Another newb looking for advice. :)

C

Cataplt

Hello all,
I did not see a introduction section so I will put it here. I will put some ---- lines below if you want to skip my intro and just get right into my question.

I am new to trading. I have always been interested in the stock market, but never had much interest in making money (I know that sounds crazy, but I have always lived a very vibrant and exciting life well below my means). Now I am 43 with two very young children and my body is starting to show its age (still very active and run under 9 min miles, it just hurts a little now). I expect that this trend will only continue :).

I opened a E-trade IRA (on top of other investment accounts) in 2014 to play around in the market. Mostly for fun. I have increased it by 400% since then. The trades were slow and honestly mostly luck. I just traded companies I knew.

Last year I was in San Diego with my brother and we got into a late night argument about the stock market. He said it was all about technical data (EPS/DIV/etc), I said it is all hype and has nothing to do with real world data. The price is simply set by what someone is willing to pay for it. Anyway that argument got me more interested in the market.

When the market crashed in March I knew I had to get in, but I really didn't know how. Sure I could put a few thousand into my IRA, and buy what?

A friend at work suggested a ALLY bank account. Sounded good to me. So I opened one up with 10K and got to work. I made 250$ in the first two weeks, but struggled to find anything to buy. I learned about stocktwits and started buying a few things from suggestions on there, but was really struggling to find any movers. I found a guy on stocktwits that offered a discord channel for 200$ and he was going to "Teach me everything and send me trades everyday. I will make my money back in a week and make a million by the end of the year" (Well sh*t, all that for 200.... I'm in!).

Needless to say two weeks later I was down 1150$ (11.5%) and realized this was not working. All was not lost, in all actuality this was a great experience. Between my brother and the guy above (not going to say his name) I decided I was going to just figure this out and learn how to do it.

I excel at everything I do. Now don't take this the wrong way, I do not do everything, or even most things. Once I decide to do it though I will at the very least be better then average at it. I set realistic goals and then set a path to get there. I decided my goal was 370$ a day. I have 100K in capital to work with (NOT RISKING ANY OF THAT RIGHT NOW!!!, I NEED TO LEARN) so if I could make .4% a day (or more:)) this is possible and realistic.

In June I started listening to audio books at work, watching Youtube videos after the kids went down, and gathering knowledge in anyway I could. I started tracking fake trades on a excel spread sheet and I was making money..... HOLY SH*T!. I then learned about paper trading (sounds dumb now, but you don't know what you don't know). I set up a Webull account with a 200$ and started paper trading. My anxiety went through the roof. All the sudden there was a real accountable number there. So I decided to take the leap to real money.

I started trading and found my entries and exits were not even close to as fast as paper trading was. I was still making a small amount of money, but nothing to great. I read that TOS may be faster then Webull so I took another 100$ and opened a TDAmeritrade account. I then found that my old computer just could not run TOS, especially if I asked to to do two or three things at the same time. So I went and bought a new gaming computer with multi monitors. Wow what a difference. I really wonder if the slow Webull trades were really my old computers fault. Either way I had got used to and preferred the TOS interface, charts, and then I discovered scanners.

I started following a lot of advice from Ziptrader. I had RSI/MACD/VWAP/9EMA/200EMA and just found a lot of those to just give mixed signals and make me hesitant to enter anything and have no idea when to exit. But from him I also learned a lot "We don't buy losers" and other things.

The I started following Warrior trading videos and learned about shooting from the hip and it is ok to lose (his last week has been rough). Also learned a lot more about entry and exit points.

Between the two of them and many other sources of knowledge. I have been doing really well for the last month. Taking a single trade in the morning before I take the kids to school. Usually 2-10$ share and making .02-.10 each. I did take a big loss trying to use a trailing stop loss.... yeah, not going to use those.

