The Mind of a Day Trader

Just a quick blog post today, the sole purpose of this post is to try and save you some time if you're currently pursuing a trading career and struggling with it, in an effort to get you to work smarter, not harder. Regarding a trade - how often are we left raising our hands to the sky, wondering what the hell just happened and how could we possibly have been so stupid? You know that feeling of pure helplessness, where your greed & ego literally, physically, prevent you from pressing that button to stop out of a trade, because "well I didn't lose yet, if this piece of crap stock would just reverse like it's supposed to (because I say so), I can avoid taking this loss and everything will be fine." You know what I'm talking about. It's an all too common feeling, and we've all been there. If you're anything like me, the beginning of your trading journey is filled with ups and downs in terms of motivation level. There were times I'd read ...

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...

I've been reading a lot of self-improvement books & articles lately and have really been enjoying the content, so I figured I'd gather some of my findings & reflect on them in my own words to share with you and how I feel they tie into trading.  Since I've left the workforce and pursued entrepreneurship, some of the thoughts I'm about to share have begun to resonate much louder with me as I see them start to play out personally.  Disclaimer:  This is not an anti-establishment message telling you to go drop out of school. I just use this example as a vehicle to portray my logic here. It is just my take on one of the main reasons things are the way they are in our lives, and why our failures influence us negatively much more than they do positively. It's simply some thought provoking & controversial content for you to reflect on - something to think about if you're having issues in any aspect of your life, perhaps you've fallen into thi...

The beginning stages of this game are brutal. You’re going to be horrible at it. You're going to feel stupid. You’re going to put in endless hours of work, and you’re still going to lose money and make the same mistakes over and over again. In just about anything else when you are learning…if you put in lots of hard work, you’ll get better at said task at a rate of time relative to the amount of work you put in. The harder you work, the faster you'll get better. Trading is not one of those things, so don’t burn yourself out at the beginning of your journey staying up until 3am every night thinking the answer to all your problems is "I just need to study harder" or it's in some book or DVD or online. It’s not. You just need screen time & experience.  There are ups and downs. In the beginning, more downs than ups. There will be moments of clarity early on when you're going to feel like you’ve “turned the corner and finally figured it out”…….you have...