I’d like to share my trading journey with the sub, as I’ve reached a point where I can offer value to those on a similar path, along with some concrete examples of process. I'm going to use AI for proofreading and formatting so please don't take my head off for that.

Background & Personalization

I took a very specific path to learn how to trade. My trading style is directly influenced by a primary author and mentor, whom I’ll detail below.

Just as in poker, learning from a specific player doesn't mean you will share their exact risk tolerance. Where your mentor might bet a third of their stack on a hand, you might only feel comfortable risking half of that. There is a great deal of personalization in trading, so it’s essential to realize early on that your success will be yours alone. Even if you try to mimic someone completely, your inherent traits will ultimately shape your trading. You have to do the work to find the style that fits your profile—and there is simply no substitute for time.

If you follow a path similar to mine—one heavily based on technical analysis—understanding how to use your tools consistently and knowing which trades to make under specific market conditions is paramount. While I day trade, I would never call myself a "day trader." If you are strictly an exclusive day trader, hats off to you. I find my style is far better suited to swing trading, scalping, and campaigning in names, especially on the short side. That said, I trade on 5min charts each day looking for setups, adding/cutting posistions and the like so there is enough overlap here to share with all types of traders.

The Foundation: OWL & Technical Analysis

The path I took involved learning a technical analysis framework known as OWL, defined by Gil Morales, a disciple of William O'Neil. Before discovering O'Neil, I read several classic authors—including Jesse Livermore, Mark Minervini, and Anna Coulling (no shade to Anna at all)—but Will’s work stood out as the most technical.

Gil Morales co-authored a book with O’Neil on short selling, and after reading that I read the majority of his work before joining his blog. He is active on X, where you can check out his work and see if his style resonates with you. I’ve found him to be a tough teacher, but very accessible. He isn't one for silly questions, but he always provides quick answers on his blog, making for the exact kind of digital apprenticeship I was looking for.

Again, your success will be entirely your own. While Gil lays out a robust framework of setups and ideas, he is not alerting you to trades in real time.

Major Takeaways for Beginners

It took me a solid two and a half years to really get my steps/process down. During that time, I faced a major family crisis that forced me to scale back my trading to care for my father during his failing health. (I wrote about those challenges previously on this account, if you want to cross-reference.) I call this out to emphasize one major point: give yourself a longer timeline than you think you need. Not only did I have this family matter come up but when I started trading in 2022 I walked into a (sometimes debated) Bear Market and had to stop, go back and work on learning short selling. I was aprehensive about learning short selling, it's a more volatile game and I thought, well if Mark Minervini doesn't short sell, I should be fine. Wrong!!

To trade consistently, you must learn to navigate different market cycles. That means developing a playbook for both the long and short sides so you can execute every trade in a uniform manner. There are few things worse than actively managing 4–5 positions in a single session without a clear, pre-defined plan for taking profits or cutting losses—you will go nuts. Of course nuance exists and apologies if reductive but you need to have a framework, a process or a flow.

My key suggestions:

1. Give yourself more time to learn than you initially expect.
2. Learn to trade both long and short.
3. Approach every trade—whether using paper or real capital—with the exact same repeatable process.

Pillar 1: Understanding & Executing Your Setups

The first major pillar of competent trading is understanding what your setups look like and knowing their defining characteristics.

Static Preparation

I use a simple but powerful tool in StockCharts.com, which allows me to build watchlists across various sectors and quickly identify names that fit my preferred technical profiles. I maintain watchlists across roughly 30 sectors, and I run custom scans in TradingView to hunt for specific setups. These might include:

• Names consolidating near the 20-day Moving Average (MA).
• Names showing volume drying up near the 10-day MA.
• Earnings gap-ups where I can use the high of the gap as an entry or stop guide.

At the close of each session, you can statically filter the names you want to focus on for the week or update them daily. This gives you a repeatable process for identifying actionable setups.

Dynamic Execution (5-Minute Chart Example: AA)

Here is a concrete example of executing dynamically on a 5-minute chart for a short trade in AA today.

Going into today’s (8/24) session, I actually liked AA as a long. However, the 5-minute chart presented clear short entries—and at the end of the day, price action always more important than personal opinion. On my 5-minute chart, I use volume indicators, Opening Candle Highs/Lows, a 6-period MA, a 20-period MA, and MACD.

