TMT Scalping System Forex Factory

So here it is, three more days and October begins, which marks one year of trading for me. I figured I would contribute to the forum and share some of my experience, a little about me, and what I've learned so far. Whoever wants to listen, that's great. This might get long so buckle up..
Three years ago, I was visiting Toronto. I don't get out much, but my roommate at the time travels there occasionally. He asked everyone at our place if we wanted to come along for a weekend. My roommate has an uncle that lives there and we didn't have to worry about a hotel because his uncle owns a small house that's unlived in which we could stay at. I was the only one to go with. Anyways, we walk around the city, seeing the sights and whatnot.
My friend says to me "where next?"
"I don't know, you're the tour guide"
"We can go check out Bay Street"
"what's 'Bay Street?'"
"It's like the Canadian Wall street! If you haven't seen it you gotta see it!"
Walking along Bay, I admire all the nice buildings and architecture, everything seems larger than life to me. I love things like that. The huge granite facades with intricate designs and towering pillars to make you think, How the fuck did they make that? My attention pivots to a man walking on the sidewalk opposite us. His gait stood out among everyone, he walked with such a purpose.. He laughed into the cell phone to his ear. In the elbow-shoving city environment, he moved with a stride that exuded a power which not only commanded respect, but assumed it. I bet HE can get a text back, hell he's probably got girls waiting on him. This dude was dressed to kill, a navy suit that you could just tell from across the street was way out of my budget, it was a nice fucking suit. I want that. His life, across the street, seemed a world a way from my own. I've worn a suit maybe twice in my life. For my first communion, it was too big for me, I was eleven or whatever so who gives a shit, right? I'm positive I looked ridiculous. The other time? I can't remember.
I want that. I want the suit. I want the wealth, the independence. I want the respect and power, and I don't give a shit what anyone thinks about it.
Cue self doubt.
Well, He's probably some rich banker's son. That's a world you're born into. I don't know shit about it. \sigh* keep walking..*
​
A year later, I'm visiting my parents at their house, they live an hour away from my place. My dad is back from Tennessee, his engineering job was laying people off and he got canned... Or he saw the end was near and just left... I don't know, hard to pay attention to the guy honestly because he kind of just drones on and on. ("Wait, so your mom lives in Michigan, but your dad moved to Tennessee... for a job?" Yea man, I don't fucking know, not going to touch on that one.) The whole project was a shit show that was doomed to never get done, the way he tells it. And he's obviously jaded from multiple similar experiences at other life-sucking engineer jobs. My mom is a retired nurse practitioner who no longer works because of her illness. I ask him what he's doing for work now and he tells me he trades stocks from home. I didn't even know you could do that. I didn't know "trading" was a thing. I thought you just invest and hope for the best.
"Oh that's cool, how much money do you need to do that?"
"Ehh, most say you need at least $25,000 as a minimum"
"Oh... guess I can't do that..."
Six months later, I get a call and it's my dad. We talk a little about whatever. Off topic, he starts asking if I'm happy doing what I'm doing (I was a painter, commercial and residential) I tell him yes but it's kind of a pain in the ass and I don't see it as a long term thing. Then he gets around to asking if I'd like to come work with him. He basically pitches it to me. I'm not one to be sold on something, I'm always skeptical. So I ask all the questions that any rational person would ask and he just swats them away with reassuring phrases. He was real confident about it. But basically he says for this to work, I have to quit my job and move back home so he can teach me how to trade and be by my side so I don't do anything stupid. "My Name , you can make so much money." I say that I can't raise the $25,000 because I'm not far above just living paycheck to paycheck. "I can help you out with that." Wow, okay, well... let me think about it.
My "maybe" very soon turned into a "definitely." So over the next six months, I continue to work my day job painting, and I try to save up what I could for the transition (it wasn't a whole lot, I sucked at saving. I was great at spending though!). My dad gives me a book on day trading (which I will mention later) and I teach myself what I can about the stock market using Investopedia. Also in the meantime, my dad sends me encouraging emails. He tells me to think of an annual income I would like to make as a trader, and used "more than $100,000 but less than a million" as a guideline. He tells me about stocks that he traded that day or just ones that moved and describes the basic price action and the prices to buy and sell at. Basically saying "if you bought X amount of shares here and sold it at X price here, you could make a quick 500 bucks!" I then use a trading sim to trade those symbols and try to emulate what he says. Piece of cake. ;)
Wow, that's way more than what I make in a day.
He tells me not to tell anyone about my trading because most people just think it's gambling. "Don't tell your Mom either." He says most people who try this fail because they don't know how to stop out and take a loss. He talks about how every day he was in a popular chatroom, some noob would say something like, "Hey guys, I bought at X price (high of day or thereabout), my account is down 80% .. uhh I'm waiting for it to come back to my entry price.. what do I do??"
Well shit, I'm not that fucking dumb. If that's all it takes to make it is to buy low, sell high, and always respect a stop then I'll be fantastic.
By the end of September, I was very determined. I had been looking forward everyday to quitting my painting job because while it used to be something I loved, it was just sucking the life out of me at this point. Especially working commercial, you just get worked like a dog. I wasn't living up to my potential with that job and I felt awful for it every minute of every day. I knew that I needed a job where I could use my brain instead of slaving my body to fulfill someone else's dream. "Someone's gotta put gas in the boss's boat" That's a line my buddy once said that he probably doesn't know sticks with me to this day.
