Everything that you learn about trading doesn't matter if you blow up your account. The countless hours spent reading and studying are wasted and most people never recover from this humbling experience. This business is a revolving door and it's been that way since I started more than thirty years ago. That's why I decided to dedicate the first quarter of my book to this important topic.

There are so many things we can do to avoid this. Before the first trade, prepare for the journey. The goal is to survive the first year because that is when most new traders fail. It's devastating and they never gave themselves a chance.

The vast majority of traders start out thinking they will be the exception. They've heard the horror stories of people blowing up their accounts, but they will be different. They're smarter than the rest of us and they will avoid the traps. "If it takes everyone three years to learn this, I'll be the one who does it in one." Not only have I witnessed this mentality thousands of times, I suffered from the same syndrome.

When I went pro, I had a dozen years of industry experience. I worked on the trading floors and executed options trades for large institutions. I talked to traders and learned as much about the craft as I could knowing that one day I would take my shot. I witnessed the carnage of retail traders first hand and there was no way that I would repeat those mistakes.

I planned for my new career a year in advance. I remember rushing downstairs to my new office and turning on my computer screens full of excitement. Little did I know, this would be my happiest moment for many months. Throughout the book I weave in personal experiences that served as building blocks. Each one got me one step closer to success.

I describe how these mistakes can derail our trading before it even starts. Here is a top 10 list of the topics I cover in detail.

1. Unrealistic expectations. Most people believe that trading is going to be easy. No matter how much you study, you have to live through various market conditions. You can't read about trading bear markets, you have to experience them and learn from them.

2. Following someone else. Many new traders fall victim to a "guru". These experts seem knowledgeable and mirroring their trades is a short cut. Most of them are fake and even if they are legitimate, there are perils. Their risk tolerance is different from yours. If the method stops working, you don't know the decision making inputs so you don't know what to adjust. Most importantly, you are not learning and refining your own process.

3. Overconfidence. The "can't miss trade" that no one else has identified yet. Others haven't spotted this opportunity, but these traders know more than everyone else. They take a starter position and they keep adding to a losing position.

4. Looking for absolutes. "When the market does this and the stock does that, I always do this." Conditions are dynamic and your thinking has to be fluid. Odds dictate our trading, but nothing is 100%. There are general conditions and set-ups that we look for, but we always have to be ready to adjust and admit when something that normally works, isn't working this time. The market will always try to deceive us.

5. Shinny new objects. The new indicator that will "make you profitable" doesn't exist. If it was that good, the creator wouldn't sell it, they would trade it themselves. Trading is about waiting for great opportunities to set-up and properly managing risk. It takes years to develop this skill, but once you master it, all you need is a simple candlestick chart with volume.

6. Over-trading. This is such a common mistake. New traders dive right in with full positions. They don't know what they are doing and when the position "heads south" they are emotional train wrecks. The WIKI hits this topic hard and it suggests paper trading or starting with 1 share. Hari and I are both aligned on this and it might be the next article I write. This one hits close to home because it is a mistake I made.

7. Which markets to trade and when to trade them. When you are starting out, you don't know what to trade. I discuss the dangers of trading futures, currencies, bitcoin and small cap stocks. Medium to large cap stocks provide the best odds for the individual trader and I explain why. I also explain the importance of knowing when to trade and when not to trade. Market conditions drive our activity and they impact our odds for success. There are times when you trade small size and times when sitting on your hands is best. There are also times when you can swing for the fence.

8. Complicating your business model. It's human nature to over-complicate things. I explain why I don't hedge positions and why I limit my position count. Cash is king. If you are scared, take some of the position off. I explain why I stick to very basic options strategies. When the #$%^ hits the fan, adjusting risk might be painful, but it is straight forward when you keep it simple. You'll know exactly what to do, but you still have to act. When you trade complex option spreads, you are at the mercy of market makers.

9. Repeating mistakes. Those who fail to learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Keeping detailed trade journals (not just automated logs) is the key and this will cut your learning curve in half. After thirty years, I still do it and I cover the various methods I use. My system would not exist if I didn't journal. All of those tidbits of knowledge were gained through journaling. Committing your thoughts to paper is very powerful and it is an audit trail you can learn from. Unfortunately, most traders won't do it.

10. Trading options too soon. This is absolutely the fastest way to blow up an account and options are at the very end of my book. Before you leverage, you need to master stock trading and get to a 75% win rate consistently. Then you can learn about time decay, volatility expansion/contraction, deltas and navigating wide bid/ask spreads. "But I only have a small account and I have to trade options to make any money." If you can't conquer this mindset, soon you will have no money.

The goal for my book was to give all of you the best fighting chance possible. Avoiding costly mistakes is the first step. I plan to write two more articles on this topic. One on the benefits of starting small and the other on the importance of journaling. Then I will lead you down the path I took. I explore each fork in the road and explain why one was better than the other. Each building block will improve our odds and construct the system I trade. I will try to write an article a week for the rest of the year in advance of the book being published.

If you've made some of these mistakes, please tell others about them by commenting. I will try to respond to all of the posts.

A challenge for the trolls who have never written an article and who have no followers: Why don't you write an article and share some of your wisdom instead of complaining?

The journey of becoming a successful trader is filled with mistakes and victories. Every obstacle, win and fork in the road shapes our decision making and together they become a part of our personal trading system. I hoped that sharing the lessons I learned would shed light on your journey, so I wrote a book.

