day trading strategies Archives | Bulls on Wall Street https://bullsonwallstreet.com/tag/day-trading-strategies/ Stop Guessing. Start Trading. Wed, 20 May 2020 20:15:59 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/cropped-Untitled-design-14-1-32x32.png day trading strategies Archives | Bulls on Wall Street https://bullsonwallstreet.com/tag/day-trading-strategies/ 32 32 3 Day Trading Strategies to Use in the Current Market Environment https://bullsonwallstreet.com/day-trading-strategies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=day-trading-strategies Wed, 20 May 2020 20:15:20 +0000 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/?p=59266 This market environment is like no other. We are seeing some of the worst economic conditions of all time. Record high unemployment numbers. Hundreds of thousands of businesses shut down. But yet the stock market doesn’t care. The market has been on a non-stop, grinding uptrend for the past 2 months. It doesn’t make sense. ...

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This market environment is like no other. We are seeing some of the worst economic conditions of all time. Record high unemployment numbers. Hundreds of thousands of businesses shut down.

But yet the stock market doesn’t care. The market has been on a non-stop, grinding uptrend for the past 2 months. It doesn’t make sense. But it doesn’t have to. The stock market is not always an accurate reflection of the current economic conditions. As momentum traders, all we care about is following the trend, and capitalizing on the momentum.

One of the most important lessons from this rally: Price action will always matter more than fundamentals. Supply and demand is the only thing you need to pay attention to as a trader. Be aware of fundamentals, but don’t let them make you get stubborn over a bias. Here are 3 day trading strategies that have been working well in the current market environment:

The Quick Pull Back Buy

A great set-up to use right near the market open. Many beaten-down stocks from March are seeing strong rallies. Many of them see strong upward momentum at the open.

The market open, the time of the trading day from 9:30AM-11 AM, is a period where stocks go on the strongest and cleanest trends. This setup is one of the best day trading strategies to capitalize on volatility at the open.

Learn how to use the Quick Pullback Buy in this video lesson:

The Rubberband Short Setup

This is one of the best setups to do in strong, uptrending markets. Many stocks get very overbought in these conditions, and become prime candidates for a short play, meaning you bet on the stock to go down.

This setup needs to be timed well. You are going countertrend, and it is always possible the stock can continue going up. Watch this video lesson to learn how to time the trade so you can catch the turn:

Day Trading the News

Understand this: The best traders don’t put on new trades as soon the news comes out. They wait for several minutes to let the trend settle and materialize. And then the find a low-risk entry to join it. Trading the news is not buying or shorting a peak volatility, guessing the stock’s reaction to the news. This video lesson will show you how to do it correctly with a recent trade I had on NCLH:

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3 Day Trading Setups I Use Every Day https://bullsonwallstreet.com/day-trading-setups/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=day-trading-setups Sat, 21 Sep 2019 07:04:50 +0000 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/?p=57137 The stock market can seem random and chaotic. In order to consistently profit from day trading stocks, you MUST use day trading strategies that have an edge. Many traders fail because they trade strategies that don’t have positive expectancy. This means that in the long run, they always lose money because their day trading setups ...

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The stock market can seem random and chaotic. In order to consistently profit from day trading stocks, you MUST use day trading strategies that have an edge. Many traders fail because they trade strategies that don’t have positive expectancy.

This means that in the long run, they always lose money because their day trading setups have no edge. They are the suckers playing the slot machine. Successful traders have setups that make them the casino. They know in the long run, they will always make money.

Today I will talk about 3 of my favorite day trading setups. These are the go-to setups that I can rely on for consistent income. Every trader needs these, and for every trader they will be different. Before I give you these setups, it is important you understand exactly what a day trading setup is.

What are Day Trading Setups?

Day trading setups are another word for day trading strategies. A day trading setup is simply an entry strategy for getting into a stock. A setup defines a set of criteria that need to be met in order to enter a trade. Without a setup, you are just gambling at the casino when you enter the market.

