt and I want to help a bit with that .
Everyone's path to consistent profitability is different but here's what helped me . I am short term though so know this ,and I don't hedge whatsoever .
1) Fundamentals are not important , well they are kind of important , but price is #1 , fundamentals don't pay you price does .
2) Your core beliefs are probably the most important thing you have and you get to build them but they can also be wrong , so keep an eye on consistent winners in the market who hardly lose , they should help you form yours , but never just copy someone . You are basically a baby in your losing years so you should choose your mentors wisely , what's there annual performance and downdraw ? pick mentors that have good stats , pick winners to teach you .
3) We are unique , you need to put in years to find out what strategies you want to run for your whole life but once you are happy with a Strat I think you should keep it going its a representation of something you built in your path , believe in it , be proud of it, after all, you built it !
Also, you need to build your own strategies they should be somewhat original to you ...
4) Trade the trend , not your opinion , its ok to have an opinion but if the trend is what you use to trade with not what you think . Random made up example , The news and sentiment is negative , economic indicators even say we are now in a recession ... then the market goes up and gives YOUR system YOU built a buy signal , you buy it without a second thought .....
5) Winning is a choice , you can even win every single month if you really want to , you get to choose . If you are losing all the time you are actually choosing to lose in some way shape or form .
We do get to choose how we trade and thus we can certainly manage trades and risk in a way that plans for so much failure that we simply do not lose . Yes, of course, you will still lose trades, but, you can go month to month with no losing months on a consistent basis , this is a fact . I have only just started to figure that one out to be honest..... for me the key was scaling up and trader selection is still necessary which goes hand and hand with screen time . I actually don't recommend scaling up at first though , I do believe in it but its transaction heavy and too much for someone starting out , its too much for me lol and I have 5 years of order management behind me .
6) You suck , yep you do , realize that and plan success into it . Realizing you suck but making plans not to is all part of the process of consistently winning in the market and often life ...
7) Do only 1 thing , focus on being good at it first and then after a decent amount of history and muscle memory you can branch out . I like to think of it as mana ( anime fan here ) , you are basically a young magic learner , your journey is long and your just starting , you can't do complex spells yet and if you do you will fail , and probably die lol focus on getting good at something simple first and don't rush it .
8) I make all my money from trends and the stronger the trend the easier to make money , I buy late all the time too if the trend is super strong , way after conventional buy points . I think buying late is not for everyone , lost me money when I was starting out but with a proper gameplan that's where the " winning is a choice " part comes in .
9) Don't look at profit % or $ , look at everything in R , What are you risking on a trade ? That's R. 1R is one risk . You should always risk the same on every trade . The trading view Long or short position calculator is really an awesome tool for this . I am always surprised to find long time traders that size trades without it . You probably shouldn't be risking more than 1%. I think 2% is too much .
This is probably one of the most important points , use R for everything . And if you become a successful trader and your account grows massively you can manage more and money while conditioning yourself to think in R vs $
10) I back test new prospective strategies back 14 years if I can use the daily chart or if its a lower timeframe I go back many months . This process takes weeks as I am also building rules and methodology . Then I live test them all while still recording data/results . The process takes a minimum of 6 months till use real money . If you cant do this you don't deserve real money and I know a lot of pro traders say they think paper trading is no good because your emotions are different and you need something on the line , IT'S COMPLETE BULLSHIT. Paper trading is a process my emotions are exactly the same with paper as real money I want to refine the process and know exactly what to do and when and a successful strategy , for me , takes at least 6 months . Then the live strategy is started with a fraction of what I have dedicated to it , and is rewarded with more money for every month of gain . That a sure way to manage your capital that will not lose your money if it works . And when you build these strategies , keep in mind you only have so much time , so are you willing to run the strategy till you die ? I believe that you should be willing to and so what's the rush ?
11)Ok last thing if you made it this far .....
Here is a simple way to manage trades that WILL make you money overall , especially used in trends ...having said that you need to risk the same per trade vs account or your fucked. lol
Here's the process , modify to your liking but this WILL make money ....
1) your strategy has a trigger ( could be a close under 21 ema )
2) your strategy has a signal ( could be first close above 50 sma, 10 ema , and 21 ema)
3) you buy , stop loss at 1R loss first thing you do , and you do immediately .
4) you place another order to sell 1/3 of your shares at 2R or 2 times your risk above entry price .
5) once you sell at 2R in profit ( assuming it works , you move your stop loss to break even )
6) you use something you choose as an exit for the 2/3rd of shares you still have ( a close below the 21 ema would be a good area in my opinion )
.
Ok last thing .
Stan Weinstein's Secrets For Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets
Then the following month read it again , and then several months later read it again .
And you get my drift . Re read the best books and that's one I've personally bought 3 times because I like it so much even as a gift and I only have just started to re read my trading books but I think that is also important . We don't need 100 trading books , we need one to five that give us good core beliefs and then we need to keep reminding ourselves and continually reprogramming our brains , re reading books that like stans are the equivalent of defragmenting our brains imo.
Good luck being a winner , never give up ...
艾力克~