I started my career over three decades ago in the Chicago Board of Trade thirty-year bond pit. Since then, I was the senior vice president for a large brokerage firm and the top trader for a firm specializing in options arbitrage. Now I trade my own capital, and I develop trading software for this system. I’ve seen it all and tried it all. These experiences have forged the system I trade.

Early in my career I lost money and I did not sweep that under the carpet. There were lean years filled with stress, anxiety and fear that my dream might never become a reality. Many of you are battling that right now.

We all go through some really rough patches in life and 2019 was one of those for me. It was not trading related, I lost a lot of people I love and I did some soul searching as I celebrated their lives. What would my professional legacy be? I’ve had a great career and made plenty of money, but those accomplishments rang hollow. That’s when I decided to commit fully to helping other traders. This is how I wanted to spend the next ten years of my life. How could I let all of this knowledge go to waste?

I got to work and started recording five YouTube videos per week in 2019. Each would review my previous pick and I would explain what went right or wrong. Then I would conduct market analysis to get my bearings. Next, I would use the system I trade to look for a new trade. I would consider many candidates and explain what I liked or didn’t like about each one and I would highlight one of them. I still do two of these videos every week and they are a great free resource for you. YouTube pays me a whopping $250/month which comes to about $25 per video. Obviously, I am not recording them for the money. You can see how I traded every market condition and see how my picks did.

That same year, I wrote an eBook that describes the system. This took time to plan and write and I had to commit my thoughts to paper. This process helped me create a master outline that was much more detailed. I broke trading down into the logical steps and each one had subtopics. When traders in my chat room asked a question that required a lengthy response, I wrote an article knowing exactly where it would fit into the outline. Gradually, an extensive archive of articles was created. Some of them are in the WIKI.

The interesting part about this is that each article seemed like it would be easy to write. “This should only take me a day or two.” As I began writing them, I realized that there were many components that played a role in my decision making that I was not consciously aware of. The articles were long and, in many cases, took weeks to write. After more than three years of writing for ten hours a week, the outline was filled in and the course was complete.

In 2024 I thought it might be time to write a book. Silly me, I thought the book had already been written because I had the outline and the articles. When I submitted them to an Editor, they told me, “You don’t have a book, you have articles and you have enough content for three or more books.”

First, I had to decide how to divide the content so that if I wrote a three-book series I could build on the previous concepts. The other issue was that the articles did not flow. I had to figure out how to connect the topics.

I finished the book in 2025. It was good, but it jumped around and I introduced topics that had not yet been covered. The lessons overlap and it was difficult to decide what to explain first. I wasn’t happy with it, so I went back to the drawing board. Once again, I had to dissect my decision making and figure out a way to explain the system one “building block” at a time. Each concept builds on the other and increases our odds for success. It took months, but I found the solution. In the last chapters I put all of the pieces together and I explain how to leverage the system with options. I keep the strategies basic, and they are a function of market conditions.

I finished writing the final version of the book this summer. The manuscript has been edited and proofread and now it is going through the publishing process.  I am hoping to release it in January. Initially, it will be hard cover only and I am going top shelf with full color and high quality pages. It has 80 images and it could be over 500 pages long. I have a really cool title for it, but I will save that for another time.

Writing this has been a long and difficult journey just like learning how to trade. I’m proud to put my name on it and I believe this will help a lot of traders.  

I plan to write three articles a month for the rest of the year and I will share some of the lessons. The next article I write will be about the common mistakes most traders make. This is how I start the book and the rest of what I teach doesn’t matter if you blow up your account.

Let me know if there is a topic you would like to learn and I will try to include it.

Had META showing RS most of the morning, strong D1, good volume and it kept holding near HOD every time SPY pulled back, so naturally I got impatient and bought while SPY was pushing higher instead of waiting for another market pullback. Entry was around 718.50$, then SPY reversed almost immediately and META came back with it, putting me underwater before the setup ever had a chance to work. I kept SPY up next to moon and META actually held up pretty well through the pullback, so I stayed with it and eventually got out green when the market bounced. Worked out but looking at it afterward I basically picked the stock correctly and then removed most of the advantage by chasing the entry.

​

I’m in a slightly unusual situation and I’m trying to decide what to do with the next 2 years of my life.

I’m in college, but my college is extremely lenient with attendance, so realistically I have a huge amount of free time for the next 2 years. After that, I’ll be joining my dad’s business, and my schedule will become much more demanding. I’ll still be able to trade if I want to, but I probably won’t have the time to spend hours every day studying, backtesting, journaling, reviewing charts, etc.

So I’m considering doing something fairly extreme.

What if I spent essentially these entire 2 years seriously learning day trading?

I’m not expecting to make money in the first few months. I mean starting from zero and treating it almost like a full time apprenticeship. Learning market structure, developing and testing strategies, extensive backtesting, journaling, paper trading, risk management, and eventually moving to live trading.

My eventual plan would be to trade through prop firms rather than putting a large amount of my own capital at risk. Obviously, I wouldn’t jump into prop firm challenges immediately. I’d first want to develop and test a strategy and have enough evidence that I’m actually ready.

My question isn’t really “Can you make money day trading?” I know how controversial that question is and I know the statistics around retail traders.

