r/RealDayTrading

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?

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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...

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.

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)

SPY D1 last 10 trading days (2 weeks)

Meta D1 last 3 weeks - Note teh compression they are in and how important the SMA 50 (bottom) and SMA 200 are. I got some trades out this one especially on this hard drop 3 days ago and the bounce of the low of the compression.

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

MSFT D1 - Check out the SMAs (50, 100, 200)

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

This is a question I wish someone had asked me when I started. Here's how I'd approach it now,

based on experience:

- Days 1-7: Foundation only, no charts yet. Understand what you're actually trading, how pricing works and what the realistic risk looks like. If you skip this stage, you’ll regret it later.

- Days 8-14: Learn the platform mechanics and interface without worrying about strategy. Some platforms, like ExpertOption for example have a demo account where you can practice placing and closing trades. Use it.

- Days 15-21: Pick one simple strategy and test repeatedly on demo, logging every trade with your reasoning before and after the outcome.

- Days 22-30: Review your trades, look for patterns in your mistakes. Are you exiting too early? Overtrading after losses? This phase teaches you about yourself as a trader.

Then you'll know whether trading is something you actually want to pursue.

What would you add or change about this structure?

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.

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 ❤️