B The Trader

During the month of December, I challenged myself to avoid my PnL chart and only look at it at the end of the month. December turned out to be profitable, but not as much as I would like it to be. This is a tip for beginner traders who are still in search of their strategies and favorite setups. As a short seller, you constantly get hit with various fees. Over time, they cut into your wins quite a lot. However, if you're buying long, you don't have any fees, so you're trading for free. That's why I've been recently dabbling into long buying myself. I'm still getting a feel for it, so I'm only risking $10 at most. Getting more experience with it will be my January focus. Another thing I'll focus on will be taking my full 3R and cutting my loss at 1R. Additionally, I will still ignore PnL chart for another month and see what it does for my trading habits. In this video, I wanted to talk about Price Action and its importance. Recently I've been noticing a trading pattern where a stock goes up (I find it through biggest % gainers), I do my research looking for news, check SEC for any warrants, offerings, and ATMs. Finding a warrant would immediately make me a short-bias trader (on top of me leaning to sell short more times than not). In this scenario, I would completely ignore price action and often take a loss. The last time it happened to me, I wasn't stubborn in that trade and I cut my losses quickly. However, that trade made me think that I should focus more on the Price Action than the research and expectations. Watch the full video to learn more about waiting for confirmation and Price Action signs. Do you ever struggle with following the news and pulling the trigger too quickly? Comment below, I'd love to know!

James is a day trader, MIC moderator, and an entrepreneur. He's been trading for almost 2 years, and December has been one of the best months of his career. We talked about a new approach that led him to have a great month. His new strategy is to wait for confirmation before entering a trade instead of jumping in out of FOMO or anticipation. James shared a 30/70 rule that protects him from getting hit with big losses upfront and how he's choosing consistency and predictability over hitting the highest numbers possible. His philosophy is that you can hit a 50c win by gaining 10 cents 5 times or winning 50 cents at once - but choose whatever suits you best. We talked about adapting strategies and rules from other traders and making them yours. The point is to make trading work for you, not the other way around. As a day trader with a full-time job and an entrepreneurship side hustle, James can only spare mornings to trade. He likes to be done by 10:30 am to be able to focus on the rest of his life, and he has adapted his trading style to do just that. Having a busy life outside of trading hours gives James another benefit - he can truly appreciate how relatively fast he can generate income with just a few successful trades in comparison with other revenue streams. He also discovered that as an experienced trader, you stop trading for your ego, you stop caring about other people's opinion and praise. You start trading for yourself, and that's when the real results start pouring in. Check out the video below to learn from this amazing young trader! What was your favorite interview moment?

Alex is a long-bias trader who focuses on penny stocks while learning more about trading big caps. Over 2019 he took his biggest loss, which prompted him to cut down his account to half of its size. After that, however, he realized that "the worst" - loosing big - has already happened, so he started to trade a full size again. As a result, he had to make peace with heavier average losses, but that also gave him a chance at higher average gains too. In 2019 he's been breaking into trading big caps. We talked about the transition from small to big caps and the difference between the tools and skill set necessary for them. For example, you need more capital to trade big caps, but you don't face liquidity issues as you do with small caps. Additionally, following the market is much easier, so it makes sense to focus on 20 or so big names and trade them since you now know how the company operates and what to expect. We talked about his big loss of May 2019 and how it changed Alex as a trader. We chatted about commission changes for long traders, getting over significant mistakes and moving on with a clear vision from both losses and wins. We had a great discussion about your 'Why' as a trader, a possible burnout, and curbing your expectations when you live your life (as you travel, have kids, have other obligations) while trading full-time. Alex described his 2020 goals, and (spoiler!) it's not just a single $ goal. Watch the video to learn more about his goal-setting and his biggest challenge for the new year.

Holiday trading is different as there's a lot more volatility in the holiday market. Short selling is challenging in the last week of December. I saw on Twitter that a lot of people were trading and taking big hits. This is my theory: everyone is off at home on their computers, there are many new traders on the market who are more familiar with the long selling, and a lot of squeezing is happening, so you have to be careful when selling short. I didn't have very successful trades on Monday and Tuesday, but Friday was profitable as I followed my trading plan and waited until I hit my target before cutting it. So if you're trading short, be extra careful during the holidays and all the way up to the New Year. Wait for a clear signal and don't waste your time on mirages that take your time and attention away from the real A stocks. Be careful trading pre-market and watch out for squeezers. Watch the video till the end to learn how I adapted my trading and daily routine now that I have a full-time day job. I also share the news about new exciting guest interviews!

We met with Matt over 9 months ago, and, funny enough, I didn't know who he was at first despite listening to his show. Matt found out about trading when he was in high school. He started trading in the summer of 2017 after the freshman year of college (he studies software engineering); his parents helped him to join the Tim Sykes challenge. 2 years later, November 2019 was his best month yet. Matt switched to big caps despite starting with the small caps as he didn't like the volatility and the fact that one loss could easily wipe out multiple wins. We talked about the benefits of trading big caps such as easy and reliable automation, low chance of sliding, and generally slower pace that allows traders to make rational decisions instead of acting impulsively. Matt shared his plans for May 2020 when he graduates. We talked about the benefits of trading part-time, and how spending less time in front of the screen makes you a more disciplined trader. We chatted about the biggest challenge Matt faces when trading and his plan to work on it. We also talked about his accomplishments - this student trader has already managed to get over the PDT by trading and working hard during his internship while going through the senior year of college. Watch the full interview to see what ticker we both successfully traded the week before. Check out his podcast Beyond The PDT on your favorite podcast platform! as I will be appearing there shortly.