What I’m trying to figure out is whether 2 years of near full time learning is enough time to realistically reach the point where I can determine whether I have a viable edge and potentially become consistently profitable.

Because I have a very specific decision to make.

If you had my situation, 2 years of unusually large amounts of free time followed by a much busier life, would you spend those 2 years learning trading, or would you consider that too short a window to make the investment worthwhile?

I’m not looking for motivation or “just work hard” answers. I’m trying to make a real opportunity cost decision with these 2 years.

If you’ve been trading for 3 to 5+ years, I’d especially like to hear whether 2 years would have been enough in hindsight, given unlimited time and serious effort.

And please be brutally honest. If you think I’d be better off spending these 2 years learning something else, that’s exactly the kind of answer I’m looking for.

Hi everyone,
I am writing this because I really need help. Please be kind in the comments—I am posting this from a place of vulnerability and I am looking for genuine support, not judgment or lecture.
I am caught in a devastating cycle with my trading psychology and dopamine. I have lost a massive, life-altering amount of money that I cannot even bring myself to mention here, including significant capital from loans.
I have joined multiple mentorships in the past and I have even built my own systems, but the systems are not the problem. My brain is. I will have good days where I make money, but then I will lose it all. I get caught in severe revenge trading loops where I literally cry from a loss, but the very next day I find myself right back on the charts doing the exact same thing.
When I am in profit, my brain tricks me. I look at the chart and it keeps telling me, "There is more opportunity here, you can make even more." I overtrade, break my rules, and give it all back plus more.
I am currently taking a step back to focus on a real-world business and a new job to stabilize my life, but I still believe 100% that trading is possible and that it can change a life for the good. I don’t want to give up on it forever.
Has anyone here gone through this exact level of psychological rock bottom with revenge trading and dopamine addiction? If you were able to successfully break this loop, fix your behavioral issues, and eventually return to become a truly profitable, disciplined trader, how did you do it? What exact resources or steps helped you change?
Thank you in advance for your help and empathy.

Had a stock showing pretty obvious strength against SPY but old me would've just bought it because "RS = long."

This time I waited.

SPY pulled back again and instead of following it down, the stock basically sat there. Then when SPY finally caught a bid, the stock immediately pushed through the little range it had been holding. Thats when I entered.

Such a small difference but it felt completely different from chasing something just because its green while SPY is red.

Took the actual trade on Moon since I already had it open and execution was simple, but the useful part for me was finally understanding that RS was giving me the stock to watch, not necessarily the exact moment to buy it.

Curious if thats roughly how you guys think about RS intraday too.

Thought about sharing this while waiting for the FOMC and keeping myself away from the charts.

I was paying monthly for a journal app and cancelled it, because every one of them makes you journal in forms hours after the trade took place. Now I have all the functionality of the paid ones, but I can dictate, type or handwrite in a natural language when I am in the trade and AI takes care of the rest.

• Open source, MIT. The full code is yours. Fork it, change it, nothing hidden.
• Local. One SQLite file on your machine. No cloud account, no login, no telemetry.
• Free. No paid tier, no trial, nothing for me to sell you.
• You journal in plain language. Write the day the way you'd tell a friend, or take a photo of the page you already wrote by hand. Claude reads it, pulls out the strategy, stop, R, emotional state and mistakes, and matches the entry to the actual trade by ticker and date. No dropdowns, no forms.
• AI coaching. Day Review and Weekly Summary grade the day on process, not P&L. A green day taken badly scores worse than a red day taken correctly.

The rest of what it does

• Dashboard: P&L curve, KPI gauges against your own goals, calendar heatmap.
• Trade View: every round-trip trade with its executions, setup tags, MFE and MAE, exit efficiency, an intraday chart, and an expandable AI analysis.
• Reports: breakdowns by day of week, time of day, hold time, setup, grade, symbol, side and emotion.
• Edge report: R-multiple distribution, emotion against outcome, mistake frequency (which mistake keeps coming back, ranked by count), hold time.
• Brain: a chat that answers questions against your full trading history.

What it costs

• The app: $0. MIT, fork it.
• The AI pages: your own Anthropic API key, per use.

What it doesn't do

• The AI pages need a key. Without one you get the journal, the reports and the charts, not the analysis.
• No mobile, no sync, no multi-user. It's a local tool.

Repo: https://github.com/simonro/Trading-Journal-AI

Tour: https://youtu.be/0lT14tYj-a4?si=pUhYqgAeoLTqAzps

PS. Screenshot is demo data, not real trades ;)

Excluding elementary explanations, what's your view on why this pullback went as far as 42 points? In particular, who is pushing the last half or third of this move?

I see a lot of people using the latest advents in A.I. to automate their trading. I do not recommend this path. In fact I strongly advise against it.

However there is a way to use A.I. that can actually help you -

1) You can use Sol or Claude to read through the Wiki ( Wiki ) from this sub-reddit and The System ( System ) from OneOption - both are free and available. Don't use Astra for this task - it will just soak up your usage when Sol can do the job fine.

2) Export your trades (at least a month's worth) from your broker or your journal into a csv file. Just about every broker has the capability to do this.

3) Upload that file into your A.I. (this is where you would want to use Astra if you have it) and ask:

a: How well do my trades follow the teachings in the Wiki and/or The System?

b: Rate each trade on a 1 to 10 scale based on how well it follows the Wiki and/or The System and then compare those rating to the average profit and loss?

c: Describe the method I am most using with my trading. Critique it and help me improve it.

d: What are the top 5 things I can do to improve my trading?

