How did you start trading stocks? Did you read books only? What strategies did you use?

1. I tried several day trading strategies, like ORB (opening range breakout), mean reversion, gap up/down during earnings.

2. None really worked well enough for me to stick with it.

3. Adopted new day trading strategies.

4. None really worked well enough for me to stick with it.

5. Adopted more new day trading strategies.

6. None really worked well enough for me to stick with it.

7. Learned day trading wasn’t for me — but I LOVE swing trading (holding stocks for a few days to 6 weeks).

8. Watching videos helps you build a mental strategy, but nothing is a better teacher than LOSING MONEY. It’s the best!

9. Learn WHAT NOT TO DO before you figure out what TO DO.

I typically hold 1–15 stocks over a few days to a few months. My main strategy that I’ve used is “trend following”.

I do my “market prep” work the night before and build a “csv file” with my tickers, buy/sell, number of shares, route and STOP limit price, trigger Price & TIF. I review daily & weekly chart timeframes looking for my personal “trend following” criteria. I use a stock screener that reduces the scope of 7,500 stocks/ETF’s to my exact criteria, so I reduce the size of stocks to review to only 5–50 stock charts a day.

I peek at QQQ, DIA & SPY to see how they closed to get an idea of the overall market to decide if I want to get aggressive or conservative with the # of open positions I want.

I enter the stock “setups” I like into my Google Drive spreadsheet to calculate my risk, number of shares and have inventory of my “watch list” and my open positions so I can remember my specific entry/stop & thoughts on a specific trade.

I use a risk management strategy known as “Trading an R” (risk unit). My trading friends and I can compare scores on a weekly/monthly basis — even though we have different size $$ in our accounts. Link > Real Life Trading (use same strategy swing trading, but risk a HIGHER amount). Essentially, I decide how much money I am willing to lose before placing a trade, assuming it may be 50/50 odds I win/lose, ultimately time will tell. I may deploy $50–100k on one trade, but only willing to “lose” $1k.

5–15 minutes AFTER the opening bell, I import my orders inside my DasTrader Pro software and push my orders live, the orders sit “open” waiting for my STOP limit orders to trigger. If they don’t trigger, I haven’t made (or lost) any money. Once they trigger, I’m in the trade and add a row inside my spreadsheet.

I am in front of a computer screen during market open — maybe 30 minutes a day. I was NOT glued to my screen like I was day trading.