Now that you understand exactly what a setup, let’s get into some of my favorite strategies. Here are 3-day trading setups that I use on a daily basis:

Short-Selling Breakdowns

Stocks that report negative news will often have large moves to the downside during pre-market and after hours. This momentum will often continue into the market open, and provide great short selling opportunities. I will look for these downtrending stocks during pre-market, and look at their charts to find a good entry point for an entry for a short sell.

The best breakdown plays gap down under nearby support on their daily chart and increases the probability that sellers will enter the market, causing the stock to depreciate in value. Here is an example of earnings breakdown play I took on $X:

Day Trading 2nd Day Continuations

A lot of traders get FOMO after missing a big move in a stock. What they don’t understand is that stock trends will typically last multiple days. The following day after a stock has made a strong move is often actually easier to capitalize on than day 1.

When trading a continuation play, I am looking for an entry to join the trend that is continuing from the prior day to the long or short side. Here is an example of how I day trade 2nd day plays:

VWAP Pullback

The VWAP (Volume Weighted Price Average) is a great indicator to gauge a stock’s trend. It is a great tool for managing your risk for day trades. It often acts as support and resistance for stocks intraday. One of the favorite strategies using the VWAP is the VWAP pullback.

This is a setup you use between 10:30-4 (not during the open) to buy shares on an uptrending stock after it has pulled back and retraced to its VWAP. Entries by VWAP can give you low risk, high probability trades.

It can also be used to short stocks downtrending stocks and is one of my favorite mid-day setups to day trade stocks. Here is a video lesson going over a trade I took using this strategy:

 

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Risk Management Lesson: Giving Back Profits Needlessly https://bullsonwallstreet.com/risk-management-lesson-giving-back-day-trading-profits/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=risk-management-lesson-giving-back-day-trading-profits Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:06:05 +0000 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/?p=51622 Every day trader has had to deal with the pain of giving back profits after you are up on the day. It is one of the worst feelings in trading, and for some it feels worse than just having a small red day. In order to succeed as a day trader, you need to know ...

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Every day trader has had to deal with the pain of giving back profits after you are up on the day. It is one of the worst feelings in trading, and for some it feels worse than just having a small red day. In order to succeed as a day trader, you need to know how to avoid unnecessarily giving back your profits on the day.  

Today we are going to go over our trade in SIG in how we were up on a day when there were few trading opportunities. A proper mindset would be to take your profits and run, but in our case we decided to stay around and take two losses in SIG which turned a green day into an easily preventable red day. Let’s talk about some strategies you can implement so you can avoid giving back profits unnecessarily:

Avoid Overtrading

Overtrading is the primary cause of traders giving back profits. Overtrading is when you start taking subpar setups because you want to be more green on the day, or less red. Taking more trades makes it feel like you are being proactive and doing something to make you more money. The reality is this behavior will result in you giving back your profits unnecessarily, or making your red day worse.

It is okay to take your go-to setup when you are green on the day, because you know that this setup has a high probability of making you money. But once you start taking random trades on setups you are unfamiliar with, that is when you venture into the realm of over trading. When you start to take these random setups you are essentially just gambling, since you have no edge in these scenarios. When you start to see signs of yourself over trading, it is a great idea to stop trading to protect your profits.    

Leave Your Computer After The Morning

A great way to avoid over trading is to leave the computer. This completely eliminates the temptation to keep trading. Shut down your trading platform, and go have lunch, go for a walk, or do some other work. Do anything to avoid sitting in front of your computer in front of your charts. You are going to start trading just to keep yourself entertained, and end up taking dumb trades. On the day when I was trading SIG, I should’ve just left to go to the beach. I made the mistake of forcing trades on a day where there was really nothing to trade, and ended up giving back all of my gains from the morning.  Check out this article to learn more about why you shouldn’t trade after 11am.

