How to Day Trade for a Living: Tools, Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology

In order to become a consistently profitable trader, I also believe that you need to follow these seven essential and fundamental steps before entering into the world of trading with your real money. Some of these steps you should do before and after each and every single trade you make:

Now that you have read this book, you should be in a better position to make a decision on whether or not day trading is right for you. Day trading requires a certain mindset, as well as a discipline and a set of skills that not everyone possesses. Interestingly, most of the traders I know are also poker players. They enjoy speculation and the stimulation that comes from it. Although poker is a type of gambling, day trading is not. Day trading is a science, a skill, and a career, and has nothing to do with gambling. It is the serious business of selling and buying stocks, at times in a matter of seconds. You should be able to make decisions fast, with no emotion or hesitation. Doing otherwise results in losing real money.

After you’ve made up your mind and decided that you want to start day trading, the next step is to get a proper education. This book equips you with the basic knowledge essential for day trading, but you still have a long way to go before you will be a consistently profitable trader. Can you be a mechanic by just reading a book? Can you perform surgery after reading a book or taking First Aid 101? No. This book develops a foundation that you can build upon. This book introduces straightforward trading setups to simply show what day trading looks like. It is not meant by any means to be a stand-alone book. You are not a trader yet, not even close.

I encourage you to read more books and find online or in-person courses on day trading. New traders often search for the best traders on the Internet. They think that learning from the most experienced traders is the best way to learn. On the contrary, I think new traders should look for the best “teacher”. There is a difference. Sometimes the best trader has no personality, or poor people skills, while a consistently profitable, but not one of the top ten traders, can emerge as a premier lecturer, communicator, and mentor. New traders need to find the best teacher. You don’t need to learn from the best traders to become a proficient trader yourself. Think about who some of the best professional sports coaches are. Often they were not superstar players. They knew the sport, but their passion was for teaching and developing players. The skills needed to become a great trader are different from those required to be an effective trading coach. Being a star trader requires superior pattern recognition and discipline. On the other hand, effective trading coaches are often obsessed with finding better ways to teach, are patient, and communicate clearly and effectively in a simple and easy-to-understand language. They can explain their methodology coherently. Often great traders lack the monetary incentive to create the best training program .

You should never start your day trading career with real money. Sign up with one of the brokers that provides you with simulated accounts with real market data. Some brokers give you access to delayed market data, but don’t use those. You need to make decisions real time. Most of the simulated data software is a paid service, so you need to save some money for that expense. Many trading rooms and trading educators offer simulator accounts. DAS Trader offers the best simulated accounts for as low as $120 per month (at the time of writing) with higher prices for more features such as replay practice during off-market hours for those want to practice when the market is closed. Check out their website ( www.dastrader.com ) or contact them at support@dastrader.com for more information. This completes my unpaid and unsolicited advertisement for them!

If you use it for six months, and trade only with simulated money, it will probably cost you less than $1,000. This is the cost of a proper education. If you are seriously considering day trading as a career, it’s a small expenditure compared to the cost of an education for a new profession. For example, imagine that you want to go to school to get an MBA - it will easily cost you over $50,000. Likewise, many other diploma or post-graduate programs cost significantly more than the education required for day trading.

Once you have a simulated account, you will need to develop your strategy. Try the strategies that I have discussed in this book, and master one or two of them that fit with your personality, available time, and trading platform. There is no best strategy among them, just like there is no best automobile in the market. There might, however, be a best car for you. The VWAP, Support or Resistance, and the Opening Range Breakout Strategies are my favorites. You need to only master a few of them to always be profitable in the market. Keep your strategy simple. When you have a solid strategy that you’ve mastered, make sure there is no emotion attached to it. Keep practicing it, and then start practicing a second strategy, and learn to incrementally add size in those strategies.

Practice with the amounts of money that you will be trading in real life. It is easy to buy a position worth $100,000 in a simulated account and watch it lose half of its value in a matter of seconds. But could you tolerate this loss in a real account? No. You will probably become an emotional trader and make a decision quickly, usually resulting in a major loss. Always trade in the simulator with the size and position that you will be using in the real account. Otherwise, there is no point in trading in a simulated account. Move to a real account only after at least three months of training with a simulated account and then, start small, with real money. Trade small while you’re learning or when you are feeling stressed.

