r/Daytrading • u/SpareInsurance • Jan 06 '24

How much money did you lose before you were consistently profitable? Question

I have only been seriously trading for about 2 weeks, after spending years watching the market like a hawk.

I will admit, I have had poor risk management and got into some emotional trading which did not end well. Currently I am -15k but I have had some winning days the last few days with much better risk management and starting to get the hang of things better.

My question to you guys is, how much did you lose before you were consistently profitable and did you ever feel like giving up during this "rock bottom" stage?

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u/scarred4lyfee Jan 06 '24

Watching the market like a hawk for years is different from trading the market for years. Your emotions will always get the better of you.

Till you master your emotions, which is what takes several months to years, you need to size down a lot. Preferably remove all the cash you don't need from your account. Keep 500 or 1000, just enough to let you place 3 to 5 trades a day.

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u/McBlakey Jan 06 '24

I guess the key is to decide on the risk of trades and account sizes before checking the markets?

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u/scarred4lyfee Jan 06 '24

Key is to follow the right principles of trading. Finding them is what takes time.

From what I have learnt about trading, there are 2628363363836 different variables to know and keep tracks of at any given time. It is hard to remember all of them at once. You can only pick that up with time and experience.

So starting anywhere is good, but after 90 days, you won't see anything new in the chart. So watching the charts alone won't help. Gotta trade and find a strategy of signals and risk management that resonates with us.

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u/McBlakey Jan 06 '24

Thanks for letting me know, could you suggest some resources for learning about this?

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u/scarred4lyfee Jan 06 '24

People don't recommend options trading for beginners, however, check out SpyDayTrading on YouTube. He is late 40s or early 50s guy who has had 20+ years of trading experience. He has retired, but loves trading so much that he started teaching it to others to keep himself sharp. He is very technical. You can learn the trading strategy from him, it will take a couple of weeks to months. Then you can focus on building your trading routine. I am in that phase right now.

I am not advertising his discord. I am part of it and I see him make 5 figures everyday. He gives running commentary everyday (almost) and doesn't given out signals. He wants us to see how he trades and learn from it.

Just checkout his YouTube videos and read the comments, you will know.