Don’t Risk All Your Profits On One Trade

There are going to be scenarios when you are having a nice green day, and your go-to setup comes along. This is a great position to be in because you are basically risking the house’s money now. But I advise new traders to avoid risking ALL of your profits on the next trade when you are already having a great day. Even if it is a high probability trade, there is always a possibility it will fail. Most traders I know find it very painful to go from being up $400 on the day to ending up flat on the day.

Instead what you should do is just risk a quarter or half of your profits. This allows you to still capitalize on your setup, but without giving back all of your profits. If you are up $400 on the day, and you have a $5000 account,  it would be a great idea to just risk $100 or $200 on the next trade. This way you won’t get FOMO from missing your go-to setup explode without you, and you won’t have to fear about giving back all your profits.

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Day Trading Tips: How To Correctly Scale Out Of Your Positions https://bullsonwallstreet.com/day-trading-tips-how-to-correctly-scale-out-of-your-positions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=day-trading-tips-how-to-correctly-scale-out-of-your-positions Thu, 02 Aug 2018 17:52:46 +0000 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/?p=51071 I scale in and out of my trading positions every single day. It is one of the best ways to enter and exit positions for day trading in the stock market in my opinion. Scaling out is selling partial positions of a stock you are currently in, instead of selling your whole position at once. ...

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day trading

I scale in and out of my trading positions every single day. It is one of the best ways to enter and exit positions for day trading in the stock market in my opinion. Scaling out is selling partial positions of a stock you are currently in, instead of selling your whole position at once. It allows you to realize profits when you have them while keeping you in a position to capture a bigger move. You can also scale in to your positions to build up and add to a current position, allowing you to make even bigger gains when the stock goes in your favor. In this article we will focus on how to properly scale out of your positions. Here are some tips to successfully scale out of your positions:

Sell A Portion Of Your Position Into Strength

There is nothing worse than having a nice gain on a position, and then the market turns and reverses on you. Just like that a nice winner turned into a loser because you didn’t take any profits when you had them. This is the problem that scaling out of your positions solves.

One of the biggest benefits of scaling when you are day trading is it allows you to realize profits when you have them while still keeping some of your position in the stock to capture a bigger move. When you have a decent gain on a stock, it is a great idea to sell ½ ( ⅓, or whatever suits you) of your shares to realize some profit. When you are day trading, you are trading to make income. In order to make income, you need to be taking profits when you have a decent sized gain.

Once you sell some shares, you can move your stop up and ensure that no matter what, you will have a green trade.

Move Your Stop Up After Taking Partial Profits

After selling some of your shares, it is a great idea to move your stop higher up to prevent the stock from reversing and completely wiping out all of your gains. You can move your stop to your average price to make you go breakeven in the worse case scenario with the rest of your shares. Sometimes I find its better to move it to higher area of support, because there is no technical reason for a stock to respect where your entry price is. This will allow you to not unnecessarily get stopped out of the rest of your shares when there is no sign that the trend is over in the stock.   

Make Your Own Exit Strategy For Your Positions

The reality is there are so many different trail methods of a stock, you need to create your own method that is best suited to YOUR personality. Maybe you prefer to scale out in fourths, or you don’t like moving your stop up because you want to be in position to capture a bigger move. My style of scaling out may not be suited to your personality, or you may not even like scaling at all. It is fine to prefer to sell all of your shares at once. As long as you are profitable, do whatever suits you. Be sure to always have an exit strategy BEFORE you enter a stock. Prepare what you will do if the stock goes in your favor, and prepare what you will do if it goes against you. I recommend scaling to new traders because I know that the majority of new traders find it painful to watch a nice gain in a stock evaporate without having any profit realized. 

HUYA Example

Let’s look at an example of how I scaled out in a HUYA trade I took earlier this summer. Check out its intraday chart below:

day trading

When I longed HUYA for the opening range breakout, I bought 1000 shares at $24.30. I sold 400 shares at $25, as round psychological numbers can often act as resistance, and it was near a resistance level from the prior day. I then moved my stop to a break under the 9 EMA, since it had respected moving average all morning in the build up to the move. I sold another 300 shares at $25.40, leaving me with 300 shares left of my original position. I then sold the last 300 shares when it broke under the 9 EMA  at $25.14.