New traders often try to skip steps in the process, lose their money, and then give up their day trading career forever and tell themselves that it is impossible to make money by day trading. Remember, baby steps. Success in day trading is one foot forward and then the next. Master one topic, and then and only then move on to the next.

Most traders struggle when they first begin, and many do not have sufficient time when the markets are open to practice in real time. Those who can give trading more time when they start have a better chance to succeed. How long does it take to be a consistently profitable trader? I don’t think anyone can become a consistently profitable trader in less than six to eight months. After three months of paper trading, you need at least another three months of trading in small share size to master your emotions and practice self-discipline while trading with your real money. After six months, you may become a seasoned trader. Eight months is probably better than six months, and twelve months is perhaps better than both. Are you patient enough for this learning curve? Do you really want this career? Then you should be patient enough. Do you have this much time to learn the day trading profession?

It always amuses me when I see books or online courses and websites that offer trading education that will make a person money starting on day one! I wonder who would believe such advertisements.

You must define a sensible process oriented goal for yourself, such as: I want to learn how to day trade. I do not want to make a living out of it for now . Do not set an absolute income for yourself in day trading, not at least for the first two years. This is very important. Many traders think of inspiring goals such as making a million dollars or being able to trade for a living from a beach house in the Caribbean. These goals may be motivating, and they definitely have their place, but they distract you from focusing on what you need to do today and tomorrow to become better. What you as a new trader can control is the process of trading: how to make and execute sound trading decisions. Many think a profitable day is a good trading day. They’re wrong. A good trading day is a day when you are disciplined and you trade sound strategies. Your daily goal should be to trade well, not to make money. The normal uncertainty of the market will result in some days or weeks being in the red.

Often new traders email and ask me how they can become full-time traders while they are working at a different job from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. New York time. I really don’t have any answer for that. They probably cannot become a full-time trader if they cannot trade in a simulator real time between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. New York time. You do not need to have the whole day available for trading, but you at least need the first two hours that the market is open. If you insist, I would say the first one hour that the market is open (9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. New York time) is the absolute minimum time you should be available for trading and practice, in addition to any time you need for preparation before the market opens at 9:30 a.m. New York time. Sometimes I am done with trading and hit my daily goal by 9:45 a.m., but sometimes I need to watch the market longer to find trading opportunities. Do you have this flexibility in your work-life schedule?

When I started day trading, I was unemployed. Then I had to find a job to pay the bills because I was losing my savings on day trading. I am lucky I live in the Pacific time zone because I could trade and practice between 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. and then be at work for 9 a.m. Pacific time. If you don’t have this luxury, maybe swing trading is better for you, but making a living out of swing trading is more difficult. The best swing traders can expect an annual return of 15-20% on their account size. Day traders, on the other hand, look to profit between 0.5-1% of their account size daily. The currency market (Forex) is open 24 hours/5 days per week, and perhaps you could consider trading currencies and commodities if you do not have sufficient free time to practice day trading or swing trading. This book though is not a useful guide for swing trading or for the Forex market. They are both different from day trading in so many ways.

You must always be continuing your education and reflecting upon your trading strategy. Never stop learning about the stock market. The market is a dynamic environment and it’s constantly changing. Day trading is different than it was ten years ago, and it will be different in another ten years. So keep reading and discussing your progress and performance with your mentors and other traders. Always think ahead and maintain a progressive and winning attitude .

Learn as much as you can, but keep a degree of healthy skepticism about everything, including this book. Ask questions, and do not accept experts at their word. Consistently profitable traders constantly evaluate their trading system. They make adjustments every month, every day, and even intraday. Every day is new. It is about developing trading skills, discipline, and controlling emotions, and then making adjustments continually. That is How to Day Trade for a Living .

Traders who are consistently profitable have studied the fundamentals of trading and have learned how to make well-thought-out and intelligent trades. Their focus is on the rationale for their actions rather than on making money. Amateurs, on the other hand, are focused on making money every single day. That kind of thinking can be their worst enemy. I am not consciously trying to make money as a trader. My focus is on “doing the right thing”. I am looking for excellent risk/reward opportunities, and then I trade them. Being good at trading is the result of mastering the skills of trading and recognizing the fundamentals of a good trade. Money is just the by-product of executing fundamentally solid trades.