The on the 9/10 I took a large loss on YTEN followed by another lose on STSA. I went back and reviewed my trades (I always do that) and my entry on YTEN was not great, but I see nothing wrong with STSA. It shook my up (lol shook up over 2 dollars, but it is the proof of concept here and 2% of my account value)so I did not trade on the 11th. On the 14th I made .07$ on a 6$ trade. Today I lost .04 overall on 11 trades.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So today I was thinking about signing up for one of these classes. ZiptraderU, Warrior trading. While looking up reviews on trading schools I found Trade Ideas has TIuniversity (while searching for TIU reviews I found this forum) included in there packages. I figured at some point I will be spending the money for Level 2, Trade ideas, and a faster paid broker like Light speed.

My question is what would your next course of action be? Spend 4000 for Warrior trading (EEK!), 400 for ZIP, 400 for a few months of Trade ideas including school, or keep on keeping on kid, you have been doing this for a few months and you just need more experience. Or any other course of action suggested(on any point) is really appreciated. I just don't know enough to know what to ask....

I made such a long post in effort to not be one of those people who comes in and asks how to make a million dollars by next Tuesday and never makes second post. I have nothing to offer here (unless you need car/house/pool/kid type advice), but when I have something to give I will give it.

Thank you for your time
 
Put that 4 k into spy for your kids (average in per few years, or wait till next corona)

Spend another 1 - 2 years with demos/sims & around ET.
Costs nothing / gain everything.
(Don't waste your time with those who act like asholes, few chances and then perma ignore. Much rather, keep that communication energy for kidos, they're good at sucking it out)

TOS is ideal for sim/demo choice.

Learn to read ballance sheets.
After 1 year ~~ move in with real money (slowly, small amounts/mind allocation).

Could be said much more but this is it.
download.jpeg.jpg


 
OP, here is my opinion, take it for what it's worth.

Consistently profitable trading is attainable, but it is much more difficult to achieve than most traders initially expect. You have to learn how to lose money properly before you can ever have success. Objectively losing money and retaining one's composure when you have bills to pay is more difficult than most people appreciate. If you can never get this under control however, you will never find any consistency.

With the above said, my results improved when I moved away from discretionary trading, and towards a systematic approach (i.e., a trading system I developed myself). I think the reason was that systematic trading forces me to lose money properly, and helps keep me objective.

So, my recommendation for you......crack open the Microsoft Excel and start backtesting a simple trading system....if you develop something that seems reasonable (with entry criteria, exit criteria, risk size, and a stop loss in case you are wrong), then put real money on the line and start trading it for the next 12 months. Don't judge your success by how much money you made, judge your success by how well you followed your system.

Also, dig very deep into your numbers. Part of the reason why I have confidence in my trading today is because I spend 2 hours per day with my spreadsheet models - testing, tracking, analyzing, and implementing. This is the price I have to pay in order to make money.

For example, last month my trading system lost money 4 days in a row, which bothered me a bit. I went back 5 years and looked at the historical daily results of the system, and observed a 4 day string of losses has occurred 12 times....so in other words, nothing unusual!!! Seeing this gave me the confidence to continue to follow my system, and I have made all the money back and then some.....in the past I would have jumped ship and 4 losing days, and just chased the new shiny....can't make any money doing this - losing is a part of the game. Do the work to build the confidence required.

Anyway, feel free to DM me if you have any other questions. Best of luck to you.
 
Cataplt said:
My question is what would your next course of action be? Spend 4000 for Warrior trading (EEK!), 400 for ZIP, 400 for a few months of Trade ideas
More...
If you sign up for Warrior chat, you will get trade ideas showing on his screen. He has so many YouTube videos that watching them and watching him trade live is better than paying upfront, imho. His strategy is difficult to trade though and getting so popular that it will stop working. But I see him branching out into large caps and options lately.
 
Cataplt said:
My question is what would your next course of action be?
More...

You should quit trading immediately. Unless you have a huge capital base (500k bare minimum) and/or living expenses paid from some other source, your odds of making a sustained living as a retail trader are near zero. You'll just waste money and time you could have spent advancing in some other field.
 
Cataplt said:
Hello all,
I did not see a introduction section so I will put it here. I will put some ---- lines below if you want to skip my intro and just get right into my question.

I am new to trading. I have always been interested in the stock market, but never had much interest in making money (I know that sounds crazy, but I have always lived a very vibrant and exciting life well below my means). Now I am 43 with two very young children and my body is starting to show its age (still very active and run under 9 min miles, it just hurts a little now). I expect that this trend will only continue :).