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5 Ways To Prevent Boredom Trading From Destroying Your Account https://bullsonwallstreet.com/5-ways-to-prevent-boredom-trading-from-destroying-your-account/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-ways-to-prevent-boredom-trading-from-destroying-your-account Sun, 08 Apr 2018 21:21:48 +0000 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/?p=49095 Boredom trades are one of the biggest issues for struggling day traders. You want to get paid for the time you commit to trading. But unfortunately making money every day is the wrong expectation for new traders, especially day traders, who tend to be the most trigger-happy. In order to trade for a living, you ...

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boredom tradingBoredom trades are one of the biggest issues for struggling day traders. You want to get paid for the time you commit to trading. But unfortunately making money every day is the wrong expectation for new traders, especially day traders, who tend to be the most trigger-happy.

In order to trade for a living, you must recognize the causes of boredom trades, and have strategies for preventing them. They are completely unnecessary trades and are a huge waste of your mental and physical capital. Here are 5 ways to combat destructive boredom trading.

1. No New Positions Past 11 am

The momentum in the stock market becomes much choppier past 11 am. How many times have you had a green first hour and then you keep trading all day and slowly give back all your profits? In trading, you are not paid any sort of set wage. You are more likely to make more money in 5 minutes trading your A+ setups than trading low-quality setups for 5 hours.

Don’t go to the computer thinking “I am going to trade because I want to make money today.” Instead go with the mindset “I am going to the computer to see if there is anything to make money from, and capitalize on opportunities if my setups present themselves”.

2. Leave Your Computer When Nothing Is There

Having the market in front of you makes it extremely tempting to trade. If boredom trades are a big problem for your PNL, a great way to reduce this temptation is to leave the computer. If it is 11 am and you have no positions on, go do something else. Life is too short to sit in front of a computer when there is no high probability trades to take. Get some exercise, go for a walk, or study your old trades to improve your edge.

3. Study Your Old Trades Instead

This is one of the most constructive ways you can keep yourself away from boredom trades. You can still improve yourself as a trader without actually trading. When there is nothing to trade, go back and look at your most profitable trades. Reminding yourself what the best setups look like will give you the patience to wait for them, and keep you away from making mediocre trades.

You need to focus on the process that leads you to successful trading for you. Look at the best trades that you followed your process AND you made money. Remember that making money on a trade does not make it a good trade. Studying your winning trades will allow you to refine your process so that these trades can reoccur consistently. 

4. Write Out Your Trading Plan

Writing out your trading plan will help keep you away from boredom trading. When you force yourself to write out your trading plan before you push the button, it will make you realize when you are about to make a low-quality trade. When you write something out, it forces you to rationalize your intended behavior.

Boredom trading will often result from impulsive and emotional decision making. Forcing yourself to write out your plan will make it obvious when you are just placing trades because you want to be doing something. The reality is that successful trading over the course of months and years is the result of sitting on your hands when there is no opportunity out there.  

5. A Trader Is Only As Good As Their Next Trade

You should put this on a sticky note by your trading monitors. This will be a constant reminder that you can only settle for the best trading setups. Boredom trading is the reason most traders (especially day traders) cannot do this for a living.

If you constantly remind yourself that every single trade defines your trading career, you will decrease the chance you will take low-quality setups. No one wants to be a mediocre trader. Therefore, you cannot ever take mediocre trades if you want to be a non-mediocre trader. 

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Trading The Market Open – Strategies For The First Hour https://bullsonwallstreet.com/trading-market-open-strategies-first-hour/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=trading-market-open-strategies-first-hour Sat, 18 Nov 2017 21:00:44 +0000 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/?p=47015 The first hour after the market open is the most volatile time of day. It’s a period of price discovery. It’s possible to make huge gains in just a matter of minutes. However, it is also possible to lose a ton of money just as fast, so you need effective strategies with solid risk management ...