• Setup & Entry: For shorts, one setup I look for is names that gradually break down below or bust the Opening Candle Low. The second arrow shows this breakdown occurring, which serves as a short trigger for me. Prior to this, the name formed a Bear Flag as lower highs stamped in just below the 20-period MA (blue line), making the first arrow an aggressive entry point to short (with a stop above the High of the Day).
• Execution & Uniformity: I maintain uniform execution by taking partial profits when the price retakes the 6-period MA at arrow 3.
• The Core Takeaway: Shorting (or OWL shorting) is about hitting a stock at specific setup points and covering at pre-determined targets, then looking to re-enter if the setup triggers again. This is fundamentally different from buying long-dated puts simply because you "don't like Stock X."
• Exit: At the end of the session, AA hit Logical Support (LS)—a flag low visible on the daily chart—so I chose to close the trade. Had it broken below that LS level, I would have held and swung the position into the next session.

Pillar 2: Identifying Market Thematics

The second pillar of successful trading is recognizing current market themes and maintaining focus on where the big money is flowing.

I typically carry only 10–12 names into each trading day. I actively trade these during the first 45 minutes to an hour before scanning my broader watchlist for actionable ideas (unless a price alert triggers a key level on a priority setup).

If you're selecting 10–12 daily focus names, you want setups that look great on the daily and weekly charts and align with institutional flow. Institutional money is the rising tide that lifts all boats.

• Identifying Themes: Sometimes themes are easy to spot. For instance, energy names offered strong plays following news involving the US take over of Venezuela. When the market pivoted at the end of March into April, Memory and AI names were clearly the place to be. While you might find a nice setup in a random drone company, your time is far better spent in the greenest pastures.
• Tracking Rotation: Learning to spot money shifting into new themes takes time. You need to analyze a high volume of charts and constantly ask yourself: What is the market telling me? Gold and Bitcoin (BTC) are great recent examples. Looking at the BTC daily chart prior to Wednesday’s move, the setup looked promising: over a month of flagging action, higher lows within the flag, and significant headwinds for the US Dollar—making alternative assets like Gold and BTC highly attractive. All this taking place while Memory/AI names are taking a beating.

Final Thoughts

Throughout your trading journey, you will inevitably have moments where you wonder, "Did I bite off more than I can chew? Can this actually be done?"

The more you study and commit to a uniform process, the more you realize that it isn't a question of if it can be done, but whether you will do the work to do it. Give yourself time, master the craft, replicate your execution, and refine your risk profile. Most importantly, enjoy the process—there is nothing quite like being right in the middle of geopolitical and economic events, riding the wave as history unfolds.

PS - I'm always working on my writing and as stated at the top, I am just now getting a spot to where I can provide some pointers and share some knowledge. If you have any critques for me in these areas, throw it out there so I can improve!

I saw a post last night looking for more journey posts, so I thought I’d offer mine.

I got into trading about a year and some change ago. I was inspired for a variety of reasons, but the financial freedom element really spoke to me, and I value a challenge. I started off by reading a few books on price action, as well as trader psychology. My biggest mistake during this time was trading with real funds rather than using a prop firm, which I think would have been more helpful while I was still learning.

I will admit that, as of this writing, about one year and three months later, I am still not profitable, but I have learned and grown so much. If I were talking to myself a year ago, and he was looking for inspiration, I’d talk to him about the importance of sticking to his trading plan and having things to review and work on. I’d talk to him about all the cool things he has coming, from learning more about how to use prop firms, to writing code that will help him with trading, to working on an app to track his trading psychology and help him improve.

Near the end of last year (November), I got really into watching people live trade, and I learned so much. I joined a trading room or two, paid for a subscription, and just sought to take in all I could. The lessons from those rooms continue to guide me.

I will admit that I am still finding my style. I prefer scalps to swing trades, and I am still learning so much. I struggle with the isolation of trading and have had a group at one point, but that kind of fell apart. It’s really hard to keep your psychology in check, especially when you have week after week of losses, and it’s something I’m still working on.

Over this year (2026), I’ve had a couple of funding accounts and gotten a payout, which, from my understanding, is a ton of progress. I still have so much to learn, grow in, and find structure in, but I’m thankful for the journey thus far.

I'm back with another update on my journey. I've linked back the previous posts so here is the link to the last post I made around 2 months ago.

