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I've decided to start a journal, which will actually chronicle my past two years. I'm not going to post charts because that's irrelevant; it's about my mindset during various times on my journey, including the amount of money I've lost. I'll be taking entries directly from my written journal and pasting them here because I believe the experience on this path is more important than posting charts. Additionally, I see a lot of people in funded trader programs, and it dawns on me that these people will likely never matriculate into actual traders.
Through this journal, I hope you can sense the pain of this path. Right now, I don't know if I would have embarked on this path if I had to start all over again. It's been brutal. This is why I know that everyone I communicate with on this forum who is in funded trader programs is in a simulated environment. I'm going to talk about my trading in the market, the numerous blow-ups I've had, the epiphanies, and any other lessons that I think could benefit any hopeful soul who ventures on this path. I hope you make it. But perhaps you can learn from my mistakes and better orient yourself toward success.
I am outside of the tunnel now, and that is why I feel some responsibility to throw something out there in the world that might be a benefit to the true seekers. I hope it’s helpful.
These postings will not be in chronological order, but they will be dated according to when I wrote them.
Chaos at one level of magnification is harmony at a higher level of magnification.
I made a trade today for a four-point scalp on the ES and I thought that I would stop for today with only that one trade. However, I decided to make another trade, which is turning against me. It is frightening to see myself losing such an amount so quickly and at the same time, this is a bit of a lesson.
Both trades were speculative, but the second trade was more speculative on my part. The lesson I’ve learned is that I should not have entered that position at all.
But the trend was there, I decided not to exit the position because the trend was in my favor. At one point, I was down 13 points, but the trend was still strong for the day, holding my position, I came out positive with a two point scalp. The trend was there and I could’ve stuck it out, but I am probably lucky to get out before my psychology broke down.
Chaos at one level of magnification is harmony at a higher level of magnification.
I became an active trader, an active futures trader in 2022. I funded my account with $5000, and bought the ninja trader lifetime platform.
This perhaps is one of the most confusing things about being an active trader in futures. And this is where everyone goes astray, this is where the battle is in fact lost. Because of the amount of options out there, 99% of which are individuals or entities attempting to sell one item or the other, and useless indicator after useless indicator, I was able to side-step all this, because a mentor appeared.
They say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And it really seemed like that was the case in my case.
I had been traveling for a few years as a digital nomad funding myself as a marketing consultant, but it had reached a point where I began to think about the future, I could not see myself engaging with clients continuously into my later years, and I was 36 years old, and, really wanted to start to plan for posterity, in terms of looking for something that I could do 5 years from now 10 years from now from now and so I had an idea of the path and the time it would take, but I did not conceive of the pain that would be involved.
As I look back on it, my mentor was really fit for me. He didn’t tell me much, he simply told me to get ninja trader, gave me a five minute brief about data feed, and showed me a timeless chart based on a Renko and pointer me to a video to watch to learn about renko.
And thus began my Journey on this path. And so what I know about the market is purely through renko, I’ve never used a time-based chart, and my perspective I realize is very different from people who are using time based charts, and sometimes I think in hindsight that to start off with a time based chart as a scalper, that’s probably going to be quite a journey unless you do have that money to spend on the process. Because the ES can fluctuate 10 points when it’s in a trend. And on a time based chart that might start to look like the trend is turning, but actually it’s just a pullback.
I sidestepped the courses, I sidestepped the indicator phase. I sidestepped the trading rooms, I sidestepped the Discord crowd. Whenever I had some idea, I would simply text this individual. Hey, I have an idea, and he would call it overly complex and bound to failure. He informed me that my solutions should initially be simple, and so that built up in me, a pathology to simplify what I’m looking at.
And so I had to understand my indicators, and all I used today are moving averages, and moving averages are not indicators. They are simply price averaged. If I don’t understand the calculation of an indicator at any point in time, then I don’t know what’s happening. And, if I don’t understand the structure of price then I don’t know what’s happening. But I’ve actually come to understand the structure of price because my growth was in timeless charts, so I’m purely looking at point and figure charts or renko or charts.
Side stepping all of these side quests that lead nowhere, I spent the past two years simply watching charts, making my own observations about how price reacts around certain areas, particularly moving averages, and various points a long volume weighted average price. SCREENTIME
By not falling into the various side quests that are part of this venture, I simply only had to do one thing, and that was spend time behind the screen. The old timers call it screen time. There’s no magic, there’s no special movement, there’s no additional indicator. Screen time is one of the hardest things to do, because you’re missing out on life and you’re just sitting behind the screen trying to notate patterns, that resonate with you, dissecting those patterns scientifically, seeing what PRECEDES the patterns and what occurs after the patterns. At certain points it was depressing and I think about how depressing it was just in front of the screen.
Knowing someone who is actually trading realistically in real life, and having connected with others on Twitter, who were actual traders, I knew it was possible. Because if I was doing this myself, I would not believe it was possible to be a trader. It’s almost seems unbelievable to be able to create income in such a way in our society after going through school, and learning to work 10 hour days, and equating eight hours with income to pay for life, it’s an absolute state change. And you’ve got to be a certain type of person to truly and seriously venture on this path, and to even think it’s possible. You’ve got to be a divergent thinker for better or worse.
Chaos at one level of magnification is harmony at a higher level of magnification.
