I have mastered the art of Simplifying Day Trading making it accessible and fun for all levels of traders from newbies to seasoned traders.
My goal is to help you become a consistent, confident trader.
Why would anyone want to become a day trader?
There are plenty of reasons to jump in with both feet into this amazing world. The real question is how to get started.
Here are 6 reasons day trading CALLS to us:
- To leave your soul-sucking jobs
- To increase your side income
- To create a lifestyle you've always dreamed of
- To start making money for yourself instead of for others
- To travel and enjoy your life outside the constraints of a 9-5
- To trade in hours for free time with family
You can achieve all this, but... It boils down to your commitment and belief in yourself and your strategy.
How I Got Started in Day Trading
Over 20 years ago, living in NYC was the perfect time to learn about the financial markets. The energy of Wall Street and the constant seminars made it simple to dip your feet in. However, those seminars were mainly promos for the real courses, which cost anything from $5,000 to $15,000! Not including the $25,000 you needed to front your account to start day trading.
The prices were out of reach for me back then. So I had to go a different route.
I knew that I’d need to find a trading course to learn the ropes. After all the self-education I’d worked on, it was obvious that I wasn’t going to become a successful trader on my own. But sifting through what was real and what was a scam was practically a full time job in itself.
Deciding What Kind of Trader I Wanted to Become
If you want to become a full-time day trader, it’s essential to really narrow your scope. It’s nothing like investing where you can play with different positions, funds and markets.
Diversification is your enemy when you’re day trading.
To become a successful day trader, you need to choose one market. Master it and stick with it. It is the only way to become profitable, otherwise you are too scattered and will lose more than you make.
After months of attending every webinar and seminar online, as well as joining every online course that didn’t break the bank, I finally decided to focus on Futures (E Mini - S&P 500 Futures).
Day trading courses are not cheap, but they are critical. And after too much time lost on self-educating and way too much MONEY DONATED to the markets by going live when I was sooo not ready, I decided it was time to educate myself properly.
I ended up spending over $20,000 (not all at once) on my education.
I did it all - online academies, private one-on-one mentor ships. Small retreats and workshops. Seminars, conferences, summits, the list goes on and on.
But Here's the Thing...
Every instructor and every trading room taught you their 'system'. Without truly having you understand why you are going for those specific trade set ups. Leaving you to depend on them for any changes they spot or software / indicator updates.
I was sitting in trade rooms, watching how the instructors were taking trades, not understanding why that trade worked, only to take their word for it. And jumping in, usually when it was too late, and losing money.
And if I asked a basic question like, 'Can you explain what you mean by a sideways trend. Or what is a reversal pattern. Or what's a divergence?" I would almost always be ignored, or the answer would be snippy as in how do I not know this basic information?
It's as though I am born with this innate knowledge.
I felt like a music student, who just got started, and was thrown into an orchestra pit expected to join in and play with the experts, when I was never taught the basic notes and scales.
So, of course, I lost. BIG TIME
Over and over again, not accepting that I simply didn't understand what the market was doing and was relying too much on the strategy of the instructor, their indicators and in some cases, their software!
After a massive loss of over $3,842 in a span of 5 minutes, and 2 more days of revenge trading with another cumulative loss of $1,643, I decided to step away and reevaluate.
Or, in other words, I had a major breakdown.
What Happens When You Have a Breakdown?
Only 2 things can happen when you have a breakdown:
- You quit!
- You have a breakthrough
HAVE YOU NOTICED HOW DAY TRADING KEEPS US COMING BACK FOR MORE AND MORE
It's like an itch that doesn't go away. You need to scratch it over and over again, because you know that if others are doing it, you can too.
So I didn't give up, and after taking a few weeks off from trading, I came back with a revelation. I realized that I never learned the LANGUAGE OF THE MARKET!
So I threw myself back into the charts.
- Stripped my charts entirely of indicators, and read the naked price action.
- I started to see that the market speaks loud and clear. It tells us exactly what it will be doing.