It ain't me.
So now it was October 2018, and I'm back living with Mom n' Pops. I was so determined that on my last day of work I gave away all of my painting tools to my buddy like, "here, I don't need this shit." Moving out of my rental was easy because I don't own much, 'can't take it with ya.' Excited for the future I now spend my days bundled up in winter wear in the cold air of our hoarder-like basement with a space heater at my feet. My laptop connected to a TV monitor, I'm looking at stocks next to my dad and his screens in his cluttered corner. Our Trading Dungeon. I don't trade any money, (I wasn't aware of any real-time sim programs) I just watch and learn from my dad. Now you've got to keep in mind, and look at a chart of the S&P, this is right at the beginning of Oct '18, I came in right at the market top. Right at the start of the shit-show. For the next three or four weeks, I watch my dad pretty much scratch on every trade, taking small loss after small loss, and cursing under his breath at the screen.
Click.
"dammit."
Click.
"shit."
Click. Click.
"you fuck."
Click.
This gets really fucking annoying as time goes on, for weeks, and I get this attitude like ugh, just let me do it. I'll make us some fucking money. So I convince him to let me start trading live. I didn't know anything about brokers so I set up an account using his broker, which was Fidelity. It was a pain and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to day trade with this broker. I actually had to make a joint account with my dad as I couldn't get approved for margin because my credit score is shit (never owned a credit card) and my net worth, not much. Anyways, they straight up discourage day trading and I get all kinds of warning messages with big red letters that made me shit myself like oooaaahhh what the fuck did I do now. Did I forget to close a position?? Did I fat finger an order? Am I now in debt for thousands of dollars to Fidelity?? They're going to come after me like they came after Madoff. Even after you are approved for PDT you still get these warning messages in your account. Some would say if I didn't comply with "whatever rule" they'd even suspend my account for 60 days. It was ridiculous, hard to describe because it doesn't make sense, and it took the support guy on the phone a good 20 minutes to explain it to me. Basically I got the answer "yea it's all good, you did nothing wrong. As long as you have the cash in your account to cover whatever the trade balance was" So I just kept getting these warnings that I had to ignore everyday. I hate Fidelity.
My fist day trading, I made a few so-so trades and then I got impatient. I saw YECO breaking out and I chased, soon realized I chased, so I got out. -$500. Shit, I have to make that back, I don't want my dad to see this. Got back in. Shit. -$400. So my first day trading, I lost $900. My dumbass was using market orders so that sure didn't help. I reeled the risk back and traded more proper position size for a while, but the commissions for a round trip are $10, so taking six trades per day, I'm losing $60 at a minimum on top of my losing trades. Quickly I realized I didn't know what the hell I was doing. What about my dad? Does HE know? One day, in the trading dungeon, I was frustrated with the experience I'd been having and just feeling lost overall. I asked him.
"So, are you consistently profitable?"
"mmm... I do alright."
"Yea but like, are you consistently profitable over time?"
.........................
"I do alright."
Silence.
"Do you know any consistently profitable traders?"
"Well the one who wrote that book I gave you, Tina Turner.. umm and there's Ross Cameron"
......................
"So you don't know any consistently profitable traders, personally.. People who are not trying to sell you something?"
"no."
...................
Holy fucking shit, what did this idiot get me into. He can't even say it to my face and admit it.
This entire life decision, quitting my job, leaving my rental, moving from my city to back home, giving shit away, it all relied on that. I was supposed to be an apprentice to a consistently profitable day trader who trades for a living. It was so assumed, that I never even thought to ask! Why would you tell your son to quit his job for something that you yourself cannot do? Is this all a scam? Did my dad get sold a DREAM? Did I buy into some kind of ponzi scheme? How many of those winning trades he showed me did he actually take? Are there ANY consistently profitable DAY TRADERS who TRADE FOR A LIVING? Why do 90% fail? Is it because the other 10% are scamming the rest in some way? Completely lost, I just had no clue what was what. If I was going to succeed at this, if it was even possible to succeed at this, it was entirely up to me. I had to figure it out. I still remember the feeling like an overwhelming, crushing weight on me as it all sunk in. This is going to be a big deal.. I'm not the type to give up though. In that moment, I said to myself,
I'm going to fucking win at this. I don't know if this is possible, but I'm going to find out. I cannot say with certainty that I will succeed, but no matter what, I will not give up. I'm going to give all of myself to this. I will find the truth.
It was a deep moment for me. I don't like getting on my soapbox, but when I said those things, I meant it. I really, really meant it. I still do, and I still will.
Now it might seem like I'm being hard on my dad. He has done a lot for me and I am very grateful for that. We're sarcastic as hell to each other, I love the bastard. Hell, I wouldn't have the opportunity to trade at all if not for him. But maybe you can also understand how overwhelmed I felt at that time. Not on purpose, of course he means well. But I am not a trusting person at all and I was willing to put trust into him after all the convincing and was very disappointed when I witnessed the reality of the situation. I would have structured this transition to trading differently, you don't just quit your job and start trading. Nobody was there to tell me that! I was told quite the opposite. I'm glad it happened anyway, so fuck it. I heard Kevin O'Leary once say,
"If I knew in the beginning how difficult starting a business was, I don't know that I ever would've started."
This applies very much to my experience.