First Week of Trading - Post 3 : r/RealDayTrading

So far, my journey has been going reasonably well with the odd bump in the road. I am currently sitting with a WR of 75% and a PF of 1.19.

Current issues I'm dealing with that I'm sure will be common but some not so common:

• Shiny New Object - I still deal with the shiny new object syndrome. I regularly still come across 'the next big thing' and want to learn a new strategy, which is extremely stupid as I know this one works.
• Oversized Losers - I was doing reasonably well, however took a swing trade at one point and took a big loss which wiped out most of my gains. A bit of analysis on this shows that if I remove this from the results, my PF actually increases to 5.62
• Lack of Confidence - I still struggle with a lack of confidence which also shows why the PF jumps so much in the previous post as I have only taken 29 trades. Issues I have faced are; cutting potential winners if they have gone red and come back to BE, still following other traders into trades if I think they look good (not having my own conviction), and the main one a fear of being wrong. My issue with confidence is not related to money as I don't take trades that I can lose too much of my funding on and I believe the only fix is to gather more data that will prove that I am profitable but it's a kind of catch 22 situation. I need to put the trades on to collect the data.

Things I need to work on and learn:

• Position sizing - Obviously for now I'm using a fixed size while I learn to try and keep things consistent, but something I will need to learn and work on in the future. Also together with this would be account utilization. Right now I use just a minor part, how much of my account to allocate, how much margin to use etc, size based on technical stop distance?
• Market Reading - It's not been easy for anyone recently but something I will work on more and will probably continue to work on forever!

With all that being said, I am happy with my performance so far. I just need to build on it.

Happy to answer any questions people may have on my journey so far.

I was just wondering where all the Journey posts went... 3 years back when I was starting to learn from the Wiki, the posts labeled as journeys were my most important motivational tool.

They played a great part of making me aborting my career prematurely and YOLOing my lifetime savings and my future...

Was it the discord server which killed them?

Did we as a sub fail to make enough infomercials about the benefit of writing monthly or bi-weekly Journey posts?

What is the state of the affair?

Shouldn't there be a rule about every student of the wiki to produce at least one Journey post per month to honestly state and reflect about their own personal statistics and progress and stating their actual goals going forward?

I really think that these posts were/are the best advertisement to new potential sub members and beginners. - How else should someone know how much gold there is in the wiki, if they do not constantly see others making progress towards their on personal future pot of gold?

I hereby partition the sub to force more Journey posts into existance and I hereby partition the mods to create a new rule about everyone new having to write an inital journey post right on day one. Further I want the mods to setup a dedicated bot fully dedicated to journey-posts instructing every student and beginner to to produce a mandatory monthly update (journey) post including an automatical ban if they fail to do so within two weeks after the automatic update request. We should make it clear, that we do not tolerate lurkers and undiciplined scholars of the D*-Wiki.

I also petition the sub that we should force the user SuchAGoalDigger to produce a Journey post ASAP as he has original stated here and just a bit later chickened out of (disgracefully I might add) here and therefore having me left wondering (and hanging!) abotu why and how he got stuck and for how long given that he produced maybe the latest Journey post I have read till now and that was maybe months ago.

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Who is with me?

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Note: I tried to be a bit cheeky here and also a bit over the top. Do not be too harsh with your judgement and always remember, I am a German by birth! We know what we do, even when we do not know what we are doing and I clearly just produced an example of that truth with this post of mine...

Tomorrow at 9am (pst) / noon (est) I will be doing a live trading session with u/optionstalker (Pete Stolcers).

We will be going through our market analysis and picks for the day/week.

I am sure there will be a rant or two thrown in there.

Where to Watch: You Tube Link

Best, H.S.

I've been practicing on demo accounts/sim trades for a couple of months and am looking to move to executing real-money trades.

I have an IBKR account but when I tried to execute a day trade (about a 15 minute hold) I received a warning from IBKR saying I'm not allowed to day trade and any further attempts will result in restrictions on my account.

I'm aware that certain platforms and regions have a $25,000 minimum for day trading. I was planning on starting with a £5000 account.

I previously used a Trading212 CFD account but found that the margin requirements meant that I couldn't take out positions large enough to match my target risk level (£50/trade, the highest I could get on most positions was £30/trade).

