The Mind of a Day Trader

I lost money for about a year straight once I committed to day trading as a full time profession about 3 years ago. Literally a year straight. About 14 months to be exact. It is unbelievably discouraging, disheartening, disparaging, and every other emotion on that spectrum. If you can struggle through the turbulence, which few can, this is one of the most rewarding professions out there regarding potential revenue generated and just overall freedom, don't give up. Today I want to start to get in to some tips and realizations I came to that helped me emerge from the never-ending vicious cycle of "have a few good days.. give it all back" and a few ways I like to rationalize with myself mentally to help keep everything balanced. This will be a two part post. I wanted to continue to build off the last blog post with this one as well, where I spoke about the problems with striving for perfection in this game, and how that mentality, while useful in almost every other facet

First just wanted to say thanks to everyone who DM'd me blog topics - I've written them all down & will be answering all questions in a future post - todays post will be a more generalized topic of something I've wanted to discuss for a while, and was reminded of the other day by one of the traders in my group. I'm thinking of compiling topic suggestions for a little while and turning it into a bit of a Q&A style post soon - so if you've got anything you want me to discuss - send it over! Tweet at me. This post today is for anyone who trades on a daily basis. Perfectionism & how it relates to a day trader. I got this idea from one of my traders last week. It was from a guy whom I've been trading side by side with for about 8 months now & speak to daily, and who I know for a fact to be a knowledgable and solid trader. After a very good month followed by a rough few days, he sent me a message and said to me "Dante, I had a few moments ove

Hey guys..so if you've been following me for a while, you've probably heard me mention the low volume hold pattern - it's one of my absolute favorites to look for when playing momentum stocks. The low vol hold pattern to me has to have three important parameters to be valid: 1) It must be a momo play for the day with good range - basically something you would look at after a morning ramp and say "oh man, I really want to short this right now." 2) It must have good volume - at least  4-5 million shares+ traded on the day preferably - enough that when the pattern does present itself - it is easily recognizable like on LEDS today, which you can see below.  3) It's got to be a (relatively) low floater, the lower the better obviously (preferably <10M ) In short...don't go trying to apply this pattern to FB or VRX or AAPL or something along those lines - it won't work.  SO..basically what it is, is a low float stock with momentum that absolut