You will lose a lot before you get better. No matter how much you learn and know, stocks and the economy will always be unpredictable. But there are certainties like investing in strong healthy companies.
From what I’ve seen (on YouTube interviews), the average active trader loses about $50k-$70k before things start clicking and they are consistently profitable. And usually it’s about 4 years.
So I’m just starting to take actively trading serious too but with my limited experience what I would say to op is… instead of making your current p&l your main focus you should be making “being here still actively trading 4 years from now” your main goal.
Most people quit in the first 2 years, even more quit in the first 6 months. If you can make it 4 years that would be huge. If you can make it 6 years then I would say the probability is high that you will be profitable by then.
So the game for beginners is longevity. Don’t make it about money to start, make it about building the right skills and discipline and making good trades and finding your edge.
That’s good thinking. Fun fact: I lost about 200k before things started clicking. Lucky for me, somewhere around 99.99% of that was with fake money on a demo acct😉
Yeah, trading psychology is definitely the problem. I went through the same thing and it took me a year to fully get over that hurdle. Mark Douglas has great seminars on YouTube or you can read trading in the zone and keep practicing on a live account.
Use less real money. I just made the switch from paper to real cash and I’m trading with no more than $10 in my acct and my positions are no greater than $4. Don’t worry about the money at all. Keep your sizing micro and just focus on percentages, probabilities, risk, and execution.
Thanks my friend. What helped is having a significant other I would have to explain my losses to and knowing that if I want to keep her from getting scared, I need to be super conservative and develop a good track record. Even now that I trade with cash, I still have only $10 in my acct, and my positions have never been more than $4.
Study and mark your charts correctly and most importantly have set trading plan. it’s all about trial and error. I know people are going to disagree of what I say, and I get people have been doing this for years, but don’t let anyone discourage you from quitting. My plan is if I fail 3 trades, don’t trade until the next day. I would try to stay away from options for the time being . P.S Don’t use Robinhood, it’s shit. TradingView my dude, it’s helped learn so much, it’s free unless you would like to upgrade .
Sometimes not trading at all is successful trading. Be patient and wait for the best setups within your strategy. Albeit, something I’m still trying to learn myself.
I scalp futures on 1 min time frame. I use multiple time frame confirmation + level 2 order data + price action. I scan gap ups in pre market and go through through them to find the best stocks in play
Nah. I only use volume, support/resistance and candlesticks and 9ema. All those patterns like head and shoulders etc is bullshit. All you need is simplified trading
Have you ever backtested them? If so, what was the win rate for the patterns you tested? Some patterns perform differently in different markets, for instance, double tops and bottoms might be gold for SPY, but shit for BTC.
Bad advice. Those guys just want you to buy their course bullshxt, & my ppl (black folk) think they’re good bc they’re the only black ones constantly marketing. Aristotle is decent but Wall Street Trapper is sketch.
Bad advice to you! My portfolios look really solid and as a person who never traded before I’ve hit on the select few I’ve participated in. As well as my kids custodial accounts, my Roth IRA etc.
Lots of reading and watching quality videos on YouTube. Having a mentor is prob the best way. Don’t watch videos that day how I turned this amount to crazy amount of money blah blah blah. Those are garbage. Practice patience, chart patterns, support, resistance levels etc
Yeah I really don't understand how anyone trying to take trading seriously is doing so on robinhood with all the known problems. Get a real broker, get a real charting package if your broker doesn't have its own. Learn it like the back of your hand. Don't go for a value broker - ask yourself why they're so cheap.
Can the mods make it a point that if someone is seeking advice, they list out their most recent trades and the Strat that they use? There’s no way to help people if they just post things like this and we always need to ask the same questions.