I opened a E-trade IRA (on top of other investment accounts) in 2014 to play around in the market. Mostly for fun. I have increased it by 400% since then. The trades were slow and honestly mostly luck. I just traded companies I knew.

Last year I was in San Diego with my brother and we got into a late night argument about the stock market. He said it was all about technical data (EPS/DIV/etc), I said it is all hype and has nothing to do with real world data. The price is simply set by what someone is willing to pay for it. Anyway that argument got me more interested in the market.

When the market crashed in March I knew I had to get in, but I really didn't know how. Sure I could put a few thousand into my IRA, and buy what?

A friend at work suggested a ALLY bank account. Sounded good to me. So I opened one up with 10K and got to work. I made 250$ in the first two weeks, but struggled to find anything to buy. I learned about stocktwits and started buying a few things from suggestions on there, but was really struggling to find any movers. I found a guy on stocktwits that offered a discord channel for 200$ and he was going to "Teach me everything and send me trades everyday. I will make my money back in a week and make a million by the end of the year" (Well sh*t, all that for 200.... I'm in!).

Needless to say two weeks later I was down 1150$ (11.5%) and realized this was not working. All was not lost, in all actuality this was a great experience. Between my brother and the guy above (not going to say his name) I decided I was going to just figure this out and learn how to do it.

I excel at everything I do. Now don't take this the wrong way, I do not do everything, or even most things. Once I decide to do it though I will at the very least be better then average at it. I set realistic goals and then set a path to get there. I decided my goal was 370$ a day. I have 100K in capital to work with (NOT RISKING ANY OF THAT RIGHT NOW!!!, I NEED TO LEARN) so if I could make .4% a day (or more:)) this is possible and realistic.

In June I started listening to audio books at work, watching Youtube videos after the kids went down, and gathering knowledge in anyway I could. I started tracking fake trades on a excel spread sheet and I was making money..... HOLY SH*T!. I then learned about paper trading (sounds dumb now, but you don't know what you don't know). I set up a Webull account with a 200$ and started paper trading. My anxiety went through the roof. All the sudden there was a real accountable number there. So I decided to take the leap to real money.

I started trading and found my entries and exits were not even close to as fast as paper trading was. I was still making a small amount of money, but nothing to great. I read that TOS may be faster then Webull so I took another 100$ and opened a TDAmeritrade account. I then found that my old computer just could not run TOS, especially if I asked to to do two or three things at the same time. So I went and bought a new gaming computer with multi monitors. Wow what a difference. I really wonder if the slow Webull trades were really my old computers fault. Either way I had got used to and preferred the TOS interface, charts, and then I discovered scanners.

I started following a lot of advice from Ziptrader. I had RSI/MACD/VWAP/9EMA/200EMA and just found a lot of those to just give mixed signals and make me hesitant to enter anything and have no idea when to exit. But from him I also learned a lot "We don't buy losers" and other things.

The I started following Warrior trading videos and learned about shooting from the hip and it is ok to lose (his last week has been rough). Also learned a lot more about entry and exit points.

Between the two of them and many other sources of knowledge. I have been doing really well for the last month. Taking a single trade in the morning before I take the kids to school. Usually 2-10$ share and making .02-.10 each. I did take a big loss trying to use a trailing stop loss.... yeah, not going to use those.

The on the 9/10 I took a large loss on YTEN followed by another lose on STSA. I went back and reviewed my trades (I always do that) and my entry on YTEN was not great, but I see nothing wrong with STSA. It shook my up (lol shook up over 2 dollars, but it is the proof of concept here and 2% of my account value)so I did not trade on the 11th. On the 14th I made .07$ on a 6$ trade. Today I lost .04 overall on 11 trades.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So today I was thinking about signing up for one of these classes. ZiptraderU, Warrior trading. While looking up reviews on trading schools I found Trade Ideas has TIuniversity (while searching for TIU reviews I found this forum) included in there packages. I figured at some point I will be spending the money for Level 2, Trade ideas, and a faster paid broker like Light speed.