So what did I do? Well like everyone I read and read and Googled and Youtube'd my ass off. I sure as hell didn't pay for a course because I didn't have the money and I'm like 99% sure I would be disappointed by whatever they were teaching as pretty much everything can be found online or in books for cheap or free. Also I discovered Thinkorswim and I used that to sim trade in real-time for three months. This is way the hell different than going on a sim at 5x speed and just clicking a few buy and sell buttons. Lol, useless. When you sim trade in real-time you're forced to have a routine, and you're forced to experience missing trades with no chance to rewind or skip the boring parts. That's a step up because you're "in it". I also traded real money too, made some, lost more than I made. went back to sim. Traded live again, made some but lost more, fell back to PDT. Dad fronted me more cash. This has happened a few times. He's dug me out of some holes because he believes in me. I'm fortunate.
Oh yeah, about that book my dad gave me. It's called A Beginner's Guide to Day Trading Online by Toni Turner. This book... is shit. This was supposed to be my framework for how to trade and I swear it's like literally nothing in this book fucking works lol. I could tell this pretty early on, intuitively, just by looking at charts. It's basically a buy-the-breakout type strategy, if you want to call it a strategy. No real methodology to anything just vague crap and showing you cherry-picked charts with entries that are way too late. With experience in the markets you will eventually come to find that MOST BREAKOUTS FAIL. It talks about support/resistance lines and describes them as, "picture throwing a ball down at the floor, it bounces up and then it bounces down off the ceiling, then back up." So many asinine assumptions. These ideas are a text book way of how to trade like dumb money. Don't get me wrong, these trades can work but you need to be able to identify the setups which are more probable and identify reasons not to take others. So I basically had to un-learn all that shit.
Present day, I have a routine in place. I'm out of the dungeon and trade by myself in my room. I trade with a discount broker that is catered to day traders and doesn't rape me on commissions. My mornings have a framework for analyzing the news and economic events of the particular day, I journal so that I can recognize what I'm doing right and where I need to improve. I record my screens for later review to improve my tape reading skills. I am actually tracking my trades now and doing backtesting in equities as well as forex. I'm not a fast reader but I do read a lot, as much as I can. So far I have read about 17-18 books on trading and psychology. I've definitely got a lot more skilled at trading.
As of yet I am not net profitable. Writing that sounds like selling myself short though, honestly. Because a lot of my trades are very good and are executed well. I have talent. However, lesser quality trades and trades which are inappropriately sized/ attempted too many times bring down that P/L. I'm not the type of trader to ignore a stop, I'm more the trader that just widdles their account down with small losses. I trade live because at this point, sim has lost its value, live trading is the ultimate teacher. So I do trade live but I just don't go big like I did before, I keep it small.
I could show you trades that I did great on and make people think I'm killing it but I really just don't need the validation. I don't care, I'm real about it. I just want to get better. I don't need people to think I'm a genius, I'm just trying to make some money.
Psychologically, to be honest with you, I currently feel beaten down and exhausted. I put a lot of energy into this, and sometimes I work myself physically sick, it's happened multiple times. About once a week, usually Saturday, I get a headache that lasts all day. My body's stress rebound mechanism you might call it. Getting over one of those sick periods now, which is why I barely even traded this week. I know I missed a lot of volatility this week and some A+ setups but I really just don't give a shit lol. I just currently don't have the mental capital, I think anyone who's been day trading every day for a year or more can understand what I mean by that. I'm still being productive though. Again, I'm not here to present an image of some badass trader, just keeping it real. To give something 100% day after day while receiving so much resistance, it takes a toll on you. So a break is necessary to avoid making bad trading decisions. That being said, I'm progressing more and more and eliminating those lesser quality trades and identifying my bad habits. I take steps to control those habits and strengthen my good habits such as having a solid routine, doing review and market research, taking profits at the right times, etc.
So maybe I can give some advice to some that are new to day trading, those who are feeling lost, or just in general thinking "...What the fuck..." I thought that every night for the first 6 months lol.
First of all, manage expectations. If you read my story of how I came to be a trader, you can see I had a false impression of trading in many aspects. Give yourself a realistic time horizon to how progress should be made. Do not set a monetary goal for yourself, or any time-based goal that is measured in your P/L. If you tell yourself, "I want to make X per day, X per week, or X per year" you're setting yourself up to feel like shit every single day when it's clear as the blue sky that you won't reach that goal anytime soon. As a matter of fact, it will appear you are moving further AWAY from that goal if you just focus on your P/L, which brings me to my next point.
You will lose money. In the beginning, most likely, you will lose money. I did it, you'll do it, the greatest Paul Tudor Jones did it. Trading is a skill that needs to be developed, and it is a process. Just look at it as paying your tuition to the market. Sim is fine but don't assume you have acquired this skill until you are adept at trading real money. So when you do make that leap, just trade small.
Just survive. Trade small. get the experience. Protect your capital. To reach break even on your bottom line is a huge accomplishment. In many ways, experience and screen time are the secret sauce.
Have a routine. This is very important. I actually will probably make a more in-depth post in the future about this if people want it. When I first started, I was overwhelmed with the feeling "What the fuck am I supposed to DO?" I felt lost. There's no boss to tell you how to be productive or how to find the right stocks, which is mostly a blessing, but a curse for new traders.