- Reversal patterns and divergences show that the market is about to change momentum and I need to sit out and wait for confirmation.
- Support and resistance areas, once broken, can be the perfect set ups for break out trades.
- When the trend changes direction with strong confirmation, this is where you can go in for the bigger profit targets.
- Slowly I added in 2 indicators - EMA and MACDs.
- My EMA lines became the only place I took trades from, because otherwise I was simply jumping in aimlessly.
- I became ultra conservative - no more trigger happy (I was taking like 20 - 30 trades a day before) now I was down to 1- 3 trades and they have to be 85% probability of winning (this I had calculated after months and months of back testing each and every trade set up!)
My Biggest Game Changer of ALL!
Going for the BIG PROFITS looks great on paper.
Sure, who doesn't want to go for a target of $200 - $400?
Here's what happens when you go for such a big target for an intraday trader:
- You have to put up a risk of at least $100 - $300 - when you go for big rewards, you have to put up big risks!
- It takes a long time to get that kind of profit because with the E-mini that means I'm looking at 4 - 8 point runs.
- When you are waiting for huge runs, you get way too many retracements (corrections) that can stop you out, and give you serious anxiety.
- The human factor plays a huge role - when you are sitting thru such movement it's amazing how much the mind can play tricks on you. For some reason if the market starts to turn on you, can you start pushing the risk to be even more, not accepting the fact that you can lose. Yetttt... when it comes to taking profits, you will get out of a tiny profit yet still have massive risk on the table.
THIS WAS ABSOLUTELY KILLING ME, and the main reason I lost so much money day in and day out.
After my breakdown, and massive chart studying, when I finally decided to go for the trade set ups that I had been seeing over and over again, I realized one thing!
Most of my trades get to a 1 point profit over 85% of the time.
What does this mean?
How Scalping Saved My Trading Career and (Lifestyle)
When you look for a small profit, that means you have small risk on the table.
What it also means is that each trade that I was now looking at lasted 3 - 15 minutes tops.
I was able to sit thru each trade, without the stress and anxiety.
And with an 85% - 90% probability it would hit the small target.
That's when something clicked in me!
Do You Know What Emotional Capital Is?
When I finally, after years of failing, started to consistently hit my profits I realized that my confidence level was what was truly changing. And it had nothing to do with the money I was earning. Because my spirits were just as high when I took a VALID trade that simply didn't work out.
Instead of the nonstop degradation that had been going on in my head such as: "I can't believe I did that again, what the hell am I thinking, why don't I just stick to the plan, I suck at this, I hate myself, why am I doing this to myself and my family", etc...
Good thoughts started to pop up: "I can do this! I'm making the right decisions. I love sitting here and watching the markets. I love hearing the target bell go off."
The bad mouthing that was going on in my head didn't stop when I closed my charts. But continued on through everything else I was doing, like hanging out with my kids. Being with my husband, around my friends. I was so emotionally drained and total lack of confidence and full of doubt that it leaked into everything else I was doing.
By focusing on smaller targets, it became so much easier for me to follow my strategy and stay disciplined to my trading plan.
But the best part, my EMOTIONAL CAPITAL was getting filled up again and it was remarkable how it affected everything in my life.
'Small profits daily, lead to big profits yearly'
FUN FACTS About 'The Trader Chick'
- I'm an expat mama living in Barcelona, Spain
- I speak 3 languages fluently
- Russian - I was born in the USSR (Soviet Union) and a Refugee fleeing from there to the US over 40 years ago
- English - even though it is my second language, it is more my mother language than Russian, being raised in the US
- Spanish - I have been living as an expat in Central America for almost 20 years (first in Costa Rica for 7 years, next Guatemala for 14 years) and now in Barcelona, Spain.
- Before I started Day Trading I was a Fitness Instructor teaching aerobics and spinning throughout the top gyms of Manhattan
- And I was, still am, a travel blogger - Travel Experta has been my baby for over a decade, allowing my family and me to travel and share it with the world
- My kids are pro climbers and most of the time you can find me at a climbing gym with them or traveling with them for competitions.