As you guys know, I got a job about 2 weeks ago and I've been officially trading part-time ever since then. I wasn't planning on trading much during the first week. The trades that I did take were very safe, I only risked a quarter of what I normally do. I did it with range order - it's when you set up the profit target and the stop loss, and once one of them is hit, the other one cancels out automatically. It worked out well for me, and I'll keep using automation to manage my trades while I'm away at work. I don't really know how much I've made on that trade. The whole month of December I didn't look at my PnL as a part of the challenge that I've created for myself at the beginning of the month. The question is, how do I know if I'm doing well? Well, at the end of the day, you always know if you're up or down. And the benefit of not knowing exactly how much money I've made is that trading stopped being all about the money. I'm not tempted to trade less than ideal setups just to get the profit. The trade that I'm still in - CBIO - is the trade that I've executed differently thanks to this challenge. I got in at the $7.70s after a big squeeze and not seeing much interest from other buyers. I covered most at the $7.30s and $7.10s, and I'm still waiting for the $7 to crack. It might not crack, but it's fine since I only have ⅕ size still in the trade. Before the challenge, I would have gotten in earlier. Most probably, I would have been one of the sellers who got squeezed. I would have chased one of the minor spikes out of FOMO. The December challenge helped me with the fear of missing out. I'm not trying to instantly make up for the losses incurred, and I'm trading just to trade well while focusing on the risk/reward ratio. I'm really excited to see how this month turns out! Do you have any questions regarding the PnL challenge or any other topic? I'd be happy to answer them - hit me up on Twitter or in Youtube comments!

Trading Coach and Mentor Akil Stokes is here today! He is part owner of Tier One Trading and has his own podcast called Trading Coach Podcast which I listen to regularly. You will learn a ton from this Forex Coach/Trader and you will realize it doesn't matter if you trade Forex or Stocks, Same mentality.

This was a very special episode for me! I had 3 experienced and consistently profitable traders on the show - Kyle Williams, Harry Hoss, and Jack Kellogg. We had a great time answering Twitter questions and discussing the trades from the week before. We chatted about sticking with the chosen trading strategy and remaining consistent despite feeling tempted with the exciting yet not proven setups. We discussed the interesting tickers of the past week and the trades that the guys made or missed out on. We also talked about the FOMO - fear of missing out - and if it should affect your trading habits. We talked in-depth about the optimal win percentage in correlation with the risk/reward ratio. Guys shared their recent win percentages while talking about how random the sequence of losses and wins can sometimes be and how, if you're not careful, 1% of losses can take out 99% of wins. We chatted about the scariest moments of their trading careers as guys shared their stories. Kyle revealed that he was once ready to pick up a side gig just to recover the losses from a trade gone bad, but managed to turn it around. Harry finished this fun episode with a rant about short sellers and the strategy that burns them time after time, yet people remain falling for it. What did you like the most about this episode? What did you learn?

In December I challenged myself to not post any of the trades and not look at the daily or weekly P&L. I did it because I wanted to focus on trading well by following my trading strategy. The truth is, it's harder to stick to the 3R target than it seems. It's challenging to kick an old habit of taking profits in the support area of 1.8R. If I make most of my profits at 1.8 and take the rest at 3, the average will be somewhat close to 2R. But in the long-term, that won't leave enough room to cover for the mistakes, and I know that I will make mistakes no matter how successful and consistent I am. I've talked with experienced traders such as Kyle Williams, Brian Lee, Jack Kellogg - do check their interviews if you haven't yet - and all of them say that mistakes happen. You just have to make sure that they don't happen too often and not let them spiral out of control. At the same time, you have to learn how to not take your profits too soon. If one mistake wipes out 3 or 4 profits, that could crush your mindset. If one mistake erases 1 profit, it doesn't feel like that big of a deal. So this week I did a better job waiting to hit 2.8-3R, and I'll continue with this strategy. I will also be focusing on Big Cap markets. Looking forward to that and the added challenge of managing my time as I start a new job - watch the video to learn more about that!

Jack was 18 when his friend introduced him to day trading. His trading journey wasn't a linear path to success: he took big losses at first and struggled against brokerage fees while barely breaking even. Nevertheless, he became a successful and profitable day trader, making $1-2k a week consistently even when the market is slow. We talked about emulating mentors and following strategies of other people. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes you can't seem to get the setup right no matter how hard you try. Additionally, the market is changing, and strategies that used to bring consistent 4-figure income are not as successful anymore or don't come across as often. We discussed the difference between trading NASDAQ and OTC stocks, and how a successful strategy used on penny stocks will paper cut you all the way down on NASDAQ - and vice versa. Jack shared the brokerages that he currently uses, how busy he is with the current state of the OTC market, and how much money he generates on a good week. We chatted about the misconceptions that he used to have about day trading and how different the reality is. He also described the challenges that he faces when day trading and what he does to overcome them. What is your takeaway from Jack's interview?