As a new trader, you will be constantly looking at your profit and loss (P&L). P&L is the most emotionally distracting column in my trading platform. Plus $250, negative $475, plus $1,100. I tend to make irrational decisions by looking at it. I used to panic and sell my position when my P&L became negative although my trade was still valid according to my plan. Or, quite often, I became greedy and sold my winning position too early while my profit target had yet to be reached according to my plan. I did myself a favor and I hid my P&L column. I trade based on technical levels and the plan I make. I don’t look at how much I am up or down in real time.

P&L is not important when novices first begin trading with real money, especially when smaller share sizes are involved. Most trading platforms include an option to hide real time P&L. When this is not available, a strategically placed strip of ever-versatile duct tape or dark-colored masking tape will conceal that information. Your goal is to develop trading skills and not to make money. You must focus on getting better every single day, one trade after another. That is How to Day Trade for a Living . Push your comfort zone to find greater success.

John Wooden (or as some call him, the Wizard of Westwood), the famous American basketball player and coach, once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. ” Indeed.

There are two aspects to the preparation process for day traders:

1) the preparation necessary before the market opens (usually the night before or between 8 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. New York time), and

2) the specific trading information you must obtain before you can make a trade .

Wake up on time and get in front of your PC early.

Review your scanners and shortlist your choices of stocks for the day. Review www.finviz.com or www.briefing.com and read about the fundamental catalysts that caused the stock to gap up or down. Compile information such as daily volume, intraday range (the Average True Range), and short interest. Review daily charts and identify important levels of support or resistance. I do not make a trade unless I know the average volume, Average True Range, important technical levels, short interest, and fresh news for the Stocks in Play.

Shortlist your watchlist down to two or three stocks. During earnings season, there are many Stocks in Play to choose from. Each day, traders shouldn’t choose more than two or three of these stocks to focus on. You can make considerably more money trading one or two stocks well instead of watching and trading many stocks poorly.

The earlier you start your morning, the more time you will have to go through the news and find the best Stocks in Play. Sometimes in those extra minutes you find the stock of the day that you wouldn’t have if you had spent less time researching. Moreover, you have extra time to ask members of your community about their choices of stocks and obtain their feedback. Most professional traders do not arrive later than 7:30 a.m. New York time. Experienced traders with a strong community and powerful scanners can certainly stroll in later, but 9 a.m. is the latest that most serious traders would ever consider arriving at their desk. Prepare physically. Drink enough water to hydrate during the morning stretch and do not become over-caffeinated.

Being present in the pre-market is important. Every once in a while there will be an opportunity during pre-market trading to make quick money on a breaking news story. In addition, valuable information can be obtained by watching how stocks are being traded in the pre-market. Monitor the ranges of the stocks that are on your watchlist, identify intraday support or resistance levels, and confirm how much volume is being traded.

New traders will often think that trading strategies can be reduced to a few rules that they must follow in order to be profitable: always do this or always do that. Wrong. Trading isn’t about “always” at all; it is about each single trade, and each situation. Every trade is a new puzzle that you must solve. There is no universal answer to all of the puzzles in the market. Therefore, you need to make a plan for each trade as early as when you are doing your pre-market scanning. Before making a trade, you must create a plan for your trades or a series of “if-then ” statements. Develop some plans as to when you might take a position in one of the stocks on your watchlist: if you see x scenario, then you will buy at y price. Continue creating “if-then” scenarios for each outcome.

For an example, let’s take a look at Figures 10.1 and 10.2. Imagine you plan to trade DICK’S Sporting Goods, Inc. (ticker: DKS) on March 7, 2017. The stock had gapped down because of disappointing earnings reports and was being traded at around $50.50 in the pre-market. You think it might be a Stock in Play.

Consider the different ways the stocks you have picked might trade and develop a series of if-then scenarios such as I’ve marked in Figure 10.2 below:

If the price cannot push higher than VWAP in the first fifteen minutes of the market Open, then I will go short until the previous day close of $48.10.

If the price does sell off to the previous day close of $48.10, then I will go long and ride the reversal to VWAP.

If the price pushes over VWAP with high volume, then I will go long and ride the momentum to sell at the next resistance level of $53.25.

If the price breaks over the daily level of $53.25, then I will go long again until the daily level of $55.50 (which is not shown in the above Figure 10.2).

On the other hand, if the price goes to $53.25, and that level acts as a strong resistance, then I will go short with the stock until it goes back down to VWAP.