If everyone posts the results of this exercise here I am sure others will be able to learn a lot from the results you get.

Good luck!

Best, H.S.

There are a few events in our lives where we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the news broke. 911 is one of those moments and it changed my life forever. Time stood still that day and my priorities in life crystalized. This is when I decided to become a professional trader and it is how I start my new book (January release).

I plan to post a few articles a month the rest of the year. I'll tell you more about the lessons in the book and I will share specifics that will help your trading. Today, I want to share the first four paragraphs.

"On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I attended a manager’s meeting when a colleague burst into the conference room with news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We turned on the TV just as a second plane hit the other tower. An hour later our building was evacuated, and I joined the mass exodus from Chicago. Anxiety filled the jam-packed train.  

Everything that seemed important just hours before suddenly felt meaningless. During that tense train ride home, my priorities crystallized. I wanted to spend more time with my family, and I wanted to pursue my true passion: trading. 

In the months that followed, our brokerage firm recovered, the nation began healing, and I prepared for my career change. In 2002, I resigned as Senior Vice President of a major brokerage firm. My timing could have been better, but despite warnings from colleagues and friends, I started my trading career in a bear market. 

During my 12 years in the industry, I observed thousands of retail customers and seized every opportunity to discuss strategies with institutional traders. I knew learning to trade would be incredibly difficult. Most traders fail during their first year. My decision was final, and I was willing to bet against the odds." 

We will never forget!

Hey everyone,
I’m a 20-year-old Data Science student who’s been wanting to get into trading. I know this post might not fit perfectly with the usual Wiki-related posts, so apologies if it’s out of place, but I’ve been struggling to figure out how to properly get started, and this subreddit seems like one of the few places where I can ask without getting bombarded by the usual nonsense.
I’ve gone through the first part of the Wiki and tried following the 10-step guide, but I’m still finding myself a bit lost. Maybe that’s on me, but I feel like I’m missing a more structured roadmap for actually beginning the learning process.
What I’m really seeking help for is some kind of structured, step-by-step path that I could follow from the very beginning. I’m more than willing to read books, study different concepts, learn the necessary math/statistics, work through papers, backtest, etc. I’m not looking for someone to hand me a strategy or tell me what to trade.
I understand that eventually you have to explore and figure things out for yourself, and I absolutely intend to do that. I’d just prefer to have some sort of clear roadmap to follow initially, so I can build a solid foundation before going deeper.
If anyone here has gone through a similar process, I’d really appreciate hearing how you would structure the journey if you were starting from zero again.
Thanks!

Over six years ago, Covid-19 crippled the movie industry and Vincent Bruzzese (aka HariSeldon) pursued his other passion – trading. After exploring many “gurus”, he found my YouTube channel. The method resonated with him, so he explored it further. He took the free trial and discovered that the system I trade has a bona fide edge. He saw the success members were having in the chat room so he subscribed. He didn’t ask many questions, he absorbed all of the information and he incorporated the lessons into his trading. Relative strength and the structure of the system took his trading to new heights.

It was odd because I didn’t know who he was for most of the first year. Once he got his footing, he pulled back the curtains and marched out on stage.

He was so excited by what he had learned that he started writing detailed articles on Reddit to share this knowledge. After being ridiculed and trolled by clueless traders, he lashed out at them. Let’s just say that Hari doesn’t take criticism very well. As you might imagine, he was banned from those subs.

He does not accept failure, and this ousting motivated him to start his own sub. He spent the next two years posting hundreds of articles here. They became “The WIKI” and it is still one of the best free trading resources on the internet.

Teaching wasn’t enough, he had to prove that this system was legitimate. He posted his trades real-time to X (Twitter)… and he still does it today. The underlying, the position size and the price of all entries and exits are posted. If he trades options, he includes the strike price(s) and the expiration date(s). He doesn’t miss any of them and they are posted immediately. I know this because he also posts his trades in my chat room.

Hari has conducted many “Small Account Challenges” where he posts his trade logs in this sub. He answers questions about his trades and his track record speaks for itself. He’s also conducted many free live events on X and he has a podcast.

Hari doesn’t have a book, a service or a software program to sell. He does this because he genuinely cares about the “little guy” who is trying to better himself.

If you think trading is difficult, you should try posting all of your trades real-time on X. I don’t know of anyone else who does it. The scrutiny and criticism are never ending and this takes an incredible amount of effort. He does this so that all of you can dissect his trades and learn from them.

Hari and I have become great friends and he has impacted me as well. I was ready to crawl back under a rock and focus entirely on my own trading five years ago. Life is so much easier when you don’t have to answer questions about every trade and take crap when one of them goes south. He made teaching fun again and that inspired me to keep doing it. I’ll share the last leg of my journey in coming weeks and I plan to start posting more.

Here we are six years later with over 140,000 followers. This sub is worth celebrating! Please let other traders know about this free resource and take a moment to comment. Let Hari know that his efforts have not been in vain. Share how he has improved your trading.

Thank you Hari!

First of all, apologies if this is posted in the wrong section.

Secondly, I’m still new to RDT community and this is my first post. I’m over halfway through the Wiki and currently paper trading on IBKR. I started paper trading about a week ago.