All that shit you see, don't believe all that bullshit. You know what I'm talking about. The bragposting, the clickbait Youtube videos, the ads preying on you. "I made X amount of money in a day and I'm fucking 19 lolz look at my Lamborghini" It's all a gimmick to sell you the dream. It's designed to poke right at your insecurities, that's marketing at it's finest. As for the bragposting on forums honestly, who cares. And I'm not pointing fingers on this forum, just any trading forum in general. They are never adding anything of value to the community in their posts. They never say this is how I did it. No, they just want you to think they're a genius. I can show you my $900 day trading the shit out of TSLA, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Gamblers never show you when they lose, you might never hear from those guys again because behind the scenes, they over-leveraged themselves and blew up. Some may actually be consistently profitable and the trades are 100% legit. That's fantastic. But again, I don't care, and you shouldn't either. You shouldn't compare yourself to others.
"Everyone's a genius in a bull market" Here's the thing.. Markets change. Edges disappear. Trading strategies were made by traders who traded during times when everything they did worked. Buy all the breakouts? Sure! It's the fucking tech bubble! Everything works! I'm sure all those typical setups used to work fantastically at some point in time. But the more people realize them, the less effective they are. SOMEONE has to be losing money on the opposite side of a winning trade, and who's willing to do that when the trade is so obvious? That being said, some things are obvious AND still work. Technical analysis works... sometimes. The caveat to that is, filters. You need to, in some way, filter out certain setups from others. For example, you could say, "I won't take a wedge pattern setup on an intraday chart unless it is in a higher time frame uptrend, without nearby resistance, and trading above average volume with news on that day."
Have a plan. If you can't describe your plan, you don't have one. Think in probabilities. You should think entirely in "if, then" scenarios. If X has happens, then Y will probably happen. "If BABA breaks this premarket support level on the open I will look for a pop up to short into."
Backtest. Most traders lose mainly because they think they have an edge but they don't. You read these books and all this stuff online telling you "this is a high probability setup" but do you know that for a fact? There's different ways to backtest, but I think the best way for a beginner is manual backtesting with a chart and an excel sheet. This builds up that screen time and pattern recognition faster. This video shows how to do that. Once I saw someone do it, it didn't seem so boring and awful as I thought it was.
Intelligence is not enough. You're smarter than most people, that's great, but that alone is not enough to make you money in trading necessarily. Brilliant people try and fail at this all the time, lawyers, doctors, surgeons, engineers.. Why do they fail if they're so smart? It's all a fucking scam. No, a number of reasons, but the biggest is discipline and emotional intelligence.
Journal every day. K no thanks, bro. That's fucking gay. That's how I felt when I heard this advice but really that is pride and laziness talking. This is the process you need to do to learn what works for you and what doesn't. Review the trades you took, what your plan was, what actually happened, how you executed. Identify what you did well and what you can work on. This is how you develop discipline and emotional intelligence, by monitoring yourself. How you feel physically and mentally, and how these states affect your decision-making.
Always be learning. Read as much as you can. Good quality books. Here's the best I've read so far;
Market Wizards -Jack Schwager
One Good Trade -Mike Bellafiore
The Daily Trading Coach -Bret Steenbarger
Psycho-cybernetics -Maxwell Maltz
Why You Win or Lose -Fred Kelly
The Art and Science of Technical Analysis -Adam Grimes
Dark Pools -Scott Patterson
Be nimble. Everyday I do my research on the symbols I'm trading and the fundamental news that's driving them. I might be trading a large cap that's gapping up with a beat on EPS and revenue and positive guidance. But if I see that stock pop up and fail miserably on the open amidst huge selling pressure, and I look and see the broader market tanking, guess what, I'm getting short, and that's just day trading. The movement of the market, on an intraday timeframe, doesn't have to make logical sense.
Adapt. In March I used to be able to buy a breakout on a symbol and swing it for the majority of the day. In the summer I was basically scalping on the open and being done for the day. Volatility changes, and so do my profit targets.
Be accountable. Be humble. Be honest. I take 100% responsibility for every dime I've lost or made in the market. It's not the market makers fault, it wasn't the HFTs, I pressed the button. I know my bad habits and I know my good habits.. my strengths/ my weaknesses.
Protect yourself from toxicity. Stay away from traders and people on forums who just have that negative mindset. That "can't be done" mentality. Day trading is a scam!! It can certainly be done. Prove it, you bastard. I'm posting to this particular forum because I don't see much of that here and apparently the mods to a good job of not tolerating it. As the mod wrote in the rules, they're most likely raging from a loss. Also, the Stocktwits mentality of "AAPL is going to TANK on the open! $180, here we come. $$$" , or the grandiose stories, "I just knew AMZN was going to go up on earnings. I could feel it. I went ALL IN. Options money, baby! ka-ching!$" Lol, that is so toxic to a new trader. Get away from that. How will you be able to remain nimble when this is your thought process?
Be good to yourself. Stop beating yourself up. You're an entrepreneur. You're boldly going where no man has gone before. You've got balls.
Acknowledge your mistakes, don't identify with them. You are not your mistakes and you are not your bad habits. These are only things that you do, and you can take action necessary to do them less.
It doesn't matter what people think. Maybe they think you're a fool, a gambler. You don't need their approval. You don't need to talk to your co-workers and friends about it to satisfy some subconscious plea for guidance; is this a good idea?
You don't need anyone's permission to become the person you want to be.
They don't believe in you? Fuck 'em. I believe in you.