You can write down your statements at the beginning of your trading career to make sure you stick to them, but after a few months of simulated trading you will learn how to quickly develop and review these statements in your mind. You may find that with time, some notes are all you will need. That is one of the most important outcomes of trading in a simulator: to practice and master if-then scenarios for your strategies and to process that information quickly. That is why at least three months of live simulated trading is essential as you begin your day trading career. As intraday traders, we develop theories daily.

In case you are wondering about DKS in the above example, it actually opened weak (below VWAP) and it was a good short trade toward the previous day close of $48.10 as you can see in Figure 10.3 below. I then caught a smaller bounce from the previous day close to VWAP with a long position.

Hard work in day trading is different from what you might originally assume. A trader should not work 100 hours a week like investment bankers or corporate attorneys or other highly paid professionals do because, for us day traders, there are no end of the year bonuses. More than anything else, day trading is perhaps most similar to being a professional athlete because it is judged by one’s daily performance. Having said that, day traders should work hard, consistently and productively, each and every day. Watching your trading screens intently and gathering important market information is how we define hard work in day trading. You must ask the following questions constantly and at a rapid pace for several hours every day:

These are some of the questions that I ask myself and then answer before trading a stock. All of this information should be gathered before you make any trade. This is what we mean by hard work. As you can see, day trading is an intense intellectual pursuit which requires hard work. Remember Rule 2?

It is essential to develop the routine of showing up every day to trade, whether it is in your real account or in a simulator. Searching for support and resistance levels each day, including before the market opens, will benefit your trading in the long run. Turning off the PC early after a few bad trades is a strategy that should be reserved for the rare occasions when it is absolutely essential to give your brain a break. Usually, spending some time in a simulator after some losses will clear your mind sufficiently. Novice traders using a simulator should keep on trading and practicing until the Close. After all, trading in the simulator is not nearly as stressful as real trading with real money. Using a simulator with no commission and no P&L is still no excuse for overtrading. At all times the focus must be on sound strategies with excellent risk/reward opportunities.

Becoming a consistently profitable trader requires hard work, extensive preparation, and considerable patience.

Successful trades usually look easy after they’re done, but actually finding them is far from easy and requires more patience and hard work than you might imagine if you have not day traded before.

You need to watch, watch some more, and then keep watching. If a stock you’re watching isn’t offering excellent risk/reward opportunities, it’s time to move on. Check out other stocks on your watchlist, and then monitor them closely. Consistently profitable traders often spend their trading days searching and watching for excellent risk/reward opportunities.

Successful traders are patient and resist the temptation to be involved in every move. Traders need to wait for opportunities where they feel comfortable and confident. It is not enough just to buy a strong stock, or sell short a weak one. Entry price is also very important. You have to open your positions at a price that offers the best risk/reward opportunity and not trade a strong stock that has moved away from a good risk/reward entry. That, as I described earlier, is called chasing the stock .

For example, if a stock is trading near a support and then breaks out downward, and you see a short selling opportunity but miss it, well, that is your first mistake. But if, out of frustration, you sell short that same stock well below that level, you have chased it. Now you have made a bigger mistake. Chasing stocks is a deadly and unforgivable sin in day trading. Missing the opportunity will not lose you any money (just an opportunity cost), but chasing the stock will. Do not let one mistake cause you to lose money with another one.

Success in trading comes with skill development and self-discipline. Trading principles are easy, and day trading strategies are very simple. I have a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and I have worked as a research scientist at a world-class facility. I have published numerous scholarly publications in high impact and respected scientific journals on my nanotechnology and complicated molecular level research. Believe me, I had to study and understand extremely more difficult concepts, so I can assure you that day trading, in theory at least, is easy.

What makes day trading, or any type of trading for that matter, difficult is the discipline and self-control that you need. You have no chance to make money as a trader without discipline, no matter your style, the time you commit to trading, the country you live in, or the market you are trading in.

As I wrote in Chapter 3, novice traders who fail to make money in the markets will sometimes try to improve themselves by learning more about how the markets work, studying new strategies, adopting additional technical indicators, following new traders, and joining other chatrooms. What they don’t realize is that the main cause of their failure is often not their lack of technical knowledge but their lack of self-discipline, their impulsive decisions, and their sloppy risk and money management.