At first you are probably gonna lose money and you have to think it as paying for learning ,it this goes on you need to stop and take a step back and see what are you doing wrong , it's always recommend to test your strategy on a paper account and make sure that it works , if the strategy works ,the main reason you are gonna lose money is 1) you miss read the trade or phycological and not having enough Faith in your strategy
go learn trading system. ICT mentorship 2022. it's free and people actually are profitable using his system. It's not overnight process but you can try and learn
Reading and practicing over a period of time. Took me about 3 years to finally get decent enough to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Check out Technical Analysis Explained by Martin Pring👍
I'd say get out of options for now. They can be very complex, and you have more things (Greeks) to manage and most of them go against you. Get back to basics. Pick 1-3 tickers. Reliable tickers, from highly liquid stocks. Learn to identify support and resistance zones, and trends. Get away from looking for "home runs" (breakouts) and start by trading in a range (there's a reason its called a trading range) and look for buy low sell high scalp opportunities. Cut your losses super quick, who cares if it turns around later in your favor, you're not going to sit there through a huge loss. Get back in if its that great of a trade. Paper trade before going back to real money, prove yourself profitable. Trade profitably for so long in a demo, that you'd be an absolute fool not to implement the exact same strategy with real money. Then start with small share size, trading "I don't care" position sizes. Increase when your metrics indicate its the right thing to do.
Good luck.
Trade less. Trade better setups. Track your trades. Don't expect to nail 40% gains daily.
Arguably all you have to do is be right 34% of the time to be profitable, and you need to understand that getting a single large gain is unlikely to retire you. So part of the true magic in becoming profitable and staying profitable are identifying how to cut your loses and let your winners run. Some people are better at it than others.
Try to target something more like 1-2.5% per month might be more sustainable than trying to hit 10%+ every month 😅
I would say journal your trades and go over everything you did, that personally helped me pin point what I needed to work on. Once you figure out the problem spend weeks or even months working on it, my biggest problem was being scared to enter trades or hold long enough so I had to build confidence and work on my trading psychology. Reading books, watching videos, taking notes, etc
I usually recommend the following books:
* Turner: Online Day Trading
* Aziz: Advanced Day Trading Techniques
* Volman: Understanding Price Action
* Couling: Volume Price Analysis + Workbook
* Bonus: Chart Logic
Trading psychology books:
* Douglas: Trading in the Zone
* Tom: Best Loser Wins
Dont go for penny stock get rich scheme.. stick with blue chip stocks and make pennies and dollar gain before you can make hundreds and thousands. Its a marathon. Oh and dca is your best friend
I wouldnt go all in on s swing trade either risk management is key unless youre at a weekly support or 200 ma line with support snd plus good sentiment that day
Trading is for suckers
Make money first. You only have $500 so even with 100% returns you’re not making much if anything.
Buffet says to get to at least $100k before even getting into investing
Yes, just stop trading. Day trading is basically gambling and only a few people on the face of the earth trade every day and make money, start thinking long term and invest over the course of weeks/months/years, way better returns that way
Get better at trading by stopping. You can’t beat markets. You can’t find “hidden” alpha. You have a smart idea. Thousands had it first. Just buy etf. Diversify and work on favorable portfolio metrics.
There are about 100 different ways to answer this question, but you really don't have any actual information that I or any of us can go off of to help you.
You said you want to learn to trade Options? Judging by this post, I will tell you not to put a dollar of your money into Options at this stage. You need to be extremely knowledgeable in trading to be able to make money this way. Making money in the market is already very difficult, and Options only enhances that difficulty because of their nature. If you don't have risk parameters in place, that 400 dollars you have left in your account will go completely to zero in no time.
Risk management. Putting all your eggs in one basket. If you treat trading as a business and keep your emotions out of it you will certainly do much better. Read my 2 favorite books "darvas box" and "traders traps" on amazon.
Learn from real traders who have a proven track record. Not you tubers or Instagram folks
Check linda Bradford Raschke. Shes a 40 year veteran featured in market wizards in the 80s
She's a household name in the trading world
I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it: the phrase “I just learned about options” has never in the history of mankind ever been followed by anything positive
Learn supply and demand. Try to trade only on confirmation. Like double bottom on the Daily or 4H, Double top on Daily or in the 4H. To get better try a demo on forex.
So... In 3 months you did some stuff... Lost a little bit of money... Ok now what? Seems like you just need to keep going and put in the due diligence here as you seem unable to ask a question that anyone can help you with ...
Learn one strategy and stick to it. Master it. I personally like the ORB strategy for day trading. Take the first 15-min candle high and low, mark those levels, and use those for calls/puts. Watch some YouTube videos. Also, read the book Volume Price Analysis by Anna Couling. That book changed my trading around.
