Hey Everyone !
About a year ago, this trading thing sparked my interest, I started to read about it and quickly stumbled across babypips, where it all started.
Today I reached a point where I feel confident about my skills, even thought, because of my greed and lack of luck I’m not up that much (Took a nasty market dump on XRP while I was over-leveraging, removed my stop last moment, worst idea ever). At least I’m profitable to some degree. I’m going to share my journey so far and the lessons I learnt from it in this post hoping it can inspire or at least help out the new comers.
It all started with questions about the meaning of life, aspiration etc… After 1 year searching for my path trying all different things, one thing that really started to stand out was trading, sitting in front of a screen, doing deep thinking and analysis, my thing, totally. One thing I’d like to highlight is that I did not choose to trade for the money but rather for the freedom it could unlock and to satisfy my thirst of knowledge.
At first I would do some charting and analysis all by myself without any knowledge, I started paper trading looking into indicators, reading, watching toons of youtube videos about the topic. This is how I ended up on babypips. Then I went across all the materials out here and read a good chunk of the forum as well.
Then in July 2020 I started trading with real money. I had invested a couple thousand in crypto. I decided to use 500 to trade with, was also paper trading forex at the same time. I was winning on crypto, but the hard truth is my investment was outperforming my trading by far. Which mean I was doing poorly. On forex things were worst, my winners were small and my losers were big. I was loosing more than winning. What was the issue ? I was scalping, i thought it was “my style” on eur/usd the spread ate all my profits. I did not cut my losses so all those little things ended up bleeding my account to death. Within 2 months I destroyed 4 demo accounts from over-leveraging, overtrading, not cutting losses, hoping, adding more to losers. I was very emotional and desperate.
I thought it was the spread that was killing me so I tried scalping futures on Ninjatrader, Yes things were a little bit better but my account still ended up in the trash bin 2 months later. It takes courage to overcome those failure and not give up. So after a month or so I searched for an alternative and started to go on the systemic side of trading, with indicators. Slowing down by taking a bigger timeframe. Found out that the 4H was a really good timeframe to take swings. So I did and had a winning streak of 12 trades for the first time, that was before the market humbled me by taking back all the profits… Was it me, or my system ? A little bit of both, I will come to it later.
In October I was lucky to find a physical mentor that shared to me a book to read which is “Come into my trading room” This book has not a something that helped my trading but helped me understand that I was on the right path. So I kept digging with confidence. little did a know from November to January I started building and fine tuning a system based on everything I learned from scalping, day trading and swing trading, systematic trading, price action and technical analysis, and I came out with a 85% winrate high risk reward ratio system. I x8 my money trading ethereum within 2 months. Y’all know the story, ethereum then crashed, even if my system was pointing this out I could not short nor sell my coins. This was definitely a human error so now I’m happily sitting on a x3. My system does work to some extend but again it all depend of the human behind.
I’m now going to go in more details about what works what did not, (or at least not enough to waste your time on it). What mistakes to avoid in jour journey and what I personally still need to improve upon to master the craft.
So first. I’d like to talk about how a trader’s mindset.
- Appreciate your mistakes made early and learn from it on before you grow your equity
- Stop putting the blame on circumstances or others. You got rekt because you over-leveraged, your fault, you got stopped out, your fault for putting your stop in an obvious area, market is manipulated ? Maybe but then what’s stopping to to be on the right side ? In short if you want to progress you need to take the blame on you and learn from your mistake
- More often than not traders like to take profit and let losers run or add on losers. you’re not investing, it’s ok to take small losses it’s the cost of business if your trade idea is invalidated try closing at best price possible and have your stop below, if you take a big hit it’s your fault for hoping too much.
- Cut your losses fast, lets the winners run.
- Always have a stop because you never know.
- Be openminded try new things especially on your first year.
- Why you should not take profits, or very little ? Because covering is basically taking the opposite position, why would you cover if you still believe it will go up ? Let’s say you’re longing, closing a long is equal to taking a short. do you have a short set-up ? I doubt so
- Know your edge, do you have an edge on this set-up if not skip it.
- Recognising the market structure has changes can save you some bucks.
- Predicting the change in advance can help you make more.
- Buying before a breakout so my risk is smaller (Buy weakness, sell strength)
Now I’m going to talk charting 
What has worked for me at least is:
- Moving averages 20 50 200
- Drawing previsional parallel channels
- Fibonacci tools
- Caring about volume (Knowing how to analyse volume, because sometime the momentum exhaust and reverse before reaching a liquidity zone)
- Using one momentum indicator, one oscillator, one volume indicator, not too much, not too little (I’m often in before they trigger but by experience I know when they’ll trigger)
- Market profile
- Multi-timeframe analysis
- Divergences
- Elliot wave(Although it’s not so obvious sometimes)
- Understanding the wyckoff system but not trading it by the book can help
- Understanding how liquidity impact the market and where they are.
- Doing projections and waiting for the price to bounce and confirm with a candle close
- Entry on lower time-frame
- Look for for potential short-set-up to take profit instead of taking profit at 1R 2R ■■■■■■■■
- You can open a long and a short at the same time instead of taking profit if it’s a high probability bounce and close after confirmation of reversal.
- consolidation’s angles give hint about what is likely to happen next (Price action pattern)
What did not work, for me at least 
Those nasty triangles
Drawing or trading trendlines alone
Taking signal from an oscillator only
Harmonics patterns (Elliot wave fully replace them) and price action patterns, they work a little but you don’t need them. It’s good to know them because when they happen the moves are stronger.
3 things that are important and little known :
- Support and resistances are zones are what I call liquidity zones, and they are more like magnets so stop putting your stop in them for god sake, it’s like being a charity. Also they often bounce because patient and late traders wait here.
- Big traders have to trade differently from small traders, we can get out instantly so use that at your advantage. when price is slowing down it’s when big traders are taking profits and/or stacking their next move.
- I forgot what I was going to say here, sorry
[Edit] Being present, self-aware when you trade is of outmost importance, you also want to take care of your mind and physical condition, eat healthy exercise, trading is a high performance game, you need to be in your A game all the time like an athlete. I’m giving this advice but it’s something I still struggle with, and some losses are due to dumb mistakes I make
If i were to relive my trading journey what would I tell myself ?
- Keep things simple. Stop overthinking it
- Keep your journal up to date it’s important
- Plan your trade in advance, follow your plan
- Keep trying you’ll find your edge soon
- Try different approaches, different styles
- Trade bigger timeframes stop fighting against robots.
- Learn to understand what others are doing in the market
What I still struggle with: I still do over-trade and can see the effect of the death by a thousand cuts even thought it did not kill me yet it’s slowing down my equity growth for sure, I still do over-leverage time to time, often in those nasty fake outs, I stopped journaling my trades, I sometime forget to see the big picture. I do micro management it is hurting most of the time.
Trading is a journey of self-discovery and I hope Y’all succeed, cheers !
Thanks for reading, hope it helps.
I’m not often coming to babypips so pardon me if I reply very late.
I dedicate this post to my buddy @CHANCYKIBOMBWE with who It all started on babypips.
, you are making a difference.