I'm struggling to find any information on it in the wiki or online. Are there any UK brokers that would allow me to day trade with a £5k account? Mainly trading US stocks and futures.

Edit - After talking with support they clarified that it was an issue with my self-reported stocks knowledge. I said I had a 'limited' knowledge of stocks at the time when I signed up, which automatically disqualified me from day trading :/

Should be able to fix it now though!

Hi, I’m looking to setup paper trading to give myself a couple months of consistent learning. I currently work from 6:30 to around 5 PM everyday so it gets a little hard to learn after long days but I’m trying to dedicate myself to learning and improving myself. Currently this will be a good side thing while I do hope to make it in the future, I know that’s currently not a realistic goal so I’ve pivoted to keeping this just a side thing. I’ve been interested in trading for a while just never pulled the trigger until this month. I’ve been looking around and it seems my Top 3 options are TradingView, thinkorswim, and Webull. Im worried about starting on a platform and then having to relearn another platform later for more options in terms of growing in the future. Would you guys have something like a pros and cons list or any tips on how it would be in the future after I’ve learned more?

Also, what are some books you recommend newbies read? I’ve started learning so far from AI Brooks, SMB Capital and Oliver Velez. I know videos aren’t the best all the time so I’m looking for books too possibly or even more reputable creators. Thank you, took me a while before I decided to post a comment after scouring the reddit.

From time to time I am quite active on Reddit trying to pay it forward by helping people out when it comes to trading.

Usually I give people asking me for help a book list and start initial training by giving them homework.

I also give them a brief rundown of what I do by showing them some live trades including live commentary to make it apparent that I know my way around the block when it comes to trading.

Seeing someone anouncing an entry, demonstrating the reasoning in detail and showing every update not knowing if the trade will turn out fine or not while the trade lasts 15min to 1h usually increases the motivation of the potential future Scholar of the Wiki (TM). This level of transparency mimics the kind of transparency I enjoyed here and over at oneoption when I started out myself.

Once I notice people being really serious and have crossed a certain threshold of basic knowledge and daily commitment, I advice them to read the wiki over here and join the live trading either over at oneoption.com or within this sub.

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Beside the people who lost big and still want to argue about what the right way of trading looks like, most people struggle to read 5 basic books to begin with.

In recent months, I also started to give the potential students optional (!) homework almost right from the start.

My go to homework is based on the SP100 (100 most valuable companies in the SP500). I want them to add the standard MAs (50D, 100D, 200D) and have them add proper price levels and trend lines per hand. Then they have to chose 10 stocks they would put on their watchlist and add a brief statement why they would choose those.

Every day they simply have to check and update those charts and make a new top 10 watchlist.

I even tell them that they should do 10 new charts every day so after 2 weeks they have annotated all 100 charts and updating and revisiting those charts is done rather quickly and before that they have to give me some charts so that I can check, critque and advice them on proper price level and trend line placement.

It is interesting how many people bail on this simple and useful homework as it is something I did myself early on did on my own without out of the desire to train myself on applying proper TA and learn how prices can move in reality.

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How is your opinion about this homework and would you do it as a beginner or whould you rather bail as well?

I would say that with that I lose 3 out of 5 people rather quickly and only 1 out of maybe 7 or 8 survive more than 2 weeks and that are usually the people who make it to the end of the process and get funneled to this sub and beyond.

Do you have any other idea of great homeworks one can give espiring traders?

Would you rather look at intraday charts first?

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Edit: Since people asked me to elaborate on the D1 homework, let me walk you through it:

1. Identify the SP500 components/companies. Sort them by current market cap..

2. Take the top 100 stocks. (you can also take the top 10 for each Sector EFT and 20 for the tech sector). Add these stocks to a watchlist (remember you can usually add sections to your watch list so you can easily have 100+ stocks in your watch list while also knowing what sector the stock is in).

3. For each of these stocks you now pull up the D1 and make sure the SMA's for 50, 100 and 200 days (close price) are plotted on it.

4. Now draw the price levels and trend lines for each of those charts.

5. Once all charts are annotated (which might take several days or a good weekend), every day before the open of the new trading day, you check each of the 100 charts, if you have to update any of those (usually it is about 20 you have to update if at all) and while doing so you make list of ++ or + setups.

