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**Read the pinned comment for the “list” summarized version of this post.** For context I’ve been a full time trader for 8 years now. I day trade crypto and futures and swing trade/invest in stocks. Due to the significant amount of information purgatory that exists when it comes to trading its almost inevitable that we’ve all bounced around trying to figure out how to become profitable. You see a word you don’t know, look it up, and next thing you know you’re going down the rabbit hole on some website about Gann fans and astrology trading. The next day you’re learning about RSI and order flow and algo trading ads keeping grasping for your attention. I’ve been there and 90% of what I explored I did nothing with. If I could go back in time I’d focus on following this exact curriculum. Hope it helps some of you. Ground zero: Understand the cycle of emotional change you are about to go through. You start out with “uninformed optimism” – you think its easier than it actually is. Marketing always emphasizes this. Once you jump into learning you hit stage 2 – you begin to see it’s harder than it was advertised or than you expected. It’s often at stage 2 and stage 3 that you bounce back up to stage 1 by starting something new because it claimed to be easier and better. This is the trap. If you recognize the stage you are in you can push through it faster. The valley of despair is where you start to lose hope, your faith is tested and everything else looks like a better option. You push through stage 3 by solving problems faster. Stage 4 you start to see the results and potential – just a little proof of concept. Stage 5 is consistency over time, you’ve proven it works, its more natural and you experience less resistance, your faith is stronger. You consider yourself a professional or master. 1. I’d focus on intentional research for proper decision making on the market I want to trade, the style of trading I want to do and the best person to learn from… it all needs to match my lifestyle, personality and goals. Because I didn’t do this, I kept learning each new thing I came across because I didn’t know what to say “No” to. A) Which market is best for you and your finances? 1. Crypto 2. Stocks 3. Forex 4. Indices 5. Commodities 6. Bonds B) Which instrument fits you best to trade with? 1. Spot 2. Futures 3. Options C) What type of trader do you want to be? 1. Scalper 2. Intraday 3. Swing 4. Investor D) Lastly, do you want to automate this or do it manually? Here’s an example: I am a Crypto futures intraday trader that executes manually. 2. Who to learn from in this environment. They or the entity need to meet some guidelines as follows: A) Trades profitably in the environment you just chose with your style of trading Third, Understand the two pillars you have to master for long term successful trading so you can always keep your focus here and say no to things that distract you from it.
*Note* What we get into next should be addressed by your teacher/program. This is what I’d be looking for them to address. 3. Basic setup – choose your exchange, charting software and trade journal that is best for your trading environment. 4. Learn market microstructure – this is the plumbing of the markets. Here are some things it should include and you should understand. A) Auction market theory Basically, just understand how the market works and the types of players in it and how they operate before you start trying to dive into technical analysis concepts. 5. Understand Technical Analysis vs trading. Simply said, trading requires that you get 4 components of a trade correct – Entry, Stop loss, Exits, Risk Management… and that you wait for specific conditions to be met. Technical Analysis requires you to identify the potential ways the market can move to determine if price goes up or down. TA is much easier. Trading is harder because if you mess up any one of the 4 components of a trade you can mess up the entire trade. You’ll come to realize this when your analysis (direction) is right but your SL was too tight, or you missed your entry, exited early or oversized your position. 6. Understand the components of technical analysis. (This doesn’t mean learn all the individual stuff, just the components) *Note* All tools are built from or based on price action . It should be the foundation you learn. Other components of TA help with confluence, decision making by providing specific conditions to be met, and a different lens to view the market from. Some traders see the market easier through different lenses. 7. Connect with the Rhythm of the market. What this means… there is an ebb and flow to the market, often called trends or regimes. They are classified as uptrend, downtrend, sideways consolidation/range. Connecting with the rhythm of the market offers a way for you to determine what regime you are in and the strategy best used in that regime. It gives you an idea of how long you expect a trend or range to last at a level that gives you an edge. For me I prefer patterns for this, specifically a new age Elliott Wave, but its dependent on your environment and what lens you see the market in easiest. 