Im sry if u find some grammatical errors, english is not my mother language. Let me know and i will fix it.
First of all, look for at least half an hour without interruptions to read this manual.
This is the system that has created trading professionals. He has done it and today he continues doing it, as it happened with me.
It is not a system written in any forum, in fact I believe that it has been the first to collect all the ideas and create a structure to follow to carry them out, but these same ideas and procedures have been the ones that the winning traders have used during decades and will continue to use, since they are based on completely objective and real foundations.
Let's go to it:
Hi all.
It is known that the observation time makes the patterns elucidate, and after some time in the forum and throughout this trading world I have found many patterns in the responses of the people, I have reasoned about them, and I have realized their failures, why they fail to be profitable.
There are people who have put effort into this. Not all, but there are people who have really read a lot, studied a lot, learned a lot and tried a lot, and even then they are not able to achieve stable profitability.
The question is: Is there enough in that effort? Is there a specific moment in the line of learning where you start to be profitable? The question is, logically.
There are traders that generate constant profitability. Hedge funds, investment firms ... and the difference is in areas where people for some reason do not want to invest time.
Why are there more messages in the strategy forums than in the psychology, journals and fundamental analysis together?
As human beings, our brain is programmed to look for quick positive responses. In nature, the brain does not understand the concept of long-term investment. There is only a short-term investment made from the difference between what we think will cost us something and what we think it will contribute. If we think that it will cost us more than it can give us, we simply do not feel motivated. It is a simple mechanism.
The market plays with these mechanisms. There are more scalpers created from the search for that positive emotion than from the search for a scalping system.
In short, we are not programmed to operate, and there lies the fact that only a huge minority of operators are profitable.
Among others, I have observed several patterns of behavior that make a trader fail, and they are:
- Search for immediate pleasure: The trader wants to feel that he has won on the one hand, and on the other he wants to avoid the feeling of loss. Following this there are many traders who place a very low take profit and a very high stop loss. This is not bad if the probabilities have been reviewed before, the mathematical factor of hope, the relation with the drawdown .. but in the majority of the cases absolutely nothing of statistics is known. There is only that need to win. They win, they win, they win, until one day the odds do their job and the stop loss is touched, returning the account to its origins or leaving it with less money than it started. This does not work.
- Search for immediate wealth: Again it is something immediate. People want good emotions, and we want them already. The vast majority of traders approach this world with fantasies of wealth, women and expensive cars, but do not visualize hard work, the sickly hard work behind all this.
From there underlie behaviors like eternally looking for new robots or expert advisors that promise a lot of money, or new systems. The type of trader that has this integrated pattern is characterized by doing nothing more than that. Spend the day looking for new strategies Of course he never manages to earn constant money.
- Think that trading is easy: Trading is not easy, it is simple. Why? Because when you get the wisdom and experience necessary to find yourself in a state of superior knowledge about the market and effectively make money, it is very simple; you just have to apply the same equation again and again. However, it is not easy to reach this equation. This equation includes variables such as risk understanding, mathematics, certain characteristics in the personality that must be assimilated little by little, intelligence, a lot of experience ..
This is not easy. This is a business, and in fact it is one of the most difficult businesses in the world. It may seem simple to see a series of candles on a screen or perhaps a line, or any type of graphic, but it is not. Behind the screen there are hundreds of thousands of very intelligent professionals, very disciplined, very educated, very ...
This business is the most profitable in the world if you know how to carry, since it is based on the concept of compound interest, but it is also one of the most difficult. And I repeat. It's a business, not a game. I think you'll never hear a lawyer say to his boss: "We're going to focus all our time on finding a strategy that ALWAYS makes us win a trial, ALWAYS." What does it sound ridiculous? It sounds to me just as ridiculous for trading.
But you are not to blame, you have been subconsciously deceived through the advertising brokers and your own internal desires, to think that this is something easy.
- Lack of discipline: Trading is not something you can do 10 minutes on Monday and 6 on Thursday. This is not a game, and until you get a regular schedule you can not start earning money. There are people who open a graph one day for 5 minutes, then return to their normal life and then one week returns to look at it for other minutes.
Trading should not be treated as a hobby. If you want to win "some money" I advise you not even to get in, because you will end up losing something or a lot of money. You have to think if you really want trading to be part of your life. It's like when you meet a girl and you want to get married. Do you really want to get into this with all the consequences? Because otherwise it will not work.
Visualize the hard work behind this. Candle nights, frustrations, several hundred dollars lost (at the beginning) .. enter the world of trading with a really deep reason, if you lose a time and money that no one will return, and both things are finite!
- Know something and pretend to know everything: Making money in the markets is not based on painting the graph as a child a paper with crayon wax and pretend to make money.
It is not based on drawing lines or circles, or squares. It is based on understanding the operation of all these tools, the background of the why of the tools of trading.
A trend line only marks the cycle of a wave within a longer time frame, within a longer time frame, and so on indefinitely. In turn, this wave is divided into waves with a specific behavior, divided into smaller waves and Etcetera, and understanding that dynamic is fundamental to winning.
It is not the fact of drawing a line. That can be done by an 8 year old boy. It is the fact of UNDERSTANDING why.
There are traders who read two technical analysis books and a delta analysis book and believe that they are professionals, but do they really understand the behavior of the market? The answer is in their portfolios.
After this explanation that only 10% will have read, I will try to detail step by step something that is 90% yearning, and that will have quickly turned the scroll of your mouse to find the solution to all your problems while supporting the beer in a book of " become rich ", rotten by lack of use.
These steps must be carried out one by one, starting with the first, fulfilling it, moving on to the second, successively and growing. If steps are taken for granted, or not fully met, it simply will not work.
I know this will happen and the person who did it will think "Bah, this does not work." and you will return to your top strategy search routine.
That said, let start:
1º Create a REAL account with 50 dollars approximately:
_ Forget the demo accounts. They are a utopia, they do not work. There is infinite liquidity, without emotions and without slipagge.
These things will change when we enter the real market, and the most experienced person in the world will notice a sharp drop in their profitability when it happens to real accounts.
And not only using a demo account has disadvantages, but using a real one has advantages.
We will have a real slipagge with real liquidity. Real requotes and more. The most important: We will work our emotions at the same time. Because yes, we will lose or win a couple of cents, but that has a subconscious impact of loss.
This means that we will begin to expand our comfort zone from the start.
Using a demo account is simply a disadvantage.
2º Buy a newspaper in the stationery or in Chinese (optional), or write one online or in Word:
A newspaper will be of GREAT help. You can not imagine, for those of you who do not have one, how a newspaper can exponentiate our learning curve. It is simply absurd not to have a diary. It's like taking a ticket of 5 instead of one of 100.
In this diary we will write down observations that we make about the operations that we will carry out in points that I will explain later of this same manual.
We will divide the newspaper into 2 parts:

• 1 part: The operation itself. We will write the reasons for each operation. The why we have done it.
  
• 2 part: How we feel. We will unburden ourselves without explaining how we feel, what our intuition tells us about that particular operation and so on.
  

How to use:
We will read the newspaper once a week, thinking about the emotions we felt each day and in what situations, and the reasons.
Soon, we will begin to realize that we have certain patterns in the way we feel and operate, and we will have the ability to change them.
We can also learn from mistakes that we make, and keep them always in a diary.
3º Look for a strategy that has the following characteristics:

• Make it SIMPLE. Nothing of 4 or more indicators or the colors of the gay flag drawn on the graph based on 1000 lines. Why? Because there is always an initial enthusiasm and maybe we can follow a complex strategy for a week, but burned that motivation, saturates us and we will leave it aside.

Therefore, the strategy must be simple. If we use metatrader, the default indicators work. No macd's no-lag and similar tools. That does not lead anywhere. And if you do not believe it, I'll tell you that in all areas of life comes marketing. In addition to trading towards MMA and now I do powerlifts, and there are 1000 exercises to do. However, the classics are still working and work very well. It seems that sellers of strange sports equipment do not share the same opinion, that the only thing they want is to sell!
4º Understand the strategy:

• We must gut each process of the strategy and reason about it. What does this indicator do? What does this process? Why this and not another? Why this exit ?. Some strategies will be based on unspecified outputs. This does not suppose any problem because as we get experience in that specific strategy, we will remember situations that have occurred, we will see situations that are repeated (patterns) and we will be able to find better starts and entrances. Everything is in our hands.

5° Collect essential statistical information:

• This part is FUNDAMENTAL, and no operator can have as much security in itself when operating as if it uses a strategy that has at least positive mathematical hope and an acceptable drawdown.
  
• Step 1: To carry out this collection of information you need to test the strategy for at least 100 signals. Yes, 100 signals.
  

Assuming it is an intraday strategy and we do an operation per day, it will take us 100 days (3 months and 10 days approx) to carry out the study. Logically these figures can change depending on the number of operations that we make up to date with the strategy.
I have no doubt that after reading this manual we will go for a quick strategy of scalpers, with 100 signals every 10 minutes where the seller comes out with a big smile in his promotional video.
I personally recommend a system of maximum 2 daily operations to start, but this point is personal.
Is it a long time? Go! It turns out that a college student of average intelligence takes 6 years to finish a career. It takes 6 years just to train, and there are even more races. This does not guarantee any profitability, and in any case most of Sometimes it will get a static return and not based on compound interest. I can never aspire to more.
The market offers compound profitability, there will be no bosses, nor schedules that we do not impose. We will always have work, and we can earn a lot more money than most people with careers or masters. Is it a long time? I do not think so.
As I was saying, we will test the strategy 100 times with our REAL account that we created in step 1. Did you decide to use a demo account? Better look for another manual; This has to be something serious. They are 100 dollars and will be the best investment of all in your career as a trader.