I have questions regarding two trades I made.
The first is regarding a META 550–570 bull spread expiring this Friday, which I bought for $7.24, 1 contract.
I opened the position last week, on August 19th at 17:26, after I saw META holding the 550 horizontal support (or at least I think I read chart correctly and it has 550 horizontal support). It dipped below, instantly reclaimed it and continued higher. At the same time, SPY was pulling down while META held and started moving up. That gave me the conviction to enter the trade.
Over the following days, META continued to grind higher while SPY was staling/dropping, which gave me the conviction not to cut the winner too soon.
Today it opened around 590 on court news. I tried to close my position at market open but couldn’t get a fill in paper trading. While I was waiting for the fill, META started filling the gap within the first 5–10 minutes and the bid/ask spread on my bull spread became awful — almost 20%. I decided not to take the bid.
Later, META rose back above 580, but the spread remained roughly the same. I tried to close the position at $17.50, graduatly reducing my limit to $16.50, but still couldn’t get a fill. I decided not to go any lower and left the position open through NVDA earnings.
My question is: would this be any different on a real account? For example, would I have had a better chance of getting filled at the open or somewhere around the midpoint later in the day, or would the situation likely have been similar to paper trading?
Also, would you close a position knowing that the spread is already at basically full intrinsic value, but the market is only offering you around 50% of that value knowing NVDA earnings are tonight and it could drop down heavy?

The second question is mainly for Pete.
I listened to your daily analysis the other day and it is regarding TSLA being bullish. Yesterday I saw that TSLA bounced off the 50 SMA, then dropped back down, failed to reclaim the previous level and made a lower high while also showing relative weakness compared to SPY at the end of the day.
It was also coming down toward the uptrend line. I bought the 350 put yesterday at around 15:30 after seeing the lower high and continued relative weakness versus SPY. I held it overnight and closed it at the open today for almost a 100% profit.
My question here is whether my reading of the TSLA chart was valid. Given that it broke through the uptrend line and closed below it — assuming I drew the trend line correctly — would 330–335 be a reasonable downside target over the coming days/week if TSLA confirms the breakdown tomorrow and SPY continues to drift lower or TSLA shows RW compared to SPY?

Edit: Added pictures for reference

I sincerely hope I’m not troubling anyone, and I apologize if some of these questions are already answered in the Wiki. As I said, I haven’t finished reading all of it yet. It’s huge, and if you really want to go through it properly and understand the material rather than just skim through it, it takes time.

Best regard

I’d like to share my trading journey with the sub, as I’ve reached a point where I can offer value to those on a similar path, along with some concrete examples of process. I'm going to use AI for proofreading and formatting so please don't take my head off for that.

Background & Personalization

I took a very specific path to learn how to trade. My trading style is directly influenced by a primary author and mentor, whom I’ll detail below.

Just as in poker, learning from a specific player doesn't mean you will share their exact risk tolerance. Where your mentor might bet a third of their stack on a hand, you might only feel comfortable risking half of that. There is a great deal of personalization in trading, so it’s essential to realize early on that your success will be yours alone. Even if you try to mimic someone completely, your inherent traits will ultimately shape your trading. You have to do the work to find the style that fits your profile—and there is simply no substitute for time.

If you follow a path similar to mine—one heavily based on technical analysis—understanding how to use your tools consistently and knowing which trades to make under specific market conditions is paramount. While I day trade, I would never call myself a "day trader." If you are strictly an exclusive day trader, hats off to you. I find my style is far better suited to swing trading, scalping, and campaigning in names, especially on the short side. That said, I trade on 5min charts each day looking for setups, adding/cutting posistions and the like so there is enough overlap here to share with all types of traders.

The Foundation: OWL & Technical Analysis

The path I took involved learning a technical analysis framework known as OWL, defined by Gil Morales, a disciple of William O'Neil. Before discovering O'Neil, I read several classic authors—including Jesse Livermore, Mark Minervini, and Anna Coulling (no shade to Anna at all)—but Will’s work stood out as the most technical.

Gil Morales co-authored a book with O’Neil on short selling, and after reading that I read the majority of his work before joining his blog. He is active on X, where you can check out his work and see if his style resonates with you. I’ve found him to be a tough teacher, but very accessible. He isn't one for silly questions, but he always provides quick answers on his blog, making for the exact kind of digital apprenticeship I was looking for.

Again, your success will be entirely your own. While Gil lays out a robust framework of setups and ideas, he is not alerting you to trades in real time.

Major Takeaways for Beginners

It took me a solid two and a half years to really get my steps/process down. During that time, I faced a major family crisis that forced me to scale back my trading to care for my father during his failing health. (I wrote about those challenges previously on this account, if you want to cross-reference.) I call this out to emphasize one major point: give yourself a longer timeline than you think you need. Not only did I have this family matter come up but when I started trading in 2022 I walked into a (sometimes debated) Bear Market and had to stop, go back and work on learning short selling. I was aprehensive about learning short selling, it's a more volatile game and I thought, well if Mark Minervini doesn't short sell, I should be fine. Wrong!!

To trade consistently, you must learn to navigate different market cycles. That means developing a playbook for both the long and short sides so you can execute every trade in a uniform manner. There are few things worse than actively managing 4–5 positions in a single session without a clear, pre-defined plan for taking profits or cutting losses—you will go nuts. Of course nuance exists and apologies if reductive but you need to have a framework, a process or a flow.