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The first hour after the market open is the most volatile time of day. It’s a period of price discovery. It’s possible to make huge gains in just a matter of minutes. However, it is also possible to lose a ton of money just as fast, so you need effective strategies with solid risk management to capitalize. Here are 3 ways you can capitalize on the volatility of the first hour of the trading day.

Pay Yourself Constantly

The open is so volatile that you can go from being up money to down money in seconds. Because of this, it is crucial that you’re taking partial profits when you have a decent unrealized gain. You should plan out your exits in advance and use limit orders to exit your positions. The stocks will be moving so fast it is easy to miss an exit, and then have it come all the way back to your buy price.  

Don’t Chase Strength

Most momentum stocks will trade with large range during the market open, and the first hour of trading. It’s normal to see 5-10% moves in a few minutes during this period. This means you have to be patient for your entries. You should wait for a stock to pull back to its moving averages or trade sideways for a few candles before entering.  If you chase you will get burned badly, and you will kill your trading day early. You will lose all of the trading opportunity because you chased something, it reversed, and now your max loss is hit and you cannot trade. 

Wait For Trend To Form

The first 5 minutes after the market opens is a crazy period. The stock has not formed a clear trend, since the market has just opened. Everyone is trying to get there orders in to react to the news. If you’re a new trader, or someone who isn’t good at making high pressure decisions quickly, it’s better to just wait 15 minutes after the market opens to enter a trade. Instead of guessing which way the stock will go as soon as it opens, wait for a little bit of confirmation and let a few candles form. 

Pay Attention to Pre-Market Trend

The pre-market trend is a good indicator of how a stock will behave at the market open. If you’re long biased on a stock and it has faded 4 points off its post market highs, you will definitely want to wait for an obvious change of trend before entering. Pre/Post- market highs are usually good first targets for breakout trades. If the stock already got there once, it would make sense that for it to test that level again once it gives the buy signal.   

Here is my full presentation on this subject at the London Investor Show.

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Watch List 06/18/2014 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/watch-list-06182014/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=watch-list-06182014 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/watch-list-06182014/#respond Tue, 17 Jun 2014 23:18:55 +0000 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/?p=27962 Good times roll in the Market as many different names taking turn every day for run up.Another super day in the chat room with real time trade alerts gaining $3305 for the day.If you are struggling with your trading or learn how to trade you need to join our 60 day Bootcamp course. Our program ...

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Good times roll in the Market as many different names taking turn every day for run up.Another super day in the chat room with real time trade alerts gaining $3305 for the day.If you are struggling with your trading or learn how to trade you need to join our 60 day Bootcamp course. Our program is designed in such a way that you come out of it ready to trade live in just 3 months. We teach you everything from risk management to scanning to trading strategies. I also share my profitable intraday trading strategy which will make you money short term regardless of Market condition. The class is one of a kind. See why you should sign up for the course here and email me thenyctrader@gmail.com. You will also have access to a private community where you can ask questions, share charts and talk with the instructors or other traders.

Also if you are interested in our trade alert services check them out here.

Follow me on Twitter @szaman and on StockTwits @szaman

longsshorts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACHN Narrow range. Watching for a break either way.
ACHN Narrow range. Watching for a break either way.
BLDP Trying to break out 20/50 MA resistance.
BLDP Trying to break out 20/50 MA resistance.
DXM Continuation watch over 11.60
DXM Continuation watch over 11.60
DXM Continuation watch over 11.60
DXM Continuation watch over 11.60
RCPT Range break watch.
RCPT Range break watch.
SPEX Watching over 2.08 for a pop.
SPEX Watching over 2.08 for a pop.
TOUR Narrow range. Watching for a break either way.
TOUR Narrow range. Watching for a break either way.
YELP Watching over 74.90 for range break.
YELP Watching over 74.90 for range break.

