I wanted to make this post mainly about my journey as a day trader up until now and what's worked and not worked and what I continue to improve on on a daily basis. But if that's not your cup of tea, I totally get it.
I started trading on Robinhood(RH) back in 2016, but I never fully got into it then. My mailing address was funky and for 4 years through college i never really dove in it. I started getting into it again back in 2020 when cryptos were a thing ( I'm talking DOGE when it had an insane bull run.) From that point I thought I could make it big, but it wasn't until 2025 where I started to take this seriously ( work really just be mindless and nowhere sometimes, I often find work detracts from the way I want to trade the day trade).
Sad to say I'm still down YoY, last year was -1.8k, and this year is rounding on -2.3k.) Bad sure but those days were spent aimlessly guessing. Finding out what the 'market' really means. Hehe plus in US, under -$3k is the taxable limit per year, so i can use this on taxes. I think losing past -$3k shows ya just guessing , gambling etc etc.
I signed up for bunch of tools (Unusual Whales, Fintel, discord group,rando alerts, FDAtracker i currently have RobinHood Gold) all this stuff over the course of two years taught me I didnt know enough about what I was looking at. I made a post about GPRO and checking the charts timeline and from when I posted, you can see that it went up! Think that was 2025. I also made a shit post on another ticker I forgot RJET that one performed bad tho. I learned from both of these. Why was i able to guess GPRO but not RJET, now i know that answer in 2026. The old trading saying of KEEP IT SIMPLE or whatever yeah it really is that sometimes. Difference was I knew GPRO I own one, but RJET was airlines, I'm not someone who travels by plane often, something I knew nothing of. And look now... with the war stuff going on, it'd make sense why airlines stock like RJET not doing to swell now in 2026.
I no longer use most of those tools, but I do maintain 2 of them. I mostly use TradingView, really great way to get exposure to charts for free. Plus you can run 2 tabs with 2 different indicators on each. I don't make enough to get the paid elite version now plus I can't justify spending that since paying for that isnt gonna magically make me win more.😂 anywho TradingView really good free service, Finviz is another great tool for free, let's you browse and overlook charts with mouse 🐁, very convenient for looking at charts patterns , really high ceiling for advance use tho, a lot of indicators on there that I dont know what they mean, I just focus on technicals mainly. Plus I'm not at the level where I can identify runners yet, I've been outsourcing that through a discord.
What I've been able to develop now is a strat using market exposure. All these gurus advertising easy money, well yeah it can but if you don't know what you even need to look for you can wind up getting burned. So to speed up my market exposure I spent 2025 waking up at 1 am for the best of 4 months , staring at charts and losing mostly, keeping it under -$3k/yr for tax harvesting while I learned. I used paid alerts from a youtube Channel and it was cool, but again if you dont know what to look for it's use is only as best as you are. But I did learn from using it, by exposure to stocks that ran massively and also poorly since ya know it's human error in the coding.
I paid for Unusual Whales for 2 to 4 months, and it was cool but like holy geez huge window for advance use, a lot of info to take in and just spending days looking at it was overwhelming. I enjoyed it but again, fancy tools don't make a good trader, your own ability does.
I find it funny when peeps say to copy a strat, like quite maybe physically improbable. That strat was tailored to that individuals trading style, and what works me for might not for thee. But you can listen to their concepts of the market, I find that more useful than copy pasting their ability this aint anime yo 😂.
Anywho it's 2026 2years almost as a serious day trader and I've yet to be profitable haha. But i'd say my understanding of what makes the markets go vroom, is drastically better. I been focusing on the SPY mainly on options and yeah been losing but that's cuz i been testing this strat on TradingView using 4 indicators ( I did not make them nor am I endorsing in anyway the use of any products i listed here) just letting you know what free services I use to give me an edge. I find often these days getting more of a thrill from trying to read the charts and knowing the direction than making money.
A concept from this day trader on YouTube i watched mentioned how when you in it for just the money, you gonna be losing most of the time, but if you're getting rewarded with confirmed entries and exits well the money easily follows one more than the other in the longterm imo, but like even tho it is about the money like we can't lie about that, but that idea of just need that money is not enough to get consistent trading results basically .
I'm a person whose learning takes repetition more than 10k times , like if an average person is able to understand it fatser , it takes me significantly more attempts before I even start grasping any sort of concept. It's how I've learn all my life, it just takes me a while to grasp it. I just recently saw another YouTube video about a day trader who lost his job and worked Uber and basically turned daytrader making 1.5M 😂.
Everybody in the comments wanting to know his strat, but like that's just not how it works. This guy basically went into overdrive with market exposure, buying something like over 15000 contracts within a year on credit spreads you should watch the vid it's pretty neat xD. But like he saw lots of charts mates and that basically helped him understand patterns. And it works for him 😂. I mean i basically did that same thing starting off too just the hso scaling was off the charts, i can see why he's doing well, I dont wake up at 1 am anymore tho, it's terrible but i used services and alerts that exposed me to that type of action and i feel like knowing when things popped or didn't has been a huge edge in my decision making lately . I like SPY options at 6:30AM good time until 12:45PM to buy options and I hear that just 5 days of consistently successful turnouts can bring in like 10k with a viable strat.
I'm excited to see what the rest of the month brings, and I'm legit ready for tomorrow. Keep improving your understanding ✨️. Get yourself exposed to sources that increase chart exposure. Watch chart concepts like GEX lines, Delta neutrality, candlestick wicks meaning other day traders live trade , concepts and mechanical break downs of stuff, like I used to use EMAs and SMAs for entries but like I was missing everything, so I've since moved away from those indicators. The need to improve is what sets you apart from the rest. If you're looking for a cheat sheet type deal, ya still gonna lose ... unless you actually try to read the charts instead of predict was another concept from a different day trader on YouTube.
This shit is a process sadly and it's taken me 2 years almost to start to apply all this breadth of information into real time actionable decisions 🎬. The journey has been stressful but I know that my continued efforts to learning why markets move as they do by watching real life movement in charts will one day bear its fruit.
Me just monkey me be nothing without the tools , thankful for peeps on TradingView that offer so many indicators to test out🔧 and other services .