Professional institutional traders often perform significantly better than private retail traders. Most private traders are university-educated, literate people. They are often business owners or professionals. In contrast, typical institutional traders are loud twenty-something-year-old cowboys who used to play rugby in college and haven’t read a book in years. Why do these “youngsters” outperform private traders year after year? It’s not because they are younger or sharper or faster. And it’s not because of their training or platforms, because most retail traders have almost the same gear as they do. The answer is the strictly enforced discipline of trading firms.

Some successful institutional traders go out on their own after asking themselves, “Why am I sharing my profits with the firm when I know how to trade and could be keeping all of the profits for myself? ” Most of them end up losing money as private traders. Even though they work with the same software and platforms, trade the same systems, and stay in touch with their contacts, they still fail. After a few months, most of them are back at a recruiting office, looking for a trading job. Why could those traders make money for their firms, but not for themselves?

The answer is self-discipline.

When institutional traders quit their firm, they leave behind their manager and all of the strictly enforced risk control rules. A trader who violates risk limits is fired immediately. Traders who leave institutions may know how to trade, but their discipline is often external, not internal. They quickly lose money without their managers because they have developed no self-discipline.

We private retail traders can break any rule and change our plan in the middle of a trade. We can average down to a losing position, we can constantly break the rules, and no one will notice. Managers in trading firms though are quick to get rid of impulsive people who break any trading rule for a second time. This creates a serious discipline for institutional traders. Strict external discipline saves institutional traders from heavy losses and deadly sins (such as the averaging down of a losing position), which quite often will destroy many private accounts.

Discipline means you execute your plan and honor your stop loss as you set it out, without altering it in the middle of a trade. Discipline is executing your detailed plan every single time. If your plan is to buy a stock at VWAP and your stop loss is if it fails to hold VWAP, then you must accept the loss immediately and get out of the trade if the stock fails to hold VWAP.

Do not be stubborn about your decision if you are wrong. The market does not reward stubbornness. The market is not interested in how you wish stocks would trade. Traders must adapt to the market and do what the market demands. And that is the way day trading works and that is how it will always work.

There are going to be many days when you follow your plan, like in the above example, and then the stock will go back up and trade above VWAP after you were stopped out. In fact, there will be many times such as this in your trading career. But consider these two points: (1) Do not judge your trading strategy based upon one trade. Executing your plan, and being disciplined, will lead to long-term success. Many times your plan will be fine and solid but a hedge fund manager out of nowhere will decide to liquidate a position in a stock that you are trading, the price will drop suddenly, and you will get stopped out. You did not do anything wrong; it is the nature of the market that is unpredictable. At times, the uncertainty of the market will leave you in the red. (2) A professional trader accepts the loss and gets out of the trade. You then re-evaluate and plan another if-then scenario. You can always get back into the stock. Commissions are cheap (for most of the brokers), and professionals often take several quick stabs at a trade before it will start running in their favor .

Trading teaches you a great deal about yourself, about your mental weaknesses and about your strengths. This alone ensures that trading is a valuable life experience.

Dr. Brett Steenbarger, the author of great books such as The Psychology of Trading and The Daily Trading Coach , once wrote:

“There is no question in my mind that, if I were to start trading full-time, knowing what I know now, I would either join a proprietary trading firm or would form my own “virtual trading group” by connecting online (and in real time) with a handful of like-minded traders. ”

You need to be part of a mastermind group that will add value to your trading career. To whom can you turn to ask trading questions? I encourage you to join a community of traders. Trading alone is very difficult and can be emotionally overwhelming. It is very helpful to join a community of traders so that you can ask them questions, talk to them, learn new methods and strategies, get some hints and alerts about the stock market, and make your own contributions. You will also notice that senior traders often lose money. It can be comforting to see that losing money is not limited to you, and that everyone, including experienced traders, has to take a loss. As I’ve said, it’s all part of the process .

There are many chatrooms that you can join on the Internet. Some of them are free, but most of them charge a fee. In our chatroom, you can see my trading platform and stock screener in real time while I am trading and listen as I explain my strategy and thought process. You can also take your own trades while still being a part of our community.

You may also want to find a trading mentor. A good mentor can positively impact your trading career in so many different ways. Today, because of algorithmic programs and market volatility, it’s much harder for new traders to survive the learning curve. A good mentor can make a huge difference. A mentor demonstrates the professionalism required to be successful. A mentor can lead you to discover the talent inside of you. Sometimes you just need to be told that you can do it. In online trading communities, experienced traders mentor new traders at times for a fee, but often for free. I personally mentor a few traders at a time, and of course, I myself did and still have a trading mentor. It is important to note though that mentorship does not work unless you are receptive, listen, and then put in the work necessary to adapt successfully.

