9 Things I Learned From Making $878,000 Trading in 57 Days…

So last quarter I made $878,000 from day trading alone. And in this video, I want to break down all the lessons I learned, some of the insights, and just kind of share key things with you guys to help you improve your trading. Now, before I go on to some of the lessons I learned, one thing I want to be crystal clear on, guys, is that I have been trading for 10 to 11 years so far. And the results that you guys see, the numbers you see is a combination of many, many, many years put together. The last thing I want you guys to kind of look at is, oh man, he made this much money in three months. How do that? Very, very fast. This is a long, long process. It is a marathon and you guys must understand that. So with that being said, let's dive into point number one. The first lesson is making money in trading is a byproduct of being a good trader. So what I mean by that is stop focusing on the money component and start focusing on how do I become a better trader, how do I start having better game plans, how do I start executing better, how do I start understanding how the market moves, moves better and how do I start reacting to these things a lot better and start making real improvements. The problem that traders do is they go into the markets and they go, well, I want to make money. Cool. That's what we all want to do. But in order for us to make money, we have to be a great trader. Now think about it. If you are naturally a good trader, you can manage risk well, you can execute at high levels and you can understand game plans, market movements and etc. On a high level, money will show up. So scratch the element of making money and start focusing on just becoming a good trader and becoming a well defined great risk manager and focus more on the process instead of the money. The next point, you don't have to make money every day. You don't even have to take a trade every day and you don't even have to be profitable every day. So last quarter I haven't traded every day, I haven't made money every day. There's some days I've been read two, three days back to back and there's days where I have showed up and I haven't even made a single trade or single dollar. And that comes to an understanding that the market not always going to present opportunities, especially depending on how you trade, what you're looking for. The way I trade and the way I look for things, the market isn't presenting me opportunities every day. And I'm aware of that. Because I'm aware of that. I know when I show up some days I may have red days. I may have days where I'm showing up and I'm spending three, four hours in front of my computer screen and I'm getting absolutely nothing, meaning I'm not making a dollar. I'm not even taking on a trade. And that is okay. And that is the game of trading, guys. The game of trading is a game where we will show up some days and we won't make money. We will show up some days and we won't even like, forget making money or nothing. We'll lose money some days because that's the risk element of us going and taking opportunities that the market is presenting or we think we're presenting, and we take risks accordingly. So start being comfortable with the idea of losing money and be comfortable with the idea of sitting on your hands, staying cash, and just waiting out for good plays that the market may eventually give you. Point number three, as a trader, you must know when to be aggressive and when to play defense. So in the past three months, we've had great couple of days where the market has given us a lot of opportunities over and over and over again. Yet again. I've also had days in the past couple of months where the market has given me absolutely no trade opportunity at all. Now the problem is when there are opportunities in the market, you must know how to be aggressive. You must know how to take advantage of these opportunities. Now, when the market shifts and there's no opportunities that exist here, you now need to know how to protect your capital, how to be patient and just basically sit on your hands. This is a key place where I see a lot of traders, traders mess up, they'll start trading and then when the market isn't giving them opportunities and the market is dead, which is normal. Guys, just once again, going back to another point, it's very normal for the market to not give us opportunities every day. So when it doesn't, just be patient, just sit on your hands and say, today's the day. Even though I showed up for four hours, even though I showed up for five hours and nothing happened, that is still better than me going on tilt and just burning capital. Because when I burn capital, it's not just financial, it's also emotional and mental capital that you're burning as well. Point number four, making money in trading is not linear. You'll have months where, where you make a great amount of money and you'll have a Month where you basically make nothing or you'll even have a red month. And that's totally natural. That's totally normal in the game of trading. Now, in my past three months, I've had my first two months where I've done exceptionally well, and my third month in June where I probably made 1/3 or 1/4 of the first two months. So in April and May combined, I made close to 700 and some thousand. And in June I made about 100 some thousand, whatever the number is. I don't know on top of my head, but just to kind of show you guys where I made in the past three months, I made 80% of my profits in two months, where one month I made not even one fourth of that. When I take a step back into my trading