• Step 2: Once with the report of the 100 strategies in hand, we will collect the following information:
  
• How many times have we won and how many lost. Afterwards, we will find the percentage of correct answers.
  
• How much have we won and how much have we lost? Afterwards, we will find the average profit and the average loss.
  
• Step 3: With this information we will complete the mathematical hope formula:
  

(1 + average profit / average loss) * (percentage of correct answers / 100) -1
Example:

• Of the 100 operations there are 50 winners and 50 losers, then the success rate is 50%.
  
• Our average profit is 20 dollars and our average loss is 10 dollars.
  

Filling the formula:
(1 + 20/10) * (50/100) -1
(1 + 2) * (0,5) -1
3 * 0.5 - 1
1,5 - 1 = 0,5
In this example the mathematical expectation is 0.5. It is POSITIVE, because it is greater than 0. From 0, we will know that this strategy will make us earn money over time ALWAYS we respect the strategy.
If after a few days we modify it, then we will have to find this equation again with another 100 different operations. Easy? A result of "0" would mean that this strategy does not win or lose, but in the long run we would LOSE due to the spread and other random factors.
You have to try to find a strategy that, once this study is done, the result of your mathematical hope is greater than 0.2 as MINIMUM.
Finding this formula will also give a curious fact. The greater the take profit in relation to the stop loss, as a general rule more positive will be our mathematical hope. This has given many pages of discursiones about whether to place take profit> stop loss or vice versa.
If our stop was larger than the take profit, then the other ratio (% earned /% lost) should be yes or yes positive.
But this is just curiosities.
let's keep going:

• 6° Expand our comfort zone:

We will not be able to work with operations of 10 million dollars overnight, but we can progressively condition ourselves to that path.
Assuming all of the above, and with a real account, some experience in the 3 months of information gathering and a positive mathematical hope, we are ready to operate in real with some consistency. But how to carry it out?
The comfort zone is the psychological limits we have before feeling fear or emotional tension. When we get into a fight, we have left our comfort zone and we feel tension, unless we have a psychopathic disorder.
Every time we lean out onto a 300-meter balcony from a skyscraper, we move away from the comfort zone. Every time we speak to a depampanante woman, we move away from our comfort zone.
Our brain creates a comfort zone to differentiate what we usually do and is not substantially dangerous, from the unknown and potentially dangerous to our survival or reproduction. And whenever the brain interprets that these two aspects are in danger, we will feel negative emotions like fear, disgust, loneliness, fury, etcetera.
This topic is much more profound and you would have to read several volumes of evolutionism to understand the why of each thing. The only thing that interests us here is the "what", and the one, that is, that there is a certain comfort zone that must be expanded without any problems.
With trading, exactly the same thing happens. The forex market is a virtual environment in which we lose or gain things, but our brain does not differentiate between reality and what is not, it only attends to stimuli of a certain type.
We can lose food in the middle of the forest or also a crude oil operation.
Our goal is to condition our subconscious so that it is progressively accepting lost and small benefits, and as time goes by, bigger.
The exercise to achieve this is the following:

• We will operate on that account of 100 dollars with our mathematically positive strategy for 3 more months.
  
• After these three months, our account should have benefits, because of the mathematically positive strategy.
  
• We will enter 200 dollars more and we will operate a month more raising the lots according to our risk management (I do not advise that the risk is greater than 2%)
  

At this point, I know how hard it is to resign myself to impatience, but follow those times and do not skip it even if you feel safe, but you will fail, it's simple.
Let's keep going:

• After that month, we will raise our capital again with a new income. This time we will enter 1000 dollars (save if you do not have 1000 dollars loose, you will recover later on, do you want to make money, enter 1000 dollars.

We will test the operation one month with this new injection. We probably notice difficulties. More blockages, more euphoria when winning ... how will we know when to move on to the next entry? When we do not feel ANYTHING or at most something very shallow, when win or lose If observing the wall and operating is for you the same from an emotional point of view, it is time to enter more money.

• We will follow this procedure until we have a basic account of 21000 dollars. The amounts to be paid will depend on our ability to not feel emotions, a capacity that will be taking over time.

We will raise capital until we feel that we block too much. In that case we will drawdown to a more acceptable amount, and we will continue at that level until get discipline and lack of reactivity at that level. Later, we will go up.

• If we want to earn more money, we will continue entering and entering. Always following the conditioning scheme of 1 month.