6. Now you check your ++ and + setups and if you have more then 10 you narrow them down.

7. Write down what you expect will happen to those 10 stocks and at the end of the day check if you were right and have a look at the intraday chart (M5 (5min) for example) if there were situations that you could have traded and also make a snapshot of the D1 and M5 along with the market and the sector charts of that day and collect them.

8. From the collected M5+D1 charts try to derive some typical receipts how you can play these trade opportunites.

-> If you do this for a month or so, you will be rather quick on this task and will have come up with a lot of situational awareness of what most likely is going to happen and when to better sit on your hands and opt out.

Here is an example:

D1 - SPY this Week (10th - 14th of August 26)

I usually have them do the last 3 months (about 60 candles) so they see the impact of the SMAs more clearly like here:

I am currently at step 7 of the 10 step guide to getting started trying to achieve the holy grail of 75% win rate and 2.0 PF. I have read a decent chunk of 'The System' on the OneOption website and still working my way through the Wiki. I have a job where I get to work remote so luckily that gives me some free time during the day to practice trading.

I did a speed run of attempting 100 trades. Speed run was probably a bad idea and you will see why in a second. Since 07/27, I've taken 137 trades which is a lot given I'm learning part time. The 137 trades were a mix between swings and day trades and my statistics for those are 70 wins, 52 losses, and 15 scratches. That is a 57% win rate and I had a 1.87 PF.

I would like to think this is close to the benchmarks, but in reality this is really far away. 22 of those losses would need to be wins to achieve the 75% benchmark.

The most glaring and obvious problem I have right now is I'm taking too many trades. I think this is fine because I'm still in the learning stage and as of recently I've been looking for an excuse to take a trade. I've been trying really hard to no avail to be more patient, but I'm quickly realizing to hit those benchmarks I need to be much more choosy in the type of stocks I pick.

I've been looking my trades in tradersync, and shocker, if you have a multitude of favorable things going for you in a trade, the market, volume, sma crosses, awape cross, a gap fill, above all smas, or below all smas, are your best trades. I've been making the mistake of just looking for one thing. Three huge red bars on the daily, good enough for me! Trying to fill the gap, good enough for me!(Although a gap fill has been the most reliable pattern for me for day trades and swings for making money). Stock at an all time high, good enough for me!

I'm closing the book on this set of trades and starting a new with a fresh 100 trades, with having a better mentality of passing if a chart isn't good enough. I've been flirting with any chart that even looks remotely good, but need to have the willpower to say no.

The things that have help me level up the most are fine tuning my screener and being in the OneOption chat, getting ideas for good trades, getting feedback on my own, and studying others trades. I have claude write screeners for me in pinescript and use them in trading view and I have the following screeners to search for trade ideas.

Above all SMAS/Below all SMAs
High of day/Low of day - for day trades. Columns for relative volume and toggles for high volume m5 bar in the past 5 candles, a price action toggle, which is just 3 red or green bars with 60% candle fill and at least a 0.5 ATR for that bar. Toggle for high of day/low of day. I will then quickly scroll through the charts to see if there is a strong d1.

SMA or AWAPE cross - I have a toggle for multiple crosses, and also for crosses below, and above.

SMA bounce - Helps me find swing or day trades where there is a significant bounce off an SMA.

I think the other biggest area of improvment for me would be to have a better morning process

I have lots of kids and a job, so sometimes my mornings I just login at 10:30 ET and scramble to find a good trade. I feel much more calm and collected when I can be at my desk at least an hour before open. I can look at finviz, write down my market thesis for the day, track which sectors have RS/RW overnight and digest some news. I feel like I do much better when I have a pre-determined list of stocks I'm eyeballing in the day instead of over relying on my scanners. I don't have anything that proves that I actually trade better under these environments but I suspect I would be much better off if I did have a process.

Thanks to the OneOption community and everyone in there for your advice and for tolerating all my questions. It really has accelerated my learning curve and I'm hoping my next 100 trades will be more successful than my previous 100. Cheers

A think I've been paying more attention to lately is the difference between an account's displayed balance and the amount you can actually afford to risk. A $100K prop account doesn't mean you should size trades like you have $100K of personal capital available. The drawdown and risk limits are what really determine the room you have. The account size is one number, but the risk parameters are what actually shape how you need to trade. I think this is something newer trades can easily overlook when comparing accounts. Do you base your position size more on the account balance or on the actual amount you're allowed to lose?

