How I Became A Profitable Day Trader | My Trading Journey

i know a lot of you i've been asking for this so here's my story of how i got into day trading if you don't know who i am i'm james and i've been a full-time day trader since 2019 and i was able to find success in less than six months skeptical i bet you are but it's the truth and i'm gonna share with you how i did it now when i say success it means i haven't had a losing month since that time and before we start as a disclaimer this is not financial advice i'm not here to sell you anything this is just me sharing my story enjoy so before i got into day trading i was in the apparel industry me and my wife started a wholesale business together back in 2010 and to quickly explain what the business is just how you would go to your retail store to buy your clothes well some of those retail stores come to our shop to buy the clothes in bulk to resell to you so we're the wholesalers right which means we're responsible for getting the clothes made from the fabric the design cutting sewing all of that and it being a very competitive fast-paced and extremely stressful industry i'm proud to say that my wife has been killing it actually the place we're in right now is what she's grown the company into now that most of my my attention is focused more on day trading so shout out to her i'm very proud of her so how did i end up day trading so it all started back in 2017 and at the time we were still at our first location and i was doing the apparel thing full time and we were doing okay for ourselves but i wanted something more more like a secondary income passive income whatever you want to call it but just a way to grow the money we were making but the problem was i didn't know how to do that i was completely illiterate when it came to investing so i started researching and going down the rabbit hole of financial education and i spent the next two years spending forty thousand dollars on courses seminars webinars all kinds and ours trying to learn this so most of what i came across was real estate investing and i've taken a course on swing trading with options i've looked into drop shipping and a few other things that caught my interest but none of them actually got me anywhere and i think some of that had to do with me buying into and some of that had to do with me not having the right resources now looking back i think a lot of that had to do with me just not putting in the work that was required i think the problem was i was trying to look for something that was quick and easy way to make money and once i found out it was going to take a lot of work or i just didn't see immediate results then it kind of killed the honeymoon phase for me so i would look for the next new and exciting thing that could possibly make me money so i was always stuck in this stupid cycle of always starting something new but never ending finishing it so now it's 2019 and it's been two years since going through all that and i came across one last webinar and it was about day trading didn't know anything about it never done it before but what this person was selling was completely different from everything i've seen so far now before i continue i want to note that this person does not offer this service anymore i know i'm going to get a bunch of questions on it but he does not do it anymore unfortunately just wanted to get that out of the way so it was an in-person mentorship program where he was going to teach us everything he knows and trade live in front of us with his real money for an entire week and he was very open and honest about everything he was showing his p l statements and just seemed like the real deal now at this point i'm still pretty skeptical just because of everything i've been through but i couldn't find a reason not to give this a shot so i decided to let the decision up to my wife because at the time she was six months pregnant with tyson which meant that i would have to leave her alone at the store for an entire week since the mentorship was in chicago and when i asked her i expected her to say no you know it's another one of your damn seminars or you know it's not the right time i'm pregnant what are you talking about but instead she was super supportive and actually encouraged me to go [Music] so june of 2019 i flew out to chicago for the mentorship and this was my first time day trading and to give you a picture of what every day was like i woke up at 4am central time walked to the closest gym because you know i have to get my training in no matter what go back to the hotel to get ready get to the mentorship by 7 a.m and from 7 a.m to 5 5 30 p.m it was all live trading and a crash course on everything he knew all his strategies management trading psychology he even had his personal setup shipped to the place to show us exactly how he trades how he scans analyze charts use hotkeys i mean it felt like i was neo learning kung fu in the matrix just straight injecting like 20 years of experience into one freaking week and credit goes to him because some people can do some people can teach but a very few can do both you can have all the information but if you don't know how to convey that information then it gets lost and i was so fascinated by everything he was saying it all just clicked with me and i was immediately hooked and after class was over around 5 5 30 i would rush back to the hotel and i would pick up whatever was on the way for dinner and review the material i learned that week in the room till i went to bed at like 11 pm and i repeated that for an entire week and after the mentorship was over on the plane right back home i realized i just didn't find my secondary income but my passion and i told myself this is what i want to do and i'm gonna do everything i can to make it work so starting that following monday i showed up to his trading room every day trying to apply what i learned i started by risking 50 bucks a trade and of course i wasn't profitable right at the start just because you know the rules of the game doesn't mean you're great at it for example i can watch all the videos and tutorials about golf but i'm not going to make any progress until i actually go out there and golf i have to find my own swing right because we're all going to vary in different height weight and limb length and by actually doing that's going to expose my strength and weaknesses and then i'll know what to work on from there so what i did with day trading is i started to track and review all my trades along with the management i trade gaps so i would study the gaps list every day i would analyze them in the pre-market to anticipate what they would do and then post-market i checked to see what the gaps actually did and compare it with my pre-market analysis then i review them and try to figure out why i was right or wrong i did a lot of scanning and started posting ideas in the room for feedback i asked a lot of questions continued my studies and really observed and paid attention to everything this trader was doing and trying to mimic his routine and the goal was to be able to do it on my own and not rely on his trades so i was spending about 12 hours a day to do all this and i did it every single day then about four or five months later i knew i was improving because that's when i started to break even and go positive in my p l at the end of the week end of the month which by the way i've never had a losing month ever since then and someone else noticed too because that professional