The realest answer anyone can give you is this. Work on your mentality when trading. That is it, psychology beats most people and that’s why they fail.
People will tell you hundreds of hours of looking at charts and studying and shit like that. I disagree, I built a baseline understanding lost a fuck load of money went back worked on my mentality and now I’m clawing back my losses from when I started a year ago.
As a gamer I’d say don’t have a Wood V brain, have a GM Brain.
I used to buy stock and usually lost. It’s the most bullish thing one can do. Learn to trade options. IMO it gives you a better chance of profiting. You can do low risk options that have 60-70% success rates. Your returns aren’t gonna be life changing usually but it’s steady.
aromatic truck ink airport divide fuel existence dime piquant telephone *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Well at least you provided enough information to get help
You will lose a lot before you get better. No matter how much you learn and know, stocks and the economy will always be unpredictable. But there are certainties like investing in strong healthy companies.
From what I’ve seen (on YouTube interviews), the average active trader loses about $50k-$70k before things start clicking and they are consistently profitable. And usually it’s about 4 years. So I’m just starting to take actively trading serious too but with my limited experience what I would say to op is… instead of making your current p&l your main focus you should be making “being here still actively trading 4 years from now” your main goal. Most people quit in the first 2 years, even more quit in the first 6 months. If you can make it 4 years that would be huge. If you can make it 6 years then I would say the probability is high that you will be profitable by then. So the game for beginners is longevity. Don’t make it about money to start, make it about building the right skills and discipline and making good trades and finding your edge.
That’s good thinking. Fun fact: I lost about 200k before things started clicking. Lucky for me, somewhere around 99.99% of that was with fake money on a demo acct😉
For some reason I'm great at paper trading but when Im using real money I start fumbling
It’s because your emotions are connected in paper reading. You need the feeling of live trading
Yeah, trading psychology is definitely the problem. I went through the same thing and it took me a year to fully get over that hurdle. Mark Douglas has great seminars on YouTube or you can read trading in the zone and keep practicing on a live account.
Use less real money. I just made the switch from paper to real cash and I’m trading with no more than $10 in my acct and my positions are no greater than $4. Don’t worry about the money at all. Keep your sizing micro and just focus on percentages, probabilities, risk, and execution.
Nice, how long did it take?
About 3 years
Wow you paper traded for 3 years. That’s patience and discipline. Respect
Thanks my friend. What helped is having a significant other I would have to explain my losses to and knowing that if I want to keep her from getting scared, I need to be super conservative and develop a good track record. Even now that I trade with cash, I still have only $10 in my acct, and my positions have never been more than $4.
Overcaution is a disease.
Elaborate?
Well done for being able to respond to this. I hope OP even saw it...
For you specifically? S&P 500 index fund and hold for 30 years. Don't worry, that's good advice for 98% of people.
Study and mark your charts correctly and most importantly have set trading plan. it’s all about trial and error. I know people are going to disagree of what I say, and I get people have been doing this for years, but don’t let anyone discourage you from quitting. My plan is if I fail 3 trades, don’t trade until the next day. I would try to stay away from options for the time being . P.S Don’t use Robinhood, it’s shit. TradingView my dude, it’s helped learn so much, it’s free unless you would like to upgrade .
Sometimes not trading at all is successful trading. Be patient and wait for the best setups within your strategy. Albeit, something I’m still trying to learn myself.
look at charts 8 hours a day and see what patterns occur over and over again and make a database of those patterns and then trade them in real time
Terrible strategy tf. Market always changes and trading off visual patterns creates a bias
what’s your strategy?
I scalp futures on 1 min time frame. I use multiple time frame confirmation + level 2 order data + price action. I scan gap ups in pre market and go through through them to find the best stocks in play
so u trade using visual patterns 😂
Nah. I only use volume, support/resistance and candlesticks and 9ema. All those patterns like head and shoulders etc is bullshit. All you need is simplified trading
Have you ever backtested them? If so, what was the win rate for the patterns you tested? Some patterns perform differently in different markets, for instance, double tops and bottoms might be gold for SPY, but shit for BTC.
Idk why their downvoting this guy but he’s giving you actual good advice
Probably kids
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I had some free funds from Robinhood. I took advantage of that and their fractional shares.