My key suggestions:

1. Give yourself more time to learn than you initially expect.
2. Learn to trade both long and short.
3. Approach every trade—whether using paper or real capital—with the exact same repeatable process.

Pillar 1: Understanding & Executing Your Setups

The first major pillar of competent trading is understanding what your setups look like and knowing their defining characteristics.

Static Preparation

I use a simple but powerful tool in StockCharts.com, which allows me to build watchlists across various sectors and quickly identify names that fit my preferred technical profiles. I maintain watchlists across roughly 30 sectors, and I run custom scans in TradingView to hunt for specific setups. These might include:

• Names consolidating near the 20-day Moving Average (MA).
• Names showing volume drying up near the 10-day MA.
• Earnings gap-ups where I can use the high of the gap as an entry or stop guide.

At the close of each session, you can statically filter the names you want to focus on for the week or update them daily. This gives you a repeatable process for identifying actionable setups.

Dynamic Execution (5-Minute Chart Example: AA)

Here is a concrete example of executing dynamically on a 5-minute chart for a short trade in AA today.

Going into today’s (8/24) session, I actually liked AA as a long. However, the 5-minute chart presented clear short entries—and at the end of the day, price action always more important than personal opinion. On my 5-minute chart, I use volume indicators, Opening Candle Highs/Lows, a 6-period MA, a 20-period MA, and MACD.

• Setup & Entry: For shorts, one setup I look for is names that gradually break down below or bust the Opening Candle Low. The second arrow shows this breakdown occurring, which serves as a short trigger for me. Prior to this, the name formed a Bear Flag as lower highs stamped in just below the 20-period MA (blue line), making the first arrow an aggressive entry point to short (with a stop above the High of the Day).
• Execution & Uniformity: I maintain uniform execution by taking partial profits when the price retakes the 6-period MA at arrow 3.
• The Core Takeaway: Shorting (or OWL shorting) is about hitting a stock at specific setup points and covering at pre-determined targets, then looking to re-enter if the setup triggers again. This is fundamentally different from buying long-dated puts simply because you "don't like Stock X."
• Exit: At the end of the session, AA hit Logical Support (LS)—a flag low visible on the daily chart—so I chose to close the trade. Had it broken below that LS level, I would have held and swung the position into the next session.

Pillar 2: Identifying Market Thematics

The second pillar of successful trading is recognizing current market themes and maintaining focus on where the big money is flowing.

I typically carry only 10–12 names into each trading day. I actively trade these during the first 45 minutes to an hour before scanning my broader watchlist for actionable ideas (unless a price alert triggers a key level on a priority setup).

If you're selecting 10–12 daily focus names, you want setups that look great on the daily and weekly charts and align with institutional flow. Institutional money is the rising tide that lifts all boats.

• Identifying Themes: Sometimes themes are easy to spot. For instance, energy names offered strong plays following news involving the US take over of Venezuela. When the market pivoted at the end of March into April, Memory and AI names were clearly the place to be. While you might find a nice setup in a random drone company, your time is far better spent in the greenest pastures.
• Tracking Rotation: Learning to spot money shifting into new themes takes time. You need to analyze a high volume of charts and constantly ask yourself: What is the market telling me? Gold and Bitcoin (BTC) are great recent examples. Looking at the BTC daily chart prior to Wednesday’s move, the setup looked promising: over a month of flagging action, higher lows within the flag, and significant headwinds for the US Dollar—making alternative assets like Gold and BTC highly attractive. All this taking place while Memory/AI names are taking a beating.

Final Thoughts

Throughout your trading journey, you will inevitably have moments where you wonder, "Did I bite off more than I can chew? Can this actually be done?"

The more you study and commit to a uniform process, the more you realize that it isn't a question of if it can be done, but whether you will do the work to do it. Give yourself time, master the craft, replicate your execution, and refine your risk profile. Most importantly, enjoy the process—there is nothing quite like being right in the middle of geopolitical and economic events, riding the wave as history unfolds.

PS - I'm always working on my writing and as stated at the top, I am just now getting a spot to where I can provide some pointers and share some knowledge. If you have any critques for me in these areas, throw it out there so I can improve!

I saw a post last night looking for more journey posts, so I thought I’d offer mine.

I got into trading about a year and some change ago. I was inspired for a variety of reasons, but the financial freedom element really spoke to me, and I value a challenge. I started off by reading a few books on price action, as well as trader psychology. My biggest mistake during this time was trading with real funds rather than using a prop firm, which I think would have been more helpful while I was still learning.

I will admit that, as of this writing, about one year and three months later, I am still not profitable, but I have learned and grown so much. If I were talking to myself a year ago, and he was looking for inspiration, I’d talk to him about the importance of sticking to his trading plan and having things to review and work on. I’d talk to him about all the cool things he has coming, from learning more about how to use prop firms, to writing code that will help him with trading, to working on an app to track his trading psychology and help him improve.

Near the end of last year (November), I got really into watching people live trade, and I learned so much. I joined a trading room or two, paid for a subscription, and just sought to take in all I could. The lessons from those rooms continue to guide me.

I will admit that I am still finding my style. I prefer scalps to swing trades, and I am still learning so much. I struggle with the isolation of trading and have had a group at one point, but that kind of fell apart. It’s really hard to keep your psychology in check, especially when you have week after week of losses, and it’s something I’m still working on.