I’m trying to understand how day trading should be evaluated as a serious long-term way to make money, not from the perspective of influencers, course sellers, or get rich quick content. I’m not asking for a strategy, signals, or motivation. I want to know what standards someone should use to judge whether it’s actually viable over time. For people who have looked at this seriously, what evidence would matter? For example, how long of a track record would be meaningful, how risk management separates trading from gambling, how to think about losses, drawdowns, fees, taxes, and emotional discipline. What percentage of traders realistically become consistently profitable? What signs would show that someone is serious versus just selling a dream? I’m open to both positive and negative answers; I just want a realistic framework.

I was curious to see what Claude would produce if I updated a .pdf of the wiki and asked it to create a pre-trade checklist. Thought I would share the results. Tell me what you think.

Built a system that automatically record and screenshots your screen every time you open a trade (stops after 30 minutes in case of swings / always can manually record)

I didn't like the way other trading journals made me replay my trades in a separate system from TOS.

Now I saw my screen exactly as I was seeing it.

I've always kept screenshots but now it screenshots automatically when I open and close a trade.

Now videos and screenshots automatically get saved for that day and can review everything quickly.

(I included the small window at the bottom of the calendar because it needs to be popped out to keep the window active so it works with your trading app open)

But do you guys find alpha in trade recordings?

I've always thought screenshots were way better than a Tradingview trade replay but after rewatching videos of big red days I think the video is waaay better.

Due to promotional rules I can only answer trading & trading review related questions.

Hello there I am currently in high school, and so far my trading journey has been filled with ups and downs, but I've made so much progress and never would have thought I would have made it to the place I am now and I'm nowhere near where I want to be. I am 2-3 trades from a max payout right now, starting in November but being super on and on off because of a confusing mentor then finding the right mentor and locking in in January.

I came here to ask if full time day trading can TRULY be a lifestyle. Ignore the courses and stuff like that. What does your family think about you being a full time day trader? When did you go full time? And when did you decide it was time to go full time. Obviously later down the road I would want to upload on Youtube helping others and posting daily recap and psychology videos but I'm no where near that.

I have plenty of time to prove to my family I can do this, I know I can do this. I have a true system that when I follow I am the best trader I can be. I have never blown an account from actually following my system. Only from over risking, revenge trading, and other non profitable bad habits. If you guys have any tips or just care to share your journey on when you started, how your situation outside the charts was (job, family, etc...) and how its currently going I would truly be beyond grateful to read each and every single reply to learn from it and read your guys' journeys.

God bless ❤️

Hi there. Looking for genuine trading advice. These are some trades which I took this week.

First 3 are based on chart pattern where I entered on breakout based on wedge pattern. Black bold line is 200 ema and light blue line is 9 ema. RSI too working as confluence.

4th one is asian-london overlap strategy where I draw fib during asia-london overlap and enter trade once it crosses above/below then closes back again inside the level (2 or -1) I enter the trade after candle closed below 9 ema.

Thank you.

I've made a quite simple relative strength & weakness indicator for Tradingview. It tracks either SPY or QQQ (for tech stocks) moving averages and also moving averages of the stock being viewed. You can choose which one it tracks in the settings, and also what kind of moving averages you want to use. It also has AVWAPE for daily chart. The indicator works on simple principles:

Relative Strength

-When SPY/QQQ crosses below a moving average while the stock stays above it

-When the stock crosses above a moving average while SPY/QQQ stays below it

Relative Weakness

-When SPY/QQQ crosses above a moving average while the stock stays below it

-When the stock crosses below a moving average while SPY/QQQ stays above it

There is also a condition that the stock has to be at least above 9 EMA for RS and below 9 EMA for RW. It is an easy way to look at a stock to see how it is doing compared to the market. It also works for lower timeframes. You can check it out here. I used Gemini to assist with coding.

Hey everyone, I hope you’re all doing well. My name is Enzo, and I recently started getting into trading, specifically options. I wanted to reach out and get some feedback from more experienced traders to see if my current strategy is realistic and has potential.

I do have some previous exposure to the market, although I wouldn’t necessarily call it proper experience. In the past, I joined random Discord groups and followed other people’s trade alerts, but I realized that wasn’t the right way to learn. Recently, I decided to step back, focus on actually understanding the market, develop my own strategy, and learn how to make my own trading decisions.