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Day Trading: The Importance of Keeping Your Emotions Under Control https://bullsonwallstreet.com/day-trading-importance-keeping-emotions-control/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=day-trading-importance-keeping-emotions-control https://bullsonwallstreet.com/day-trading-importance-keeping-emotions-control/#respond Thu, 09 Jan 2014 17:14:46 +0000 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/?p=22796 Human beings are not calculators. Sometimes, perhaps, we wish we were. After all, there’s plenty of money to be made off of good math, and day trading is living proof of that fact. In some ways, our ability to think outside the box is what can set us apart, but the difference between creative thinking ...

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Day Trading: The Importance of Keeping Your Emotions Under Control
Human beings are not calculators. Sometimes, perhaps, we wish we were. After all, there’s plenty of money to be made off of good math, and day trading is living proof of that fact. In some ways, our ability to think outside the box is what can set us apart, but the difference between creative thinking and emotion is vast, especially when moving large positions of money at once. Attaining and maintaining profitability requires a steady hand at the wheel, which is why emotion should be left at the door when the market bell rings.

Risk

When so much is at risk, there is absolutely no room for gambling based on irrationality, and understanding just how much is at stake should put things in perspective. To begin with, day trading requires putting a great deal of personal capital on the line just to get started. At the bare minimum, the SEC requires a $25,000 minimum in order to open an account with a retail brokerage. Assuming you’re able to squeeze 20% out of that investment annually (an average return), you’re still only ending with $5,000 profit. In order to make a decent living, this means investing a considerable multiple of this minimum, simply to put food on the table and pay bills, let alone driving that expensive sports car you desire.  The barrier of entry is so high that often its easier to just buy a franchise or another business as to make it in daytrading you have to have so much capital. Even then you have to have the skills to really exponentially compound your returns which take superior skills and education. You need to be elite and without elite coaching that is very hard.  The only other ways are to trade at professional firms where you take education, prove your skills on a simulator , get tested and then trade firm capital like we have through our Bulls Silver  program where we bring on many of our students to trade with us.  I teach these students myself and we test them and train them and then they are eligible to trade with us.

 

This kind of return requires that you be on your A-game, 100% of the time your first year. That doesn’t mean never taking losses, it simply means minimizing those losses, maximizing your gains, and having the mental fortitude to develop strategies for both. This complicated mix requires high levels of discipline and is likely a contributor to the 80% first-year failure rate for the occupation.

 

The combination of these factors should paint a pretty serious picture. In order to enter the field, you’re putting a lot of personal capital at risk in a market with a high failure rate. This kind of gamble should never be taken lightly.

 

But therein lies the catch: analytical, strategic, disciplined traders aren’t gambling when they enter the market. They’re investing. They’re making a conscious effort to make decisions as coolly and rationally as possible. Gambling, on the other hand, is what happens when day traders go “on tilt”, so to speak, and begin making decisions with their emotions instead of their brains. And for those who rely on their numbers and their knowledge instead of crossed-fingers, the rewards are plentiful.

 

Reward

 

First of all, there’s the innate personal victory of doing what you love. Day trading is not for the faint of heart, and making the decision to enter the profession requires passion and drive. If you can stare down the barrel of changing markets, moving analytics, complicated decisions, and perpetual stress, and still decide that the occupation is for you, then the reward you’ll receive from doing exactly what you want will be invaluable.

 

But, of course, job satisfaction doesn’t pay the bills; you need income. Alton Hill over at Tradingsim.com breaks down the numbers as follows: an average trader can expect a 20% return on investment, an above average trader can expect approximately 50%, and truly experienced traders can make 100%+. Assuming that you lie between an average and an above average trader, investing $50k in personal capital will net you $0 profit after estimated living expenses. Those investing $250k in personal capital can expect between $50k and $125k in profit. Finally, those willing to go all-in on the effort (possible, though only recommended under ideal circumstances), the potential for return is between $100k and $250k+.