You should find a mentor whose trading style fits with your personality. For example, if momentum trading is your favorite style, you’re wasting your time talking to me. Although I trade them from time to time, my style is really only for those who have an intraday swing day mentality. I mostly focus on VWAP, Opening Range Breakouts and Support or Resistance trades .

By now, you may correctly think that trading psychology and self-discipline, a series of proven trading strategies, and excellent money and risk management are the essential elements of success in trading. But there is another element that ties all of your trading fundamentals together: record-keeping.

Keeping records of your trades will make you a better trader as it will enable you to learn from your past successes and failures. In fact, the most important and the most effective way to continuously improve as a trader is to keep a diary of your trades. There are many consistently profitable traders around the world, trading different markets with different methods, but they all have one thing in common: they keep excellent records of their trades. It is a very tedious and boring task; but it is also a very necessary task. Journal your trades daily. Make sure to include the following points in your trading journal:

Using either Screenshot Captor or Lightshot (both of which are free software), I personally take a screenshot from my screen and journal my trades. Please visit our website for ideas from some experienced traders on how they journal their trades. Many of them have shared their Excel spreadsheet or other tools they are using in our publicly available forum at https://forums.bearbulltraders.com. You do not have to follow any of our styles, but you should find what works best for you because, in order to be successful, you must journal your trades daily.

Mike Bellafiore, co-founder of SMB Capital (a proprietary trading firm in New York City), writes in his book, One Good Trade , that the professional traders at his firm video record all of their trades during the day. In their afternoon session, they sit around their conference room tables, enjoy a lunch catered by the firm, review their trades and groupthink about better ways to take your money. Trading is a full-contact sport, and anything less than your complete focus is disrespectful to the game and will certainly knock you out of that game. Profitable traders constantly evaluate their trading system and are continually making adjustments.

New traders often ask me how to improve after a series of losses and a period of struggling. I recommend to them that they review their journal and look more specifically at what precisely they are doing poorly at in their trading. I am doing poorly doesn’t mean anything. You cannot improve if you don’t have a proper record of your daily trades.

One time a trader complained about her order execution speed. I remotely connected to her PC (using TeamViewer, a remote control/remote access software) and evaluated the CPU performance. I had to remove many unnecessary programs and apps from her PC, run a malware scanner and remove a variety of intrusive software, computer viruses, spyware, adware, scareware, and other malicious programs. I freed up a lot of the PC’s memory and CPU capacity and her trading execution speed increased significantly. Your PC, just like your body and mind, needs to be kept clean, lean and fast, all of which have a direct effect on your trading platform and eventually your trading results.

I personally live video record all of my trades during the morning session (as I rarely make any trades Mid-day or at the Close). I believe traders, like athletes, should watch their trading videos. The best athletes and teams watch films of themselves to see what they’re doing right and wrong, and how best to improve. I will review my tapes during Mid-day and make sure to note important observations on my entry, exit, price action, Level 2 signals and so on. I try to learn as much as possible from my trades. Sometimes I look for new algorithmic programs that I must be aware of. I search for areas where I could have added more size. This is one of my trading weaknesses. I also do a poor job of holding for a longer time the stocks that are going in my favor. I therefore consider trades that I could have held longer. I make sure to find spots where I was too aggressive. I look for times where I took a trade even though it did not offer a good risk/reward opportunity. I review my position sizing and why and where I added more. That is How to Day Trade for a Living. There is no other way to get better. There are no excuses in trading.

Watching trading videos also shows me how easy trading is when there are no emotions attached to a trade. When I review my work, I am not invested in a trade in real time with real money. Trading live, the market seems fast and unpredictable. When you watch back your trading video, you see that the market is actually very slow. There are times when I see the pattern in a stock by watching my video and recognize how I traded the stock backward, and that is embarrassing for someone of my experience.

I later review my videos over the weekend to create educational series to use in teaching day trading. Over the weekend, after I celebrate the winning week on Friday night with my friends and family, I lock myself into my home office and cut tape after tape to develop and update my training programs .

Watching your videos is an exercise that can benefit all traders no matter their experience. New traders need to watch the markets trade. Watching your videos increases your trading experience and confidence and significantly shortens your learning curve. But I agree, it takes time and it is indeed boring.