What a great week it was for PBT Nation. We bagged 14.5Rs for the week. We started the week HOT and finished the week Hotter. One heck of a week with one day that will go down as a scratch due to internet issues on my end and still came up big. We are now up 21RS for the month already with 3 weeks to go. Congrats to each of you and keep up the good work.

Have a look at a couple of trades below and see how we simplify trading and only trade viable trading setup. NO need to rush into the trade and definitely not going to chase it. We have never chase a runner but we have definitely gotten back in a trade. As you know if I get stop out of the PRO GAP and Tier 1 Gap I always get back in it. Just because I get tagged or stop out doesn’t mean I am not going to get back. One thing that remains constant is the strategy. I don’t deviate from it. Hope everyone had a great week and ready for another exciting week. Earnings are right around the corner and that is where we take it next level.

Nice day in the room and for the traders on our alert service. We were 2/3 today with $KBH and $AXSM hitting targets and taking a stop on $FTCH. $INFY was breakeven trade.

We had a nice week and to be exact we are up 6.3R. That keeps our 20Rs streak alive since April. We are on a nice streak. Those of you who joined this week also had a nice week trading with us. Not bad for about an hour a day and sometimes more… J

Weekly Stats: 2% Account Growth

Total Trades – 14

Winners – 10

Losers – 4

Winning % – 60%

Avg winner – 1.5R

Avg loser – 1R

Today is Sunday 7th of July. The holidays have passed well and looks like we are ready to start a new quarter. I don’t want to bore you with lots of charts and analysis, patterns, mistakes, reviews, trade ideas. I would like to focus your attention on the psychological side of trading.

Like we already know, psychology represents a big piece of trading success. Some say its more than 90%. The more I trade, learn, develop myself as a trading professional, the more I agree with it. I want to share my concepts for overcoming some of the hard times in trading (applies to life also) so maybe you can approach it more effectively without losing so much time and money as I did. In my opinion there are a couple of concepts that every trader should consider on the psychology side.

1. Losses are a part of the game.Trading is like any other job with its ups and downs. With success and failures. This is a probability game and no loser should become a personal insult for you. The best traders on the street have developed a very high level of Emotional Intellect that keeps their personal side of feelings like love, care and joy apart from Trading. This is something you develop with years and its called the FLOW. Once you are in the FLOW, your head, soul and emotions work like a Swiss watch without any interference and errors. Once any of these shows weakness, the whole system collapses. This takes us to the next point.
2. Trading is only a part of life.Friends, family, loved ones are the interactions that truly matter in life. No winner or loser should affect our attitude towards these individuals. The more we put our soul in trading, the less we can give to our close ones so keep it simple and stupid. Take it as a job like any other. I can say that in my experience trading is like a relationship, you build it carefully, you don’t push too hard nor you ignore the important moments. You work hard but you keep it healthy. There is no rush and there is no boundary. That slowly passes the idea to the next point I would like to make.
3. Balance is crucial in life. By working too hard, you might get a burnout quite easily. Remember the last time you watched a few hundreds of stocks and then tried trading a few dozens, it usually ends up badly for your emotional state and which is more frustrating, for your pnl. Balance is all you. Balance is having a healthy emotional status, doing sports, having time for creativity, enjoying life and people around you. Balance will keep your soul, body and mind healthy in any situation. Balance will heal you in bad weeks and months and will help you take strategic decisions when the opportunity comes.

These are just a piece of “wisdom” or “advice” that should be taken into consideration when you are starting or even moving through your trading career. The earlier you think of these concepts and start applying them, the better trader and human you become. We all have goals to achieve, we all have bills to pay, we all have 24 hours a day and we live once so lets make this journey a truly joyful one.

Always yours,

— @Trader521 —

For this post Id like to share my setup so you can better understand the decision making process of what I am doing and how trading decisions are delivered.

Tech

Core i7 – 16GB Ram – Two Video Cards – Five monitors 24”. Will likely add another 3 screens but dont have much room for the mount arm so will postpone this decision. Overall decent trading decisions could be generated and executed using only 3 screens, that is the best solution for beginners.

Platform

Takion – one of the fastest, reliable and advanced for prop-trading. At the beginning its rough and complicated but once you get used to it, it becomes the best trading software you will ever experience. To get a demo, please write me an email at trader521 @ playbooktrading.com.

Charting

TC2000 – best value for money and its direct linkable to Takion so its very easy to use.

Overall setup

The preparation for trading has the following process: (1.5hrs before market open).

1. Check world markets via – https://money.cnn.com/data/world_markets/europe/ and news via https://www.investing.com/economic-calendar/
2. Check Daily and H1 Futures via tradingview SPY (es1!); QQQ (nq1!); Gold (gc1!); Crude Oil (cl1!).
3. Check ETFs and Sectors for setups.
4. Search for Interesting Earnings via https://briefing.com/investor/calendars/earnings/ or https://estimize.com/calendar
5. Search for interesting Gaps that might trigger the setup.
6. Analyze Stock Arena and Sector Stocks considering sector ETFs and specific ideas on Daily chart.
7. List trade ideas for Long and Short on daily Setup List.
8. Wait for Market/Sector/Stock to confirm your setup.
9. Trigger the trade with calculated risk.

I do follow a very clear playbook and search for specific setups on daily and intra-day. We will cover the playbook and trading business plan in the future posts.

A lot of traders including myself have a struggle in exiting the position. After applying a more mathematical approach I decided to use Reward to Risk Ratios combined with tier system for exits. Once I have a trade trigger, I will exit gradually in 3 tiers on reaching 4 to 1, 5 to 1 and the rest I will trail by pivots on the triggered time frame. In my experience that will give a better exit average than just hit and run exits. Also this subtracts the emotions out of the equation so once the trade is on, I will just set the limit orders at specific levels according to my calculations.

Sometimes when I do have more time (more than 10 seconds) to take the trade decision I do use the trade calculator that is in the screenshot, that helps get a more exact number of shares loaded in the position to keep up with the math. If you need one of these, let me know and we will email it to you. It is adjusted for 10% of the size in case the price already moved a few cents in the direction of the trade. All you need to do is to setup the risk per trade, that should be a % of your equity (suggested 0.5-1.5%).

That is it for now. Feel free to ping me questions via Twitter or Email posted in this article.

Wish you a great trading session!

— @Trader_521 —

I would like to present myself as Trader521. I will use this nickname for the purpose of confidentiality and explain you a little bit of my trading concepts. First of all trading is not easy, but is should not be hard. When it comes to placing trades, its all about mathematics, probability, risk and reward. Over years of trial and failure, the wisdom of the trading game finally touched me with its magic hand. I know lots of you are struggling with your strategies, indicators, fundamentals and other factors that you might think are very important in trading. Ill say two basic concepts that should be at the base of your trading:

1. Psychology (this is something that can make the best trader in the world lost tons of money in a short period of time – recommended read is Mark Douglas – Disciplined Trader and Trading in the Zone).
2. Math (knowing your probability of a profitable trade, make sure you have a decent risk reward when it comes to taking profits, I am looking for at least 5 to 1 Reward to Risk).

These two factors will make pretty much any strategy work. This is the bread and butter of every successful trader even if he or she does not realize that.

Over the next blog posts I will develop these concepts more detailed and show you what to look for when placing a trade, executing a setup, setting up the sizing of the trade, manage it and taking profits on the way.

I hope you are all well and are ready to start your next and last step in becoming a profitable, highly effective trader.

I would like to thank you for your time in reading this post.

— Trader 521 —