 

That is just not feasible those type of capital requirements for most folks.  That is where skill & leverage come in.  Professional traders that trade through a firm have access to not only the best tools but also to capital and leverage.  With proper skills and coaching you really develop your skills and mind to be able to leverage your returns. On top of that you have the handholding and daily feedback that any elite performer needs to develop into a world class performer. If you look at any elite athlete they have an elite coach or coaches. Trading is no different the support system you carry will make or break your time horizons on how long it takes to develop your skills.  I had lost for years and years in trading till I found my groove.  The reason was that I had nobody to tell me what I was doing right or wrong and how to fix the problems.

 

Even if your personal capital doesn’t lie at this lofty end of the financial spectrum, you can find immense returns from joining a hedge fund. The $25,000 minimum-to-trade rule enforced at large brokerages is an absolute necessity in order for these firms to avoid a regulation T violation. Joining a hedge fund (like Clique Fund L.P.)  through our Bulls Silver program with professional tools and coaching and get the added benefit of more reasonable investment requirements for aspiring day traders.  This unique regulatory distinction lies in the private nature of these institutions, which also allows for greater flexibility in trading and much greater potential returns than retail brokerages.

 

But here we return to our original point: none of this happens if you cannot control your emotions. The rewards listed here are based on traders whose ability to keep calm when the storm hits and make informed and intelligent choices based on analytics was made possible by a calm head. Chasing emotional reactions is guaranteed to do two things: short gains and amplify losses. Pursuing the adrenaline rush of a win can mean staying in a position too long, jumping on positions before your analytics give you the green light, and/or entering a position based on overconfidence. Over-emotionalizing losses can mean staying in a losing position until the losses leave you in the red or re-evaluating a system that works fine the overwhelming majority of the time based on one bad trade. Keeping a cool head will help avoid these scenarios, inform your decisions, and open your life to the vast potential that day trading has to offer.

 

 

It’s not as though emotion will not arise. If humans were capable of silencing their inner monologue, they’d be extremely boring party guests. Consider the vast personal investment you’re making and know what stakes you’re facing. Keeping a cool head will help put you in the 20% of successes and help you to turn a profit. Doing so will not only mean job satisfaction, but truly attractive returns that will make you glad you listened to your graphs instead of your gut. Rely on one thing and one thing alone: analytics. You’ll find yourself on much calmer waters and attain some peace of mind in the process.

 

email me at kunal@bullson.ws if you guys have any questions on trading with a hedgefund or on any of our classes! We do our 60 day Bootcamp class every 2 months and have one starting up in a couple weeks.

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Am I Ready To Trade Live? https://bullsonwallstreet.com/ready-trade-live/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ready-trade-live https://bullsonwallstreet.com/ready-trade-live/#respond Thu, 24 Oct 2013 02:10:41 +0000 https://bullsonwallstreet.com/?p=18074   One of the many questions I get from my students is “when can I trade with real money” .  Its really the thing on all traders minds.  One of the tenets and promises I expect from my students when they take our TRADING BOOTCAMP  is that they don’t trade live while the class is on. ...

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One of the many questions I get from my students is “when can I trade with real money” .  Its really the thing on all traders minds.  One of the tenets and promises I expect from my students when they take our TRADING BOOTCAMP  is that they don’t trade live while the class is on.  That’s even for the most accomplished of my students. Many of the people that take our class have been trading 10 years plus but need to get to the next level. They need to get more consistent or learn to trade larger size or have more setups in their toolbox.  But most of them are brand new and so its really important to start off on the right foot and make sure to learn the material and finish the program before one goes live.  The coursework is really only have the battle as that is just book knowledge.  You can see a pattern on a bunch of slides in class that I have handpicked but that doesn’t mean that you can trade.  A trade has dozens of variables beyond just pattern recognition which is just step 1. Even if you can recognize the pattern and think you know all the angles can you do it in real time during market hours? That’s a whole different ballgame.  That’s why we have all our students spend time on a trading simulator.  This simulator is a real life trading platform and we simulate the exact conditions you would see when your trading your own account from size of account, commissions, margin expense etc.  You literally need thousands of repetitions of practice before you can make the leap to trading without emotion or thought.  You don’t just make it to the NBA without thousands of hours of practice.  You don’t just become a brain surgeon without thousands of hours of study and practice.  Being a trader is no different.  Your skill has to be developed and then worked on constantly.