performance for the years, for the past couple of years, there are months where I have had really, really big months. And then the following month I'll be lucky even if I'm green. And that's a combination of performance and a combination of market opportunity. Market, as I mentioned, will not give you the same opportunities month over month. And your performance will also not be the same month over month. Don't have the mindset of this month I made $10,000. Next month I need to make 12,000. That doesn't work in trading. What does work in trading is this month. These are the things I've done well. These are the things I've done bad. Going into next month, I want to make sure I keep doing these things well and I stop doing these things. If you keep following that order over quarter, month after month, year after year, you will look back and you'll see you come a long way and you start seeing profits start showing up. Which goes to point number one of just aim to become a good trader and not make money. Point number five, just because you made money today doesn't mean you're going to make money tomorrow. Just because you made money last month doesn't mean you're going to make money next month. I think this is one thing that a lot of traders get stuck into. They automatically think, wow, I had a green week next week I'm going to have a bigger green week. I had a green month. I'm going to have a bigger green month next month. And it goes back to the last point that I made of where we start thinking that our performance is linear and that linear performance could go from day by day, day by day. Keep this thing in mind, guys. This is a very important rule. We as traders cannot control the Outcome, the only thing we can control is risk. That's it. So if you have a day where you make $2,000 or $20,000 or $200, you can't control how much you're going to make tomorrow. But what you can control and what you should control continuously is how much you're going to risk on a day by day, week by week basis. So if you do make two grand on a particular day, don't go Tomorrow and risk $8,000 and increase your risk by a massive amount because you want to now make more money. Keep that risk consistent. Every single day is earned in the world of trading, in the world of everything. But in trading, every single day is earned. And you have to go into every day with a clear mindset that just because I made money doesn't mean I'm going to make money tomorrow. And I have to let go of yesterday's bad day or good day and start fresh. Every single day I see traders, they'll have a bad day or a bad week or a bad month, and they'll carry it over to the next week or next month. That carryover keeps happening over and over again, and it ultimately leads us to destruction. It leads us to massive drawdown. So every single day, recap your trades, stop, take everything, put a pause on it, and start the next day completely fresh. Point number six, focus on two to three setups, guys. You don't need more setups than that. Obviously, when you become a more developed trader, more profitable trader, you have a better understanding of yourselves in the markets. Start adding more playbooks. But at first, master two, three setups, understand what markets you're going to trade, understand the time frames you're going to trade, understand the tools you're going to use. Once you get that framework down, then build a playbook around them, or what the entry should look like, what the exit should look like, and back test those strategies. Those two, three setups, back test them for the past few years, go back, practice, practice, practice, Get a good foundational understanding of them, and then forward test those strategies. Now, out of the past three months, the amount of money I made, most of the money has been made on four or five setups that I have just kept trading over and over again. Obviously, every setup is not going to look the same, but the foundational structure of every setup is going to be very, very similar. And it was similar, right? And that goes back to what I was saying before that I have been trading for 10 to 11 years and for trading for long period of time, has given me that understanding of the setups, has given me the understanding of market structure, has given me the understanding of knowing what to look for and knowing what time frames and time periods to take particular trades. So those are things that you want to develop and when you're developing these things, once again, two to three setups. Master it, get great at it. Track these setups. Improve, execute and slowly add size. Point number seven, journal. Track your trades, guys. Before every trading session, make sure you have a pre market game plan. Write out a well defined game plan of what market events are happening, what happened from yesterday till today. Write out a game plan of the scenarios that you might possibly think are going to happen with those particular instruments you're trading. So for example, I am trading the S&P 500 or if I'm trading Tesla tomorrow, the way I would approach this is I would look at today's action or the past few weeks action and I would carry that action into tomorrow. I would look at the key areas that the market is trading in. What are the zones that the market transacts the most in? Right. What is the sentiment of this particular stock, stock or particular instrument? Are there any key economic data coming out that may move this market up or down or maybe the market maybe stay sideways? So having that foundational understanding in a pre market game plan is very important because your job then