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If I knew what I know today since I started I would choose Sierra Charts as my platform and data feed as well and Interactive Brokers as my broker, end of history.
But already told you that before you open a broker account if you want to be a day trader, I would join One Up Trader or Top Step Trader and try to build some equity with one of them first, then afterwards put your own money on the line... By doing this your loses will be very limited while you learn.
Wasn't sure if I should post this or not but I'm going to anyway.
First, I'm going to go against some of the crowd about psychology being the most important and hard to master. It could be for some but as long as you don't over trade (trading outside of your plan and setups) and take risky trades for your account size, it should be fine. I think everyone has experience doing a lot of stupid stuff at some point out of anger and fear. I know I've made revenge trades one after another soon ending the day with 200 trades that sucked out a month of work. I know I've closed my trades too early out of fear or held losing trades longer than I should have. I know I traded outside of my plan due to fomo (fear of missing out). I know I felt invincible one day and took too much risk. If you have these issues, one of those prop firms such as TopStepTrader and OneStep is highly recommended because it will automatically call you out on those at some point (by loss limits) and kick you out of the program to start all over again. I guess with some brokers you can ask them to have a daily loss limit on your account as well.
The hard part for me in the beginning was actually doing the work to find an edge and confirming that you do have an edge. So many different ways of going about it and how the hell do you know which method will click with you? Market profiles and orderflow stuff based on dom never did click with me. In fact, they confused me even more. For me, charts all the way. Which means I end up focusing on price action.
Al Brooks stuff is alright but it takes a lot of effort to digest that stuff. Like someone else mentioned, not sure how much it will help as a total beginner. Learning how to identify support and resistance area, drawing trend lines, how price behaves around them, what is the context (this to me just means current volatility, direction of the trend and/or trending vs ranging in my time-frame) all sounds simple but takes a fair amount of screen time to recognize the patterns properly. Al Brooks books do explain them but it won't hit you until you have much screen time after reading the book then going them over again. At least that was the case for me.
I think in the beginning, simply taking one market and maybe one or two time frames to measure each wave vs pull-backs go a long way if you are looking to trade off charts. Maybe take a year of data and analyze them. I wish I had done that and focused on price action first instead of dicking around with indicators. I find indicators are only helpful (somewhat) once you understand price behavior.
Even though I wrote what I wrote, it's just really hard to lay out a definite guide to learning. I feel like most gather their knowledge and experience piece by piece to solve the puzzle.
@navionpilot, some very helpful posts already here by others more experienced than me, you may already be overloaded with info, if so, read no further... but might also look at some of the webinars on futures.io, a couple this week that may be of interest, at least you can then hear someone.
Click on ''Trading Webinars'' in the menu bar at the top, will see one on Jan. 9, Peter Davies, and one on Jan. 11, Morad Asker/FT71. Both are experienced traders, are active here, answer questions, have given other webinars, and are obviously respected by BigMike.
Just a thought that maybe if you find the person(s) you resonate with, their person will be the door that will lead you to the what/the concrete details of your methodology....
Your initial inquiry reminds me of some parable I once came across that I'm ever more appreciative of the older I get.
Q: Should I do/be _____?
A: Not if you don't have to.
Agree about both. Each of these guys will give you a good (and different) way to look at the forces driving the markets. Not entirely different, actually, but differently expressed and using different tools. They are both clear presenters and have something to say. They will also complement the price action material that you have already gotten some introduction to.
And the video webinars are always recorded and will be available later at any time. They each have a number of earlier webinars in the library if you want to look into their material further.
Isn't that one of the most amazing aspects of it...? What's the old saying, six ways to Sunday? In trading it may as well be a billion... as many different approaches to it as there are people doing it. Ya gotta find your own LOL
Hello Grant, I haven't forgot about your post. Dealing with the process of losing a relative to liver cancer at the moment, which we were not expecting as we were told the earlier treatment was effective until Doctor's realized it actually wasn't(there are so many lousy physicians out there scares me to think what has happened to our medical school and specialization standards) So it's been a rough start to 2018. I'll give you a detailed reply shortly when I have a free moment to go into it.
Trading is nothing like most occupations. You are never guaranteed a pay off. The closest would be a pro poker or black jack player or a pro sportsman without endorsements, whose only salary is his wins.
But I get what you are saying, that it should be treated as other occupations and not as a hobby.
If you are going to quote me, please quote me completely. Don't quote part of my comment so you can make a point by "disagreeing" with me.
Here is the rest of my original paragraph from page 1: "Trading is like any other occupation. You have to work and study at it for a while before you see the rewards. Even then the rewards may never come."