Why a month?
A study conducted in the United States revealed that the subconscious needs an average of 28 days to create new habits or eliminate old habits. Emotional reactions are part of the habits. If we maintain some pressure of any emotion during the opportune time, in this case 28 days, will create tolerance and the subconscious will need a more intense version of the stimulus to activate.
AND THAT'S ALL!
Follow these steps and you will triumph. Here is the golden chalice, the tomb of Jesus or whatever you want to call it. There is no more mystery in the world of trading. This system will accompany you during the next year, year and a half. It's the one I used and it WORKS. Once done, you will have a very profitable system integrated into your being, since not only will it be mathematically viable, but you will also have the necessary experience to make it infinitely more profitable yet.
In addition, you will have psychology fully worked on a professional level to have conditioned your subconscious gradually.
Happy trading to all of u guys.-

Hi Everyone,
Brand new to reddit here (not sure how I escaped this deep deep black hole of internet for so long). I hope this is the right place.
First, I am here to distil what I have learned over the years of being a fool of the market. I’ll then try to piece together the checks and balances I have decided necessary to maintain long term success in investment management and trading. I will break it into two distinct product lines: Cash Equities and CFDs (index/forex) via FXCM/IG etc, as well as a General Risk Management section.
I have read extensively, like the usual Jack DSchwagger series, Stock Operator etc. If you haven’t read these I suggest you start there first.
General Risk Management and Setup:
Positioning/Size I cannot tell you how often I have been burned with poor position management across either cash equities or CFDs. I distinctly recall putting on a massive “no brainer” trade against the EUUSD in 2014 December. Entry 1.224. I got stopped out and lost 50% of my trading capital in 4 hours due to a margin call. I wasn’t even trying to scalp, I just wanted to get very, very rich. (I would’ve too if it weren’t for those meddling kids). The other side of this is that I express my cash equities portfolios in the form of “high conviction” trades/investments. Take A2M.AX. Average Entry of 6.XX through averaging up. It currently sits at more than 70% of my portfolio, even though I have a 12month timeframe. I have a higher conviction on Cash Equities with a far longer time frame than I do CFDs. Hence I position heavier.
There is a 2% rule floating out there that I semi-agree with. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, as I would describe myself as much more of a risk taker and less systematic than I would like. I understand also there are more schools of thought, mechanical, pure TA etc etc. But no matter what fire you choose to play with, I think positioning has been the reason why I have lost money over 90% of the time, even if directionally I am 75% right within my time frame.
How do you guys balance your portfolio for maximum returns? Thoughts on 3-4 stock portfolios? Thoughts on CFD margin/position sizing for TA/discretionary? ( I know it will vary by style but would love to hear).
Trading Diary When I first waded into CFDs, I knew I wanted to keep a record of all my trades, in the hopes that I can reflect on what technical/fundamental ideas I opened and closed my trades in. A trading diary and reflection on those trades is huge in order for you to stop repeating really stupid mistakes.
Until recently I never had the mindset of actually sorting through the wins and losses of my past trades. YOU MUST HAVE A SYSTEM of going through the past days/weeks worth of trades. Reflection and reinforcement is key.
I think starting a blog for yourself is not a bad idea. It may not have readership, but it carries the important function of reflection and learning. Just as I am doing this very moment..
Research/Information Funnel The Economist. Period. *infinity. Start here. (Especially relevant for macro)
When I first started in Cash Equities I made the novice error of joining forums. Granted there is some great content that someone else more experienced has found and analysed, thus cutting down your research time. Right? Wrong.
I think it actually causes a shift in your behaviour to trust and rely on their primary opinion. If they’re right even once, you will now face a bias and think of them as a beacon of truth. Read Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow. As humans we’re inherently very lazy. Don’t let it make you take shortcuts.
I put this in general risk because information and bias is a HUGE risk to how you formulate your trading or investment thesis.
Even I noticed that the majority of my information sources including twitter liked to preach the “melt up” of the spooz etc. Confirmation Bias exists, especially in Investing. These guys had been talking of a market that was too strong for at least 2 years. Even though it finally semi-happened, they were still wrong for two years! Do you believe it would be valuable to find a peer group IRL as an additional source of information/debate?
Timeframe This closely relates to position/sizing. Timeframe goes hand in hand with positioning and how we wish to express risk. A low beta Banking stock with healthy dividends might warrant a larger position size if you look at it from a 10 year view point. The spooz on a 20 year view point would warrant a very different mindset when compared to a tick chart.
I have found it more helpful when thinking about timeframe as not “predicting” when I think something would happen, but use it as a matter of determining sizing.Am I really comfortable TSLA as 50% of my portfolio for 20 years? Hmm
Health Something I feel understated and forgotten about is the fact that sitting down for 10 hours a day with your eyes following green and red isn’t healthy. A healthy body will produce far better results if your headspace is clear and your emotions are in check. I would put more than a fair share of my mistakes as being due to emotionally driven trades (lose x find 2x) or trading when my physical mind is no longer sharp. Trading and Investing is a full time endeavour. Unless you are extremely fortunate or lucky in how you express your trades and investments, it will take a lot of time and involvement to find an edge that is more than just market. *I mean, isn’t that why we are here? *
[Edit] How do you guys ensure you’re balancing work or study and investment? I find myself mostly 100% work ever since graduating uni.
This turned out far longer than I expected. I would love to hear all feedback. Put me in my place! This is especially because I am about to commit more time to this as I bring it into a truly serious endeavour.
[Edit] Removed personal info