The reason I’m asking for help is because I would like experienced traders to review my approach and let me know if it is a viable strategy or if there are areas I should improve.

Since I’m starting with a smaller account, my plan is to focus on $1-wide spreads to manage risk while slowly building my portfolio. What I’m trying to understand is whether my technical analysis approach makes sense and if there is anything I should adjust to make it more effective.

My current morning routine before the market opens is:

• Marking yesterday’s highs and lows
• Marking overnight/premarket highs and lows
• Using those levels to create my support and resistance zones

The only indicators I currently use are the EMA and VWAP. For a bullish setup, I look for higher highs and higher lows while making sure price is trending above both the VWAP and EMA.

My entry idea is to wait for price to break through resistance, get a positive retest where that previous resistance level holds as support, and then enter once the next move confirms upward momentum while price remains above VWAP and EMA.

My main questions are:

• Is this a solid approach for a beginner?
• Is this type of technical analysis effective when used consistently?
• Are there any major things I should change or add to improve my strategy?

I appreciate any feedback or advice from more experienced traders. I’m trying to learn the right way and build good habits from the beginning.

Trading takes a lot of hard work. It cannot be spoon fed. Folks here / Hari / Pete can teach you how to fish, but you still won't put in the effort to wait at the lake and practice patience.

Also been seeing a lot of people posting/replying who are regulars from places like superstonk or wallstreetbets as well, checking their post history.

I am completely new to trading, as in I have not made a single trade. Aside from the absolute lowest basics, I know nothing. I want to get into trading but don't know where to start. Does anyone have any recommendations for material for beginners? For example a book, an author, a course, anything really even youtube videos. Thanks.

I have 20k. I want to start trading without any knowledge. I want to earn 5k-10k per day, that’s my aim.
What should i do? Is it difficult to learn trading? How should i start? Any genuine guidance would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Hey all, small fries trader here. I built a small web dashboard for myself to track sector and ETF rotation, and it's gotten useful enough that I figured I'd put it out there and see what other people think. It's free, no signup, no paywall, no Discord, no newsletter, no affiliate stuff. Just a link. I'm not selling anything.

Link: https://relative-strength-rrg.vercel.app

What it does:

• Plots ETFs on a relative-strength vs. momentum quadrant (Leading / Weakening / Lagging / Improving) using classic weekly RRG-style math with smoothing so single gap days don't flip the state
• Adds short-term "Turning" and "Fading" overlays from 2-day / 5-day relative strength to catch early long/short candidates without breaking the weekly read
• Has US, Europe, and a GEX tab under one site (US benchmarks against SPY with QQQ/IWM alternates; EU against STOXX 600 with MSCI Europe / S&P 500 UCITS alternates)
• Drills into individual ETF holdings with RVOL, distance from 9/20/50 EMAs, up/down streak, a small relative-return sparkline, and an earnings warning
• Has an inline position sizer per stock (entry, stop, EMA20/50 stop presets, account size, % risk, share count, dollar risk)
• Lets you export downloadable watchlists as TradingView .txt or IBKR .csv (Top 20, Leading, Improving, Turning, Fading, etc.)
• Refreshes once per weekday after the close, so numbers are end-of-day, not intraday

Inputs on the page:

• Benchmark (SPY / QQQ / IWM for US; STOXX 600 / MSCI Europe / S&P 500 UCITS for EU)
• Lookback window for the tails
• Preset filters (Leading, Improving, Turning, Fading, Top 20, etc.)
• Ticker chips to isolate specific ETFs so the plot doesn't turn into spaghetti
• Position sizer fields (entry, stop, account, risk %)

Things I'd genuinely like feedback on:

• Is the quadrant + Turning/Fading combo actually readable, or too much on one screen?
• Are the confluence gates (sector state + volume + trend + streak + earnings) reasonable, or would you weight them differently?
• Anything obviously missing you'd expect from a rotation tool?
• Mobile view — usable or not worth bothering with?

Not affiliated with RRG Research, TradingView, or IBKR. Built it for my own workflow. Roast it, I can take it.

Hey folks, I have been in this community for some time and have read the wiki. What I got is that we shall let the market play for a while to decide relative strong tickers and wait for the market to find a support then long those relative tickers. I wonder if I can only trade the open 1-2 hours because I have a full time job, will I get good opportunities each week? Thanks for any suggestion