My question is what would your next course of action be? Spend 4000 for Warrior trading (EEK!), 400 for ZIP, 400 for a few months of Trade ideas including school, or keep on keeping on kid, you have been doing this for a few months and you just need more experience. Or any other course of action suggested(on any point) is really appreciated. I just don't know enough to know what to ask....

I made such a long post in effort to not be one of those people who comes in and asks how to make a million dollars by next Tuesday and never makes second post. I have nothing to offer here (unless you need car/house/pool/kid type advice), but when I have something to give I will give it.

Thank you for your time
More...

The biggest mistake new traders make is to start thinking they will make a million dollars and it would be so easy. A lot of new traders think that. Very few focus on risk management and position sizing. Your first focus should be to protect your capital. It does not matter if you have $2,000, $10,000, $100,000 or even $1,000,000. If you do not have proper risk management and position sizing, you will blow up your account and lose everything. 90% of traders lose their monies is a statistic you should be aware of. It seems to me that you are also, all over the place and like a kid in a candy store, cannot make up his mind and just want to grab all the candies. Focus on following the trend, and you should win 80% of your trades. Have stop losses in place to minimize losses when your trades do not work out. Trading is a game of percentages and even the best setups will fail at times. Your job is to keep the losses small and the winners several multiples of your losing trades. You do that, you will make monies. As for a guru to teach you, it is your monies. If you feel you have to have a guru teach you, it will be very costly. Think $3,000-$5,000 right of the bat and I am sure, you will end up spending in the $10,000-$20,000 eventually. Whether you become a proficient enough trader would be up to you.
 
Cataplt said:
Hello all,
I did not see a introduction section so I will put it here. I will put some ---- lines below if you want to skip my intro and just get right into my question.

I am new to trading. I have always been interested in the stock market, but never had much interest in making money (I know that sounds crazy, but I have always lived a very vibrant and exciting life well below my means). Now I am 43 with two very young children and my body is starting to show its age (still very active and run under 9 min miles, it just hurts a little now). I expect that this trend will only continue :).

I opened a E-trade IRA (on top of other investment accounts) in 2014 to play around in the market. Mostly for fun. I have increased it by 400% since then. The trades were slow and honestly mostly luck. I just traded companies I knew.

Last year I was in San Diego with my brother and we got into a late night argument about the stock market. He said it was all about technical data (EPS/DIV/etc), I said it is all hype and has nothing to do with real world data. The price is simply set by what someone is willing to pay for it. Anyway that argument got me more interested in the market.

When the market crashed in March I knew I had to get in, but I really didn't know how. Sure I could put a few thousand into my IRA, and buy what?

A friend at work suggested a ALLY bank account. Sounded good to me. So I opened one up with 10K and got to work. I made 250$ in the first two weeks, but struggled to find anything to buy. I learned about stocktwits and started buying a few things from suggestions on there, but was really struggling to find any movers. I found a guy on stocktwits that offered a discord channel for 200$ and he was going to "Teach me everything and send me trades everyday. I will make my money back in a week and make a million by the end of the year" (Well sh*t, all that for 200.... I'm in!).

Needless to say two weeks later I was down 1150$ (11.5%) and realized this was not working. All was not lost, in all actuality this was a great experience. Between my brother and the guy above (not going to say his name) I decided I was going to just figure this out and learn how to do it.

I excel at everything I do. Now don't take this the wrong way, I do not do everything, or even most things. Once I decide to do it though I will at the very least be better then average at it. I set realistic goals and then set a path to get there. I decided my goal was 370$ a day. I have 100K in capital to work with (NOT RISKING ANY OF THAT RIGHT NOW!!!, I NEED TO LEARN) so if I could make .4% a day (or more:)) this is possible and realistic.

In June I started listening to audio books at work, watching Youtube videos after the kids went down, and gathering knowledge in anyway I could. I started tracking fake trades on a excel spread sheet and I was making money..... HOLY SH*T!. I then learned about paper trading (sounds dumb now, but you don't know what you don't know). I set up a Webull account with a 200$ and started paper trading. My anxiety went through the roof. All the sudden there was a real accountable number there. So I decided to take the leap to real money.