 

Here is a conversation I had with one of my students John. John had done pretty much everything I had asked him to do and more.  He really displayed an incredible work ethic but also his passion for trading on a daily basis.

[screencast url=”http://screencast.com/t/bNB7Du5ZS” width=”” height=””]

 

[screencast url=”http://screencast.com/t/nGH6Gq2VukuK” width=”” height=””]

 

So is John ready to trade live?  Has he done the right things?

I say yes.  Look at all the goodness he has in his emails.  All these things are necessary to trade with real money.

 

1. Complete Trading Bootcamp (28 classes 60 days) finish projects/homework/participation grade in google+ community

2. Develop a toolbox of GOTO trading setups that will allow you to trade in any market condition.

3.  Build a Business Plan for your Trading Business (if you tried to open any million dollar business you would need a biz plan this is no different )

4.  Trade on Simulator successfully hitting all metrics (one should be profitable 4 out of 5 days a week for a month )

5. Do detailed review of Trades & archive them in journal format for Teacher to review

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

So what did John have?

1. detailed metrics of his trades all archived and journal and tagged by setup on our trading simulator.  He knew his win % vs loss % he knew avg gain vs loss per trade and per day.

He also tagged his setups so he knew his win ratio for each setup.  A big part of trading is finding your GOTO setups and really focusing on those setups. Cutting out

the setups that consistently lose you money or have a less % win rate can really boost your results but you need the DATA!

2.  Business Plan- He wrote a 16 page biz plan!

[screencast url=”http://screencast.com/t/WdQVCVFy9W” width=”” height=””]

3. GOTO setups: He had detailed reports on which setups he was fantastic on so we know what to trade and what size when we go live.

4. Near daily contact with teachers & community of students (this is huge you need to totally immerse yourself when learning)

 

SO IS HE READY? i think so!  This is the gameplan for when someone starts trading live.

The key is to trade small and build the habit of winning and finishing in the green. The hardest part of trading is going from being a losing trader to just finishing green. even up a dollar. The beginning is not about trying to make 5k in a day.  Its about building good habits learning to trade your setups to the fullest and extract what you can out of them. When a new trader trades to large size he/she will sell everything to quick when a stock goes up as they are just trading their profit & loss rather then the setup. But then if the stock goes down the loss will be much larger then those small gains they took profit on.  Winning is a habit too so trading a small size  and focusing on being profitable will allow you to scale in larger size and you wont notice any emotional impact. As you slowly build size you will  see yourself as a big time trader and your stress of the larger positions will be the same as when you were trading 100-200 shares.

1. Trade small- Max 200-300 share size.

2. Profitable 4 out of 5 days over 2 weeks then move to 500 shares.  Each 2 weeks review and add size if successful.

3. If weekly stop loss is it work with mentor/peer group on game plan for next week to pinpoint issues.

4. Still archive and journal each trade for review.  Keep building your toolbox of setups.

 

This is the best way I know how to do this.  Everyone wants to come in like gangbusters and trade huge size the first week and make a bunch of money. But its never happened that way. I have seen hundreds of traders go overboard and just jump into trading without properly taking these steps and doing the work necessary to be successful.  Not a single one of them succeeded till after they came back into the program and did things the right way with no shortcuts.  everyone naturally thinks they are very smart and the exception to the rules but everyone at some point will have to do things the right way. Either in the beginning or after a couple rounds of failure!

 

If your are interested in learning to Trade our Trading Bootcamp Starts November 5th https://bullsonwallstreet.com/trading-bootcamp-starts-november-5th/

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