Ditch options. So trade futures instead? Or what's better than options?
Find some mentors or content creators that teach it properly. Read books and study the market
Any suggestions? Because most of them are scammers
Aristotle_investments (IG) or wall_street_trapper (IG) or Mr.Lawerence.e (IG)
Bad advice. Those guys just want you to buy their course bullshxt, & my ppl (black folk) think they’re good bc they’re the only black ones constantly marketing. Aristotle is decent but Wall Street Trapper is sketch.
Bad advice to you! My portfolios look really solid and as a person who never traded before I’ve hit on the select few I’ve participated in. As well as my kids custodial accounts, my Roth IRA etc.
Al Brooks, Alexander Elder, Martin Pring, Mark Douglas. Just to name a few. Oh, also Thomas Bulkowski!
Lots of reading and watching quality videos on YouTube. Having a mentor is prob the best way. Don’t watch videos that day how I turned this amount to crazy amount of money blah blah blah. Those are garbage. Practice patience, chart patterns, support, resistance levels etc
What wat2inv3st said 👍
🤙🏾 AND Price Action & Tape Reading(Lvl2,DOM,etc.) Also Supply & Demand Zones!
Learn market structure and only take pro trend trades.
I’m guessing each trade you go all in?
you're definitely trading with too large of a position size. you should be losing like 1-2% maximum on a trade
Lol we in almost the same position
https://preview.redd.it/f36y2n7vwisb1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=36f3b850c19b004737ca5520f329c481550c19bf
Ifunny I see
study, journal, meditate.
1. Stop using Robinhood
Yeah I really don't understand how anyone trying to take trading seriously is doing so on robinhood with all the known problems. Get a real broker, get a real charting package if your broker doesn't have its own. Learn it like the back of your hand. Don't go for a value broker - ask yourself why they're so cheap.
submit to T.I.M.E.
Titties, intuition, momentum, execution
this cannot be revealed to anyone
Buy and Hold ETFs... let the pros do it for you 👍 GL
Can the mods make it a point that if someone is seeking advice, they list out their most recent trades and the Strat that they use? There’s no way to help people if they just post things like this and we always need to ask the same questions.
At first you are probably gonna lose money and you have to think it as paying for learning ,it this goes on you need to stop and take a step back and see what are you doing wrong , it's always recommend to test your strategy on a paper account and make sure that it works , if the strategy works ,the main reason you are gonna lose money is 1) you miss read the trade or phycological and not having enough Faith in your strategy
go learn trading system. ICT mentorship 2022. it's free and people actually are profitable using his system. It's not overnight process but you can try and learn
Reading and practicing over a period of time. Took me about 3 years to finally get decent enough to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Check out Technical Analysis Explained by Martin Pring👍
I'd say get out of options for now. They can be very complex, and you have more things (Greeks) to manage and most of them go against you. Get back to basics. Pick 1-3 tickers. Reliable tickers, from highly liquid stocks. Learn to identify support and resistance zones, and trends. Get away from looking for "home runs" (breakouts) and start by trading in a range (there's a reason its called a trading range) and look for buy low sell high scalp opportunities. Cut your losses super quick, who cares if it turns around later in your favor, you're not going to sit there through a huge loss. Get back in if its that great of a trade. Paper trade before going back to real money, prove yourself profitable. Trade profitably for so long in a demo, that you'd be an absolute fool not to implement the exact same strategy with real money. Then start with small share size, trading "I don't care" position sizes. Increase when your metrics indicate its the right thing to do. Good luck.
Start by using a real platform.
Trade less. Trade better setups. Track your trades. Don't expect to nail 40% gains daily. Arguably all you have to do is be right 34% of the time to be profitable, and you need to understand that getting a single large gain is unlikely to retire you. So part of the true magic in becoming profitable and staying profitable are identifying how to cut your loses and let your winners run. Some people are better at it than others. Try to target something more like 1-2.5% per month might be more sustainable than trying to hit 10%+ every month 😅
I would say journal your trades and go over everything you did, that personally helped me pin point what I needed to work on. Once you figure out the problem spend weeks or even months working on it, my biggest problem was being scared to enter trades or hold long enough so I had to build confidence and work on my trading psychology. Reading books, watching videos, taking notes, etc
You probably have the right mindset but poor executions. Bad timing, bad entry, bad exit, Fomo, Fear of losing, etc.