trader reached out to me asking if i can help him moderate the room and what that means is i'll be doing exactly what he's doing for parts of the day so i'll have to get on the mic and trade live for the members answer any of their questions scan the market and call plays to make the room money now remember just five months ago i didn't know a thing about day trading nor have i done any type of public speaking and what now i'm supposed to trade live in front of hundreds of people and try to make the money it just doesn't make sense right so initially i turned down the offer and i told them i just didn't feel comfortable taking on that kind of pressure and i remember that same night it hit me i remember asking myself when is success ever supposed to feel comfortable this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and either i'm going to win from it or learn from it so there's really nothing to lose so the next morning i told them just kidding i'll do it and that's when my life completely changed because just before that our son tyson was born we also bought our first house around that time and now i'll be making the full transition to becoming a day trader as my career and i remember being so nervous getting on the mic for the first time thinking this is crazy but this really put my back up against the wall and forced me to bring my a-game every day and it helped to have him mentor me and steer me in the right direction and there was no way i was going to let him down the room down and especially myself down so i amplified everything i was already doing to improve myself like instead of listening to music when i'm working out now i'm listening to courses i took a lot of notes not just on trading but how he was moderating presenting himself i started a daily trading journal to track all my mistakes mostly psychological like if i mismanaged to play forced to trade or got fomo things like that and what really helped was teaching if you really want to learn something try teaching it to someone else one of the responsibilities as a moderator is to answer questions and educate so when i teach it it reaffirms my knowledge and trying to make it simple to the person in front of me helps me as much as it helps them then when christmas came around we got to take a week off for the holidays but the room was going to be left open to the members who still wanted to trade and chat for that week so for me instead of taking that time off i decided to use that opportunity to get more comfortable being on the mic so i decided to moderate on my own open to close every day for that entire week and by the end of it i pretty much lost my voice but i learned a lot and i had a lot of fun doing it so it was during the week of christmas so it wasn't too busy i remember everybody was in the holiday spirit we were sharing stories eating and drinking all while doing some trading and most importantly we made money that week so we were able to catch a few plays but i still remember this one play we caught it was the rad short as an office gap and by the end of that week i was so happy that i did what i did just because it was a real confidence booster i needed for myself as a trader and as a moderator then in the beginning of 2020 is when the world gets hit with the pandemic lockdown happens we run out of toilet paper for some odd reason and the market tanks and this is when i first started scalping because i thought that's what my mentor shifted his focus to so one of the biggest lessons i've learned about trading the market is to be adaptable the market environment is always changing there's absolutely no control we have over it all we can do is adapt to it so i'm a big big believer in having multiple strategies multiple weapons in your arsenal and being wise enough to know which ones to use at any given environment because what's working today may not be working tomorrow and what happened was i ended up having my biggest month by far making about forty thousand dollars in march of 2020 risking only 100 to 200 bucks a trade now looking back it feels like it was meant to be because i spent 40 000 searching for an answer and this was like a way of telling me boom you did it you found it here's your money back as a reward because ever since i incorporated scalping into my strategies is when everything clicked and i started to make some real money day trading and from then on it just kind of snowballed for me of course there was still some bumps along the way and much more lessons to be learned a lot of that was psychological which i believe determines if you're going to succeed in this business or not because anybody can learn strategies and know how to read charts but it's you who's clicking those buttons and it's your money that's fluctuating on that screen which is why we can all get into the exact same trade but i bet you in the end we'll all have different results and for me i found out i'm not the go big or go home type of guy i'm pretty risk averse i hate giving back profit which means i may be getting checking out of plays here and there which is fine i just like to make what i can and move on and when i do that enough times at the end of the day it builds up a nice amount of profit so the key for me is knowing when to give those trades more room and i think management is an aspect in trading i'll forever be working on so that's how i got into day trading as you can see my story is a bit unique some might call it luck that my mentor brought me in which i'm very fortunate to have found such a great mentor who's now a good friend by the way but i believe it's probability because if you're consistently putting in the work and putting yourself out there it's more probable for you to come across more opportunities than the person who's just sitting on the couch and one day your work is going to align with the right opportunity and you'll be at the right place at the right time so i'm still here still learning and growing those are two things i'll never stop doing and i've also grown to love teaching it's given me a new sense of purpose it's actually one of the reasons why i started this youtube channel so if you're liking the content make sure to subscribe and before i close off the video i'll show you what i'm up so far this year of 2022. i know a lot of you guys are always curious so we're in the end of april now and i wish it was a different time in the market because it's one of the slowest times i've traded by far my mentor who's been training for 15 plus years told me it's one of his slowest times he's traded so it sucks but also it's a bit encouraging because i'm still up over 100k in my toss account i think almost 20 in my e-trade account which i only use for shorting stocks that are hard to borrow on toss and this is with me risking 500 bucks per trade so i'll take it but i think last year i think i made this same amount in just like the first two months so it's pretty slow but slow times don't last so hopefully you'll pick up soon so hope you enjoyed my story i hope there's some nuggets in there you can take away and apply to your trading if you found this to be helpful make sure to hit that like button if you have any questions at all leave them in the comments below and as always i appreciate you for being here and i hope to see on the next one [Music] [Music] you

Channel: James Rich Young

Views: 106,687

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Id: OKpQJiu5SGk

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2022