In my 2 decades of trading stocks, I have never seen more trading service advertisements on social media. Unfortunately, 99% of these services are taught by frauds or traders who have been trading for only a few a couple of years and are riding the tailwind of an incredible bull market.
In all this noise on social media, I want to give you a no BS, accurate outlook of what it takes to become a consistently profitable trader.
This will not be sugarcoated. If you’re a new or struggling trader, I want to make sure you know exactly what you are getting yourself into.
After working with thousands of students over the past 12 years, we have narrowed down the precise steps it takes to find success. Here are the steps needed to become a consistently profitable trader:
Education FIRST
No one comes into trading stocks knowing what they’re doing. Even if they have a background in finance. Momentum trading is a whole different ball game from mainstream finance.
There is a lot of confusing terminology in trading. Candlesticks? Moving Averages? Short selling? Level 2? It sounds like a foreign language. You have to get acquainted with the stock market basics before putting any money on the line.
Most new traders are impatient and just want to start trading right away and end up losing all their money cause they have no clue what they’re doing. Trading is no different than other high paying professions. You need education and mentorship in order to find success.
Learning all terminology and basics of trading only take 1-2 months. In our 60-Day Live Trading Boot Camp, we spend the first month covering all the stock trading basics and fundamentals, all of our day trading and swing trading strategies, and. We test their knowledge with homework and quizzes to make sure they master and encode all of the concepts.
Most traders think they’re ready to trade once they learn a few strategies, know the terminology, and look at a few charts. There is still a LONG way to go.
Mentorship From Real Traders
Don’t take the slow lane by making all the mistakes and learning through trial and error. Instead, learn from mine. Learn from Paul Singh’s. And all the other veteran traders in our community. Learn from those who have already done it.
For the next 30 days in our live trading boot camp, you sit on my market recaps. 3 times a week, you will watch me review all of my day and swing trades from the day. Learning my thought process behind all my entries and exits, stock selection, and my mental approach.
Practicing in a Simulator
In our trading boot camp, we put our students on a simulator at the end of the two months of instruction. We only keep them on it for at most 30 days. We have found that a simulator is only beneficial for a short period of time before the student develops bad habits.
It has utility: It gives newbies a chance to get the hang of the mechanics of trading, like placing orders, reading your charts, and making decisions on the fly. If you cannot make money with your system on a simulator, why would you ever use real money? As soon as they get the mechanics down and can get a week or two of green on the simulator, we move them to real capital.
Trading Live With Small Size
Finally, you get to the fun part: Trading with real capital. But this is the most difficult step of them all. Becoming consistently profitable trading real capital. Success in the simulator usually has little indication of your ability to make money trading with a real account.
This is where we encounter the most problems with traders. They have a sound system and plan, but they cannot execute it correctly. This is where trading psychology comes into play. You have to constantly be improving yourself to achieve peak trading performance that delivers your results. When you start trading live, trade with small size.
Ease your way into it. Build up size as you start to find consistency. This is NOT an overnight process. We spend the majority of our time at BOWS working with traders in this stage and help them resolve psychological and mental hurdles that are preventing them from executing correctly.
Diligent Reflection
Once you have traded for a few weeks with real capital, you have started to gather some valuable data about your trading. You will have a large enough sample size to see trends of what is working well in your trading. This is one of the most important habits of successful traders. I can tell you that every single successful boot camp student of hours diligently journaled their trades. Every single week (Click here to learn more about how to journal correctly)
Scaling Up
Once you find consistency with small size, it comes the time to start scaling your success. Many traders shoot themselves in the foot because they scale their position sizing too fast. It should be a slow gradual process, not doubling your size every two weeks you are profitable. This is an essential component of increasing your income without hampering the execution of your system.
Scaling up too fast will make your trade emotionally, and hurt your performance. Build up your position size slowly, maybe increase 5-10% every couple of weeks when you are consistent. Eventually, you will hit barriers where you start to become emotional. When this happens, size down to remove the emotions. We work with our students constantly on picking the right times when to size up, and when to size down.
6 Seats Left in Our Next Live Trading Boot Camp!
Think you have what it takes to become a successful stock trader? Our 60-Day Live Trading Bootcamp is the only live course on the internet that will give you access to over 200 hours of all the live training and mentorship you need to become a successful trader, for a reasonable price. Only 6 seats are open for our next boot camp.
Click here to apply for our next trading boot camp!