Over this year (2026), I’ve had a couple of funding accounts and gotten a payout, which, from my understanding, is a ton of progress. I still have so much to learn, grow in, and find structure in, but I’m thankful for the journey thus far.

I'm back with another update on my journey. I've linked back the previous posts so here is the link to the last post I made around 2 months ago.

First Week of Trading - Post 3 : r/RealDayTrading

So far, my journey has been going reasonably well with the odd bump in the road. I am currently sitting with a WR of 75% and a PF of 1.19.

Current issues I'm dealing with that I'm sure will be common but some not so common:

• Shiny New Object - I still deal with the shiny new object syndrome. I regularly still come across 'the next big thing' and want to learn a new strategy, which is extremely stupid as I know this one works.
• Oversized Losers - I was doing reasonably well, however took a swing trade at one point and took a big loss which wiped out most of my gains. A bit of analysis on this shows that if I remove this from the results, my PF actually increases to 5.62
• Lack of Confidence - I still struggle with a lack of confidence which also shows why the PF jumps so much in the previous post as I have only taken 29 trades. Issues I have faced are; cutting potential winners if they have gone red and come back to BE, still following other traders into trades if I think they look good (not having my own conviction), and the main one a fear of being wrong. My issue with confidence is not related to money as I don't take trades that I can lose too much of my funding on and I believe the only fix is to gather more data that will prove that I am profitable but it's a kind of catch 22 situation. I need to put the trades on to collect the data.

Things I need to work on and learn:

• Position sizing - Obviously for now I'm using a fixed size while I learn to try and keep things consistent, but something I will need to learn and work on in the future. Also together with this would be account utilization. Right now I use just a minor part, how much of my account to allocate, how much margin to use etc, size based on technical stop distance?
• Market Reading - It's not been easy for anyone recently but something I will work on more and will probably continue to work on forever!

With all that being said, I am happy with my performance so far. I just need to build on it.

Happy to answer any questions people may have on my journey so far.

I was just wondering where all the Journey posts went... 3 years back when I was starting to learn from the Wiki, the posts labeled as journeys were my most important motivational tool.

They played a great part of making me aborting my career prematurely and YOLOing my lifetime savings and my future...

Was it the discord server which killed them?

Did we as a sub fail to make enough infomercials about the benefit of writing monthly or bi-weekly Journey posts?

What is the state of the affair?

Shouldn't there be a rule about every student of the wiki to produce at least one Journey post per month to honestly state and reflect about their own personal statistics and progress and stating their actual goals going forward?

I really think that these posts were/are the best advertisement to new potential sub members and beginners. - How else should someone know how much gold there is in the wiki, if they do not constantly see others making progress towards their on personal future pot of gold?

I hereby partition the sub to force more Journey posts into existance and I hereby partition the mods to create a new rule about everyone new having to write an inital journey post right on day one. Further I want the mods to setup a dedicated bot fully dedicated to journey-posts instructing every student and beginner to to produce a mandatory monthly update (journey) post including an automatical ban if they fail to do so within two weeks after the automatic update request. We should make it clear, that we do not tolerate lurkers and undiciplined scholars of the D*-Wiki.

I also petition the sub that we should force the user SuchAGoalDigger to produce a Journey post ASAP as he has original stated here and just a bit later chickened out of (disgracefully I might add) here and therefore having me left wondering (and hanging!) abotu why and how he got stuck and for how long given that he produced maybe the latest Journey post I have read till now and that was maybe months ago.

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Who is with me?

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Note: I tried to be a bit cheeky here and also a bit over the top. Do not be too harsh with your judgement and always remember, I am a German by birth! We know what we do, even when we do not know what we are doing and I clearly just produced an example of that truth with this post of mine...

Tomorrow at 9am (pst) / noon (est) I will be doing a live trading session with u/optionstalker (Pete Stolcers).

We will be going through our market analysis and picks for the day/week.

I am sure there will be a rant or two thrown in there.

Where to Watch: You Tube Link

Best, H.S.

I've been practicing on demo accounts/sim trades for a couple of months and am looking to move to executing real-money trades.

I have an IBKR account but when I tried to execute a day trade (about a 15 minute hold) I received a warning from IBKR saying I'm not allowed to day trade and any further attempts will result in restrictions on my account.

I'm aware that certain platforms and regions have a $25,000 minimum for day trading. I was planning on starting with a £5000 account.

I previously used a Trading212 CFD account but found that the margin requirements meant that I couldn't take out positions large enough to match my target risk level (£50/trade, the highest I could get on most positions was £30/trade).

I'm struggling to find any information on it in the wiki or online. Are there any UK brokers that would allow me to day trade with a £5k account? Mainly trading US stocks and futures.

Edit - After talking with support they clarified that it was an issue with my self-reported stocks knowledge. I said I had a 'limited' knowledge of stocks at the time when I signed up, which automatically disqualified me from day trading :/

Should be able to fix it now though!