I started trading and found my entries and exits were not even close to as fast as paper trading was. I was still making a small amount of money, but nothing to great. I read that TOS may be faster then Webull so I took another 100$ and opened a TDAmeritrade account. I then found that my old computer just could not run TOS, especially if I asked to to do two or three things at the same time. So I went and bought a new gaming computer with multi monitors. Wow what a difference. I really wonder if the slow Webull trades were really my old computers fault. Either way I had got used to and preferred the TOS interface, charts, and then I discovered scanners.

I started following a lot of advice from Ziptrader. I had RSI/MACD/VWAP/9EMA/200EMA and just found a lot of those to just give mixed signals and make me hesitant to enter anything and have no idea when to exit. But from him I also learned a lot "We don't buy losers" and other things.

The I started following Warrior trading videos and learned about shooting from the hip and it is ok to lose (his last week has been rough). Also learned a lot more about entry and exit points.

Between the two of them and many other sources of knowledge. I have been doing really well for the last month. Taking a single trade in the morning before I take the kids to school. Usually 2-10$ share and making .02-.10 each. I did take a big loss trying to use a trailing stop loss.... yeah, not going to use those.

The on the 9/10 I took a large loss on YTEN followed by another lose on STSA. I went back and reviewed my trades (I always do that) and my entry on YTEN was not great, but I see nothing wrong with STSA. It shook my up (lol shook up over 2 dollars, but it is the proof of concept here and 2% of my account value)so I did not trade on the 11th. On the 14th I made .07$ on a 6$ trade. Today I lost .04 overall on 11 trades.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So today I was thinking about signing up for one of these classes. ZiptraderU, Warrior trading. While looking up reviews on trading schools I found Trade Ideas has TIuniversity (while searching for TIU reviews I found this forum) included in there packages. I figured at some point I will be spending the money for Level 2, Trade ideas, and a faster paid broker like Light speed.

My question is what would your next course of action be? Spend 4000 for Warrior trading (EEK!), 400 for ZIP, 400 for a few months of Trade ideas including school, or keep on keeping on kid, you have been doing this for a few months and you just need more experience. Or any other course of action suggested(on any point) is really appreciated. I just don't know enough to know what to ask....

I made such a long post in effort to not be one of those people who comes in and asks how to make a million dollars by next Tuesday and never makes second post. I have nothing to offer here (unless you need car/house/pool/kid type advice), but when I have something to give I will give it.

Thank you for your time
More...

Hey new trader I've been trading bitcoin since 16 and volatility products a little bit of options trying to find the next big thing. I noticed that I was just strategy hopping, you know going from one thing and another and not really finding my niche. Made a lot of quick money a lot of slow money but due to a gambling addiction it's mostly gone. My life is in a better place now mentally and emotionally to actually take trading seriously this time.

Step one is to learn about Risk Management, you can have the best strategy but if you bet too big or too small you will either lose all your money on a trade you know should of been right whether it's an indicator or your own ego that made you think that or too small that you don't make any money. It's all about balance and what makes you comfortable to keep your emotions in check.

Step two would be emotional management you have to learn about your self and at some point you have to trade like a robot so no emotion, whether it's short term or long term. Either way in trading the best time to buy is when prices are low and to sell high if your a bull and sell high and buy low if your a bear, but pigs get slaughtered so don't get greedy.

It took me about 7 years to get this down, all after a gambling addiction and suicidal idealtion don't worry not market related but the stress of markets is intense.... I'm about to be 24 and I have a more stable situation to devote time to trading the markets ,reviewing my strategies, back testing, and logging my trades and I even have a trading journal to keep track of my emotions. Haha and I thought I'd sipping pina coladas while I'm macking on some honey's on a beach resort town in a foreign country by now. But here I am in what feels like a similar position except I have more confidence in my trading style due to the above mentioned preparation. My trades just can't get too over confident or try to prove something to my ego or else well, the market humbles everyone.

Good luck and I wish you the best.

I've also stopped drinking and now meditate so you have to be very Zen in order to not be hurt by losing hundreds which you know are not that easy to make in real life but easy AF to lose in the market haha.
 
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