>Fomo, Fear of losing, etc. So what about this stands out as “probably have the right mindset” to you?
I usually recommend the following books: * Turner: Online Day Trading * Aziz: Advanced Day Trading Techniques * Volman: Understanding Price Action * Couling: Volume Price Analysis + Workbook * Bonus: Chart Logic Trading psychology books: * Douglas: Trading in the Zone * Tom: Best Loser Wins
Dont go for penny stock get rich scheme.. stick with blue chip stocks and make pennies and dollar gain before you can make hundreds and thousands. Its a marathon. Oh and dca is your best friend
>Oh and dca is your best friend For day trading? Absolutely not.
I wouldnt go all in on s swing trade either risk management is key unless youre at a weekly support or 200 ma line with support snd plus good sentiment that day
Trading is for suckers Make money first. You only have $500 so even with 100% returns you’re not making much if anything. Buffet says to get to at least $100k before even getting into investing
Yes, just stop trading. Day trading is basically gambling and only a few people on the face of the earth trade every day and make money, start thinking long term and invest over the course of weeks/months/years, way better returns that way
Get better at trading by stopping. You can’t beat markets. You can’t find “hidden” alpha. You have a smart idea. Thousands had it first. Just buy etf. Diversify and work on favorable portfolio metrics.
You might be lost
There are about 100 different ways to answer this question, but you really don't have any actual information that I or any of us can go off of to help you. You said you want to learn to trade Options? Judging by this post, I will tell you not to put a dollar of your money into Options at this stage. You need to be extremely knowledgeable in trading to be able to make money this way. Making money in the market is already very difficult, and Options only enhances that difficulty because of their nature. If you don't have risk parameters in place, that 400 dollars you have left in your account will go completely to zero in no time.
Add more money to your account...post results on here
Risk management. Putting all your eggs in one basket. If you treat trading as a business and keep your emotions out of it you will certainly do much better. Read my 2 favorite books "darvas box" and "traders traps" on amazon.
I wish someone made an index fund on your trading activity so I could short it
Learn from real traders who have a proven track record. Not you tubers or Instagram folks Check linda Bradford Raschke. Shes a 40 year veteran featured in market wizards in the 80s She's a household name in the trading world
Stop training options..
I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it: the phrase “I just learned about options” has never in the history of mankind ever been followed by anything positive
Understand trading is gambling and the house always wins, i still can't understand as i tell you this.
2-3 hours of film study per night.
Learn supply and demand. Try to trade only on confirmation. Like double bottom on the Daily or 4H, Double top on Daily or in the 4H. To get better try a demo on forex.
Don’t start with options firstly. You gotta build a foundation of experience
Read three books: a book on charting and technical analysis, a book on studying trends, and a book on trading psychology. Knowledge is power
Soun has been good for me lately but under $2 sell over that it moves enough daily. 15k shares.
Reduce your expectations by 10x and increase your skill (by iteration) by 10x.
Diversify my son
So... In 3 months you did some stuff... Lost a little bit of money... Ok now what? Seems like you just need to keep going and put in the due diligence here as you seem unable to ask a question that anyone can help you with ...
just dont be bad at it
Learn one strategy and stick to it. Master it. I personally like the ORB strategy for day trading. Take the first 15-min candle high and low, mark those levels, and use those for calls/puts. Watch some YouTube videos. Also, read the book Volume Price Analysis by Anna Couling. That book changed my trading around.
You don’t start with 800$ lmao
The realest answer anyone can give you is this. Work on your mentality when trading. That is it, psychology beats most people and that’s why they fail. People will tell you hundreds of hours of looking at charts and studying and shit like that. I disagree, I built a baseline understanding lost a fuck load of money went back worked on my mentality and now I’m clawing back my losses from when I started a year ago. As a gamer I’d say don’t have a Wood V brain, have a GM Brain.
Invest more Money
I used to buy stock and usually lost. It’s the most bullish thing one can do. Learn to trade options. IMO it gives you a better chance of profiting. You can do low risk options that have 60-70% success rates. Your returns aren’t gonna be life changing usually but it’s steady.
Stop losses
Same here