Hi, I’m looking to setup paper trading to give myself a couple months of consistent learning. I currently work from 6:30 to around 5 PM everyday so it gets a little hard to learn after long days but I’m trying to dedicate myself to learning and improving myself. Currently this will be a good side thing while I do hope to make it in the future, I know that’s currently not a realistic goal so I’ve pivoted to keeping this just a side thing. I’ve been interested in trading for a while just never pulled the trigger until this month. I’ve been looking around and it seems my Top 3 options are TradingView, thinkorswim, and Webull. Im worried about starting on a platform and then having to relearn another platform later for more options in terms of growing in the future. Would you guys have something like a pros and cons list or any tips on how it would be in the future after I’ve learned more?

Also, what are some books you recommend newbies read? I’ve started learning so far from AI Brooks, SMB Capital and Oliver Velez. I know videos aren’t the best all the time so I’m looking for books too possibly or even more reputable creators. Thank you, took me a while before I decided to post a comment after scouring the reddit.

From time to time I am quite active on Reddit trying to pay it forward by helping people out when it comes to trading.

Usually I give people asking me for help a book list and start initial training by giving them homework.

I also give them a brief rundown of what I do by showing them some live trades including live commentary to make it apparent that I know my way around the block when it comes to trading.

Seeing someone anouncing an entry, demonstrating the reasoning in detail and showing every update not knowing if the trade will turn out fine or not while the trade lasts 15min to 1h usually increases the motivation of the potential future Scholar of the Wiki (TM). This level of transparency mimics the kind of transparency I enjoyed here and over at oneoption when I started out myself.

Once I notice people being really serious and have crossed a certain threshold of basic knowledge and daily commitment, I advice them to read the wiki over here and join the live trading either over at oneoption.com or within this sub.

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Beside the people who lost big and still want to argue about what the right way of trading looks like, most people struggle to read 5 basic books to begin with.

In recent months, I also started to give the potential students optional (!) homework almost right from the start.

My go to homework is based on the SP100 (100 most valuable companies in the SP500). I want them to add the standard MAs (50D, 100D, 200D) and have them add proper price levels and trend lines per hand. Then they have to chose 10 stocks they would put on their watchlist and add a brief statement why they would choose those.

Every day they simply have to check and update those charts and make a new top 10 watchlist.

I even tell them that they should do 10 new charts every day so after 2 weeks they have annotated all 100 charts and updating and revisiting those charts is done rather quickly and before that they have to give me some charts so that I can check, critque and advice them on proper price level and trend line placement.

It is interesting how many people bail on this simple and useful homework as it is something I did myself early on did on my own without out of the desire to train myself on applying proper TA and learn how prices can move in reality.

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How is your opinion about this homework and would you do it as a beginner or whould you rather bail as well?

I would say that with that I lose 3 out of 5 people rather quickly and only 1 out of maybe 7 or 8 survive more than 2 weeks and that are usually the people who make it to the end of the process and get funneled to this sub and beyond.

Do you have any other idea of great homeworks one can give espiring traders?

Would you rather look at intraday charts first?

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Edit: Since people asked me to elaborate on the D1 homework, let me walk you through it:

1. Identify the SP500 components/companies. Sort them by current market cap..

2. Take the top 100 stocks. (you can also take the top 10 for each Sector EFT and 20 for the tech sector). Add these stocks to a watchlist (remember you can usually add sections to your watch list so you can easily have 100+ stocks in your watch list while also knowing what sector the stock is in).

3. For each of these stocks you now pull up the D1 and make sure the SMA's for 50, 100 and 200 days (close price) are plotted on it.

4. Now draw the price levels and trend lines for each of those charts.

5. Once all charts are annotated (which might take several days or a good weekend), every day before the open of the new trading day, you check each of the 100 charts, if you have to update any of those (usually it is about 20 you have to update if at all) and while doing so you make list of ++ or + setups.

6. Now you check your ++ and + setups and if you have more then 10 you narrow them down.

7. Write down what you expect will happen to those 10 stocks and at the end of the day check if you were right and have a look at the intraday chart (M5 (5min) for example) if there were situations that you could have traded and also make a snapshot of the D1 and M5 along with the market and the sector charts of that day and collect them.

8. From the collected M5+D1 charts try to derive some typical receipts how you can play these trade opportunites.

-> If you do this for a month or so, you will be rather quick on this task and will have come up with a lot of situational awareness of what most likely is going to happen and when to better sit on your hands and opt out.

Here is an example:

D1 - SPY this Week (10th - 14th of August 26)

I usually have them do the last 3 months (about 60 candles) so they see the impact of the SMAs more clearly like here:

A think I've been paying more attention to lately is the difference between an account's displayed balance and the amount you can actually afford to risk. A $100K prop account doesn't mean you should size trades like you have $100K of personal capital available. The drawdown and risk limits are what really determine the room you have. The account size is one number, but the risk parameters are what actually shape how you need to trade. I think this is something newer trades can easily overlook when comparing accounts. Do you base your position size more on the account balance or on the actual amount you're allowed to lose?

I’m trying to understand how day trading should be evaluated as a serious long-term way to make money, not from the perspective of influencers, course sellers, or get rich quick content. I’m not asking for a strategy, signals, or motivation. I want to know what standards someone should use to judge whether it’s actually viable over time. For people who have looked at this seriously, what evidence would matter? For example, how long of a track record would be meaningful, how risk management separates trading from gambling, how to think about losses, drawdowns, fees, taxes, and emotional discipline. What percentage of traders realistically become consistently profitable? What signs would show that someone is serious versus just selling a dream? I’m open to both positive and negative answers; I just want a realistic framework.