also i do not sleep more than 4 hours a day anyway. Why take sleeping tablets, like most elderly people do?
You reminded me of myself many decades ago, before I became a full-time trader. Decades ago, I was planning to be a full-time trader. I had a full-time job. During the night time, I did my demo trading. During the weekends, I did my demo trading. So for 2 years, my average sleeping time was 5 hours a day. KEEP IT UP!!!
Good Morning padutrader, How are you doing buddy! Welcome Back and I wish you great trading success. Great work buddy. It is good to see you still trying your best. It is all us day traders can do. I am in the trenches as well, trying my best!!
I disagree with following some other trader 'diligently', in that case just give them your money to manage. You have to come up with a method that you trust because let's face it, even if you do well mirroring Al Brooks' trades what if he decides to throw in the towel (or nature takes its course)? You have to have a method that only you trust. Only you can come up with that method. You can use ideas of technical analysts like Brooks, but at the end of the day it's your method and your rules that make your money. Not someone else. And I don't know what you are doing trying to monitor markets 20 hours a day. Markets have a limited volatility window most of the time. And if you don't take care of your health you will trade badly. A bad risk reward ratio...
As a post-scriptum, there is one thing you need to understand about people who sell trading education. With extremely rare exceptions you have no idea if they are profitable traders or not. When I once tried listening to Al Brooks for a month he'd say 'I'm profitable most days'. His saying so doesn't matter, what matters is if I can take his ideas and use them to make money for me. What works for him (assuming it actually does) may not work for you, what works for you may not work for him. And please, nobody in the trading education business does this for charity. Every time I hear a trading instructor say 'I feel a need to help people', it's a big joke. They want the income, so they do it because it helps smooth the volatility of trading income assuming they have it in the first place. It's that simple. Does a math tutor help kids pass exams because he enjoys helping people? He wants the income, and he may enjoy the job, but it's for profit. Just keep that in mind. Nothing wrong with making a profit, I'm not saying someone should teach for free, but let's just call things what they are... Traders take information, process it, and see if it can be used to make money. That's your job description. Not fealty to an instructor.
Hello @padutrader , I appreciate your commitment to becoming ES Master. I am trying to be ES Master as well everyday as well. Please ignore others. I study Al Brooks for about 1.3 years, and I believe he is a great teacher to learn from. So keep on going man.
@padutrader print out what @Georgii is suggesting in ‘post #24’, and give his suggestions a try. He's very objective, and knows what he's talking about. Also consider trading higher timeframes maybe on multiple instruments. Maybe you can throw in few FX pairs on H4 TFs and Gold (or whatever works for you in your timezone). It will take a while to get used to, but higher timeframes are easier to trade, more reliable setups, you have more time to thoroughly prepare each trade (instead of jumping in on every price wiggle). It is much better to have one quality trade per day instead of multiple rushed trades. Don’t be greedy, focus on consistency. If you do the numbers, making 2Rs per week will translate in triple digit returns per annum while having low drawdowns, and that’s doable on FX H4 TFs while trading part time, setting alerts and doing “set & forget trades” while enjoying your life. Don’t make the mistake of trying to grow small account fast. Slow is Fast. Grow the account smoothly. Avoid recovery from drawdown. Don’t be a slave to Al Brooks, there are more efficient, more objective, more structured, less time consuming, and more profitable ways to trade PA than Al Brooks. At this stage you seem to be trading Brooks’ beliefs (and your trust in him), but you must be able to trade your own beliefs, your own tweaked version of his methods, and you must be trusting in yourself, and not in him. Don’t be afraid to experiment with better (quality) life style.
padu du has been on this forum for years. Meaning well advice goes in one ear and out the other. He is what he is.
A lot of guys out there have full-time jobs and just trade futures in their spare time,probably because it doesn't interfere with their full-time job. For them scalping the ES is just a fun,money-losing hobby. I say let em knock theirselves out.
Al Brooks perhaps unintentionally encourages people to overtrade, because he focuses on one market intraday and he has a number of setups. I remember he said on some interview it took him about 10 years of backtesting and trading to finally make money doing this. He made the methodology his own and really, really worked on it. That's really what you need to do. When many people watch Al Brooks and other day traders they think that they should be able to scalp every last point off of the market, and instead of mastering one or two setups they go all over the place. That lack of focus and patience is what kills many people. Even Brooks tells people they should start trading just one setup like the "major trend reversals" and focus on that exclusively. But of course like all setups, sometimes you get a lot, sometimes you get very few, and when you get none you often get bored and want to 'create' one out of thin air or you just go strategy hopping. And being in front of the screen for more than the US session (or European session) is just totally unnecessary. Yeah, sometimes something will happen in Europe and US will be dead, more often vice versa, sometimes both sessions have stuff going on, but I'd say you'd be best off spending 6.5 hours at the screen and using the rest of the time for backtesting. And if you don't enjoy the weekends, I have good news for you: it's a great time to backtest. Linda Raschke always suggest people backtest outside of market hours. One more point about Brooks: he doesn't believe in indicators. For a long time I also bought the machismo of "naked charts". But if Linda Raschke uses them (who actually has a provable track record), what's wrong with them? Yes, some people think indicators do all the work for you, that's totally not true. And some trade well without them. But they're a useful shorthand when analyzing a market, and they help build rules. Thinking flexibly is key when coming up with your own method.