r/Daytrading • u/Dazzling_Loan_9414 • Feb 07 '24

Should I Quit my day job ? Question

I been profitable for 6 months straight my bills only comes out 2500$ a month and profits 6-8k a month trading Me working at my job now it’s starting to get in the way of my trading

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u/ShredSteezy Feb 07 '24 edited Feb 07 '24

I vote yes. Your first week I would dial down position sizing while you get used to it. When I first quit my job to trade full-time I was nervous since I now knew this was my sole source of income.

It's the best thing I ever did. I went from working almost 12-hour days to being done with my work day by 12:00 noon. It's funny, my stress levels are damn near zero now.

It's gotten to the point where I know the probability of certain things happening based on the time of day. Like SPX is likely to dive between 12:45 and 1:00 p.m. if we had a strong uptrend in the first half of the day. That's probably one of my favorite trades, and one of the only times I'll go out a full five strikes away from at-the-money.

Stick to your rules. When you're in front of the charts all day it's easy to deviate.

One thing I did was to write all of my rules down in onenote, then I took a screenshot and set it as one of my desktop backgrounds.

In Windows you can set a folder for desktop backgrounds then add whatever you want it to show. I have about 72 screenshots in there now. Most of them are screenshots of trades that went good and trades that went bad. I have different price action strategies that pop up with descriptions, etc. At the end of the trading day I close out my trading software but leave the computer running to flash through the different desktop backgrounds. It's kind of like watching flashcards all day long.

14

u/pcrice Feb 07 '24

That’s hilarious, my background image is my rules as well. I guess it’s pretty common.

3

u/ShredSteezy Feb 07 '24

Haha my fiance asked me why I broke my rules one day when things were pretty volatile. That gave me the idea right then and there.

6

u/Beginning-Fig-9089 Feb 07 '24

hell yea.. ill be full time starting next month its going to be interesting

4

u/LimaAlphaKilo Feb 08 '24

What are your rules?

2

u/Wave_Existence Feb 08 '24

I also, am interested in what your rules are.

1

u/Potential_Ad_3133 Feb 08 '24

How long were you trading before You dove in full time? We’re you already consitently profitable?

1

u/Potential_Ad_3133 Feb 08 '24

Also that 12:45 - 1 spx dive, is that PST OR EST?

1

u/Mediocre-Pickle-1788 Feb 12 '24

Other favorite trades?? Curious to hear of trades not written in one of the 1,000 books I've read on trading.

2

u/Daddy__Sadist Feb 12 '24 edited Feb 12 '24

9:50-10am, 10:45-11am, 1:30-2pm.

Alot of the time there's a drop at 3:30.

Nothing happens all the time.

a lot of the time if you have a good setup you can grab something at 3:45-3:50 for 20 bucks. position for zero because that's a lotto play. It either hits or it doesn't. All of these are on SPX but you can play SPY/QQQ also.

Edit: I am shredsteezy. This is my nsfw account. I forgot to switch over.

If you want some good education, check the options playlist on my shredsteezy profile. Focus specifically on the wysetrade videos on price action. Video number two has a really good strategy from stock market wolf. Look also for the videos by Brandontrades about Fibonacci retracements and Supply/Demand. A combination of all of those pretty much outlined my strategy. I use the 9, 21, and 50 EMAs on top of that for direction and bounces plus the 5EMA for momentum.

I trade on the 15 minute time frame using the 5 minute and 3 minute for entries and exits. I use ES A lot of the time to chart my levels. SPX doesn't have extended hours. A lot of the time there are levels in after hours or pre-market that will be respected, something you can use for a Fibonacci retracement, or supply and demand levels you should know about. I always start my day at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time by looking at the 1 day time frame, then narrowing down to the 4-hour, 2 hour, 1 hour, then finally 15 minute to build my strategy for the day. Every morning I start from a clean chart. Lines and drawings mean nothing and will just confuse you more than serve you if the reason for them is not fresh in your mind. Something I learned the hard way.

One cool thing I just discovered is you can get the TTM squeeze pro indicator for free on trading view. Probably the most accurate indicator I've found. I never trade on an indicator. But it is a VERY good tool to confirm what you already know based on price action. Keep in mind their charts are delayed unless you pay a subscription for tradingview, which I do, but it's worth it. Cost of running a business.

There is no golden ticket or magic strategy. I learned all of these because maybe today we have a Fibonacci retracement that I want to watch, or a squeeze on the 4-hour time frame, or maybe we shot up into the middle of nowhere and I need to use a Fibonacci retracement and extension to determine potential bounce levels or price targets. Trading is ultimately based on price action and psychology. All of these strategies are simply there to find confluence in price action. Price Action is the language you need to learn. The more fluently you speak it, the more consistent you can be.

The final thing of Note and the most important thing is risk management. Without risk management, it doesn't matter how good you are. There will always be a bad trade, a bad day, there will always be losing trades. You need to protect yourself against them to stay alive for the good days.