8. Your multi time frame analysis and creating context for a trade. This is where you do your analysis to determine which ways the market can move and establish your bias. Nine, Your strategy. It’s best to start with a binary strategy(fixed conditions) so you can identify when your emotions are steering you away from your strategy. Otherwise its real easy for you to blend your emotions in trading if you use discretionary trading and difficult for you to diagnose and troubleshoot problems 9. Learn about time and the fractal nature of the market through multi time frame analysis. This is all about identifying a system for navigating time frames. Will you use a fixed time, a series of time frames, or have conditions that tell you a specific time frame to use? 10. Developing your technical analysis flow to determine which paths the market can take and creating your bias or larger context for a particular strategy to print in. 11. Your strategy. It’s best to start with a binary strategy(fixed conditions) so you can identify when your emotions are steering you away from your strategy. Otherwise it’s real easy for you to blend your emotions in trading if you use discretionary trading and difficult for you to diagnose and troubleshoot problems as a beginner. Will you use someone else’s or create your own through back testing? 12. Paper trading application or prop firm. This is all about proving you can get the strategy to work with real execution. It is NOT meant to imitate the psychology of real trading. It’s to prove to yourself that you can execute your strategy profitably in a simulated environment and that the math holds up. Aim for 100+ trades, start your habit here of journaling and treating it like a business. 13. Live Trading: This is where you get to risk real money and most likely watch your results fall apart. Because you didn’t skip step 11 we can confirm that if you’re not getting similar results it’s because your MINDSET is sabotaging your trades. Emotions are getting in the way. If you don’t have this problem then congrats, you’re a weirdo (in a good way). 14. Mindset: Trading psychology is the study of a trader’s mind. It’s discovering how a successful trader thinks and what they believe that shapes the actions they take and how they navigate the markets. The job here is to find where you deviate from the profitable trader’s mindset and then rewire your mind with those beliefs. The two pillars here are 1. Awareness and 2. Reprogramming You could do this through therapy, coaching, visualization, neuroscience studies, NLP, and many other modalities. My favorite has been a blend of Dr. Joe Dispenza courses and meditations, licensed professional therapy(IFS is my favorite type), and journaling. 15. Mastery: Master one strategy on one asset and the mindset to execute that profitably and consistently. From there you’ve got the formula down and you can use it to trade other assets, master other strategies and do a different type of trading. For perspective, I have 2 breakout strategies alongside 7 pullback strategies that all operate in different regimes. It allows me to do circular trading, hedging, etc. Some excel on different assets or in different markets. This provides me a lot more opportunities to take advantage of in the market vs being restricted to just one. Here’s my overall stack: I trade Crypto and Futures markets with 9 different strategies across different regimes. I focus on day trading (30min to 3 hrs holds). My strategies are built from each component of TA mentioned above. I use a combination of SMC, order flow (specifically Bookmap software) paired with Fibonacci retracement and extension tools (just those 2), TDI indicator (basically a fancy RSI) and New Age Elliott Wave for my trend identification (determining if we are going into a up/down trend vs sideways consolidation vs reversing. None of these methods alone are very helpful. It’s strategically pairing them together and then having specific conditions be met between them to form strategies that produce a probable outcome. All TA tools work and they all basically describe each other, but there are nuances between the categories I mentioned above that make them perform better than if I stacked 2 tools in the same category, such as RSI and OBV. Not all tools make sense to everybody, some people can’t see Elliott waves and it makes zero sense to them. Some people look at the RSI and feel a different indicator is easier to read. It doesn’t make any of them invalid. I would give it your best effort to learn the system of the mentor you chose, but if its just not clicking, there is likely a different lens that you’d see the market through better. You need to give it a solid 100 hours though before throwing in the towel and trying a different lens. submitted by /u/MountainTrader_CO to r/Trading |