comes eventually to come back to it, to see what your game plan was and see how you reacted upon it and what actually happened in the market. If you do this for the next three months to six months, you will develop a crazy amount of knowledge of the market and also yourself. I've had days where I would write out a pre market game plan and after I read out my pre market game plan, I would look at what I did and I've done something completely opposite. And I'm like, well, why did I do this? If I wrote out these scenarios, I didn't follow any scenario. I didn't follow any of the economic news that I thought was going to come out. I traded around them. These are rules that I broke. Why? Because I didn't have emotional control, I didn't allow myself to process these things. I didn't have discipline to go and not react to the things I said I was going to react to. And these things put me in a massive drawdown. Those things you learn about yourself and then also you learn things about the market. Same thing with journaling your trades. After every trade you've taken, track your data, look at what is working, what is not working. And if you guys want to track your trades, journal your trades, check out tradezilla.com there's a link down below if you guys want to get started. If not, just. Just start with something, guys, and have data. Data is very important because you'll know what is working, what isn't working, when it's working, and so on. And that's one of the key foundational ways to improve as a trader. Point number eight. So out of 20 trading days, roughly in a month, I've noticed there's typically maybe four to six trading days where I get action, right? I start seeing good movements, good setups, where the market wants to give me good entry points, some solid movement and so on. Right? Now, after realizing that, I approach every month with this foundational understanding of that where it's like, okay, well, if I know out of 20 trading days the market is going to give me four to six, then when I do show up the 20 days, I'm more comfortable when I'm wrong, I'm more comfortable if the market is flat and I don't take a trade, right? So it's kind of like fixing your mindset and understanding the structure and you know, how the market operates in a better way. So when you do go into a day and you don't get a setup and you do get a flat day, you're like, okay, well, this is my paying cost to the market. This is my cost that I have to pay to show up and not make any money. Because when the market does give me a setup, I will do extremely, extremely well. And that only exists if I do show up these other 16 days or other 14 days, right? Because a lot of traders, they'll be like, well, I showed up 12 days and I only made money two days. Yeah, well, the other 10 days you guys showed up allowed you to make money those other two days, right? So that's how the game works. And that's what we have to accept and follow. And the sooner we accept that and the sooner we start approaching it from that angle, the better it will be us for a long run. And the four to six days, whatever, up or down the days the market is presenting these opportunities, just be aggressive, take advantage of these opportunities. And the days the market isn't giving you anything, just once again, play defense, stay cash, and let the market ride out the last point. The market is always right. Always, always, always right. And the reason I say the market is always right is because we as traders, we have to understand that we can create our Game plans create our scenarios and sometimes things may not go our way. And if it doesn't go our way, we don't want to be so stuck on our thesis, our ideas that we don't allow ourselves to become flexible. And being adaptable and allowing yourself to be flexible in the game of trading is very important. That is, if I had to guess, one of the top five soft skills you need as a trader to actually be profitable, right? You'll have a game plan, you'll have approach to the market. Well, it doesn't happen. Maybe you were wrong, you know, some new set of data came out, maybe some new big player came into the market and things shifted. If that happens, a adapt to the situation, be flexible to changing the things that you've laid out. Be adjust to your game plan, adjust to the market conditions, adjust to your stop loss, adjust to these different things that are needed in the moment. Right? Because as mentioned, we sometimes become so obsessed with our ideas, our thoughts and we kind of fall in love with our ideas, right? And that's okay. But if we don't let go of them when we need to in the game of trading, it will hurt us a lot. So yeah, those are some of the points that I wanted to share with you guys on what I've learned in the past quarter. As mentioned, a lot of highs, a lot of lows. And you know, when I am doing these recaps, I do these recaps from two components. One is like from a information point of view, an emotional point of view and then the second is like technical and data. So I have a lot of data on my last quarter as well, which I will share with you guys soon and break down what my drawdown was. Break down with my win to loss ratio was winning percentage. And those numbers aren't the best you guys might think. Oh man, he's never wrong. I lost a lot of money on a lot of trades. I've been wrong countless times. But the things that I have done well is manage my risk risk, manage expectations and execute it at a high level by adapting to market conditions. So with that being said, I hope you guys enjoyed this video and I hope you guys have a great rest of your year.