To The Moon

It took me close to 5 years of losses and breakeven to reach where I am today. I'm handling 6 figures worth of prop firm funding and has many payouts from various prop firms.

This didn't come easy.

Like many traders, I started trading with the goal of achieving financial freedom and to leave his 9 – 5 job. I learned from free contents on YouTube. I know many concepts like smart money concept and multi-timeframe analysis.

Even with so much knowledge, I am unable to put together a coherent system. Why? Knowledge is power, but action is king. I do not have a fixed strategy that I consistently trade with.

Does this sound all too familiar? It does.

It’s happening to you now, right?

Many traders experienced what I experienced.

I've been there, done that and is now profitable.

You Need A Systematic System

Knowledge is power but without action is useless. There is no point being a genius if you don't use your intelligence and knowledge for something. - Abu Bakr

I know you have a lot of knowledge. I know you understand how different indicators worked and wave theories. So how do you put these knowledge into action?

There are so many criteria to look out for. How do you know what will work, what will not work?

What if you spent 2 days testing your strategy, only to find out that it's not profitable? How do you proceed from there? Do you tweak your system a little and backtest again? Or do you build an entire different trading system?

This is a serious problem that you have to address. You will waste a lot of time on the wrong approach. You will backtest wrong. You will not get enough data from your backtesting. You will apply the concepts wrong.

The bulk of your problem lies with not having a well thought out trading plan. If you don't know what or how to, I have a framework which I will go through later in the post. This gives you a good starting point to play around with. Anything you do here, get to 100 backtested data. After that, decide if you want to add in more criteria into your trading plan. I have a free trading journal here.

You're indecisive. You backtest and moved on without any result. You need to pick 1 and stick to it.

Basic Framework

This is the framework of how I trade.

1. Markup your chart. Find the area of liquidity, point of interests, liquidity grab, direction of the market and demand and supply zones. Do your multi-timeframe analysis here. Higher probability trade is to buy at discount levels, and sell at premium levels.

2. Set alert at your point of interests (Where to buy and sell)

3. Write down your analysis on the chart. If the price hits your point of interest, I would expect X to happen. When X happens, I will do Y. 

4. When the alert goes off, go back to your chart and see if your analysis in step 3 still holds.

5a. If yes, mark out roughly where your stop loss and profit target will be. See if the RR is decent enough. If yes, then wait for the price to give you a confirmation. If no, either wait for a refined entry on the lower timeframe, or to wait for another confirmation.

5b. If not, repeat step 1.

6. Wait for price to give you a confirmation. Calculate the lot size you need to open based on your risk management and place your order.

7. Once you're in the trade, you can either forget about your trade and let it hit TP or SL, or actively manage your position. This will depend on how you backtested your strategy.

8. Once your trade hits the TP or SL, journal it. Record your entry, take profit and stop loss. Take screenshots. Record your emotions and feelings before, during and after the trade.

This is how a trading plan should look like. A clear plan of action and train of thought. There should be actions taken before, during and after the trade.

Do not follow strictly if your trading strategy is different from me. You need to change it to fit your strategy and lifestyle.

Amend it to fit your (i) trading style (ii) personality (iii) lifestyle.

My trading style is SMC with VSA, trading on 15m. I have plans to transition to trading on the 1h TF when the time comes. I started from multi-timeframe analysis. A few months later, I discarded it even though it gives a higher win rate. Why? Because I’m lazy, so I made my plan fit to my personality. I also like to spend less time on the chart so I can have a life outside of trading. This fits my lifestyle. I started trading because I want time freedom. It will be ironic if I were to spend more time on the chart compared to working in a 9 – 5.

The Holy Grail

You must understand that most of the trading strategies work. It doesn't matter if it's price action, wave theory, or indicator based. You need to have a solid backtested result to rely on. Of course, the more concepts you put together, you can find confluence between them. This can get higher probability trades. But that comes with a tradeoff too - decision paralysis. Some part of your strategy might tell you to go long, but some are telling you to go short. It's an art of balance here.

Before you take on any funded challenges, solve the above issue first. There is no point wasting money because you will be failing challenges. You are not prepared yet.

This payout look nice. It's even nicer if you can get this every other week. But you need to get your basics right first.

Having A Guide

Having a mentor to cut short your learning curve is cost-effective. Imagine spending 1 year on your own. You learn and test strategies that are not applicable to you, only to find yourself back to square 1. Mentorship could cost upwards of $1k, $2k or even $5k. No doubt, it's an expensive commitment.

But think about spending $10,000+ on a university degree to work a 9 - 5 job. To me, it's a no brainer to go for mentorship as I can scale my income way faster than a 9 - 5 job.

The only problem with finding a good and legit mentor is it's hard to find. Given the nature of this industry, there are many scammers. Some “mentors” do not actually trade. They rely on posting high profits screenshots to lure customers. It’s quite simple to filter these people out.

(i) Common sense. If someone is posting high RR trades often, start to question. Why would he sell you his course or strategy if he’s so profitable.

(ii) 3rd party verification like myfxbook and fxblue. Remind yourself that the results can be faked with white-label brokers. Make sure they verify their tracked account and he is using a reputable broker.

(iii) Check if he has many prop firm payouts. It’s higher chance for someone to know how to trade with different prop firm payouts.

(iv) He has transparency with his wins and losses by sharing his journey publicly.

(v) Check his online work – blogs, newsletter, YouTube etc. See the values that he provides for free. This is a good indicator of the value you will get from his mentorship.

I do have many mentors, and I agree that finding the right one is definitely a challenge. But once you've found that right mentor, everything will start to change. Everything will click and you will be on your path to consistent profitability.

Stay consistent. Stay safe. Success is just around the corner.

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Happy weekend!

@MillionaireTiger @CaptainTiger @TigerStars