How to Make +10k Per Month with Less Than 40 Hours/Week

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Andrew, from Disciplined FX, here! If you’re interested in learning how to day trade as your profitable skill, I recommend reading the book I wrote on how you can leverage the most important habits of professional day traders to set yourself up for long-term success in the markets!

I’ve Been Thinking…

I want to share with you something that I’ve been reflecting on for some time now. 

Most of you reading, like me, probably grew up with parents or society pressuring you to get an education in order to create financial security in life. 

You might have been encouraged to hustle for scholarships or take out enough student loan money that could have covered the cost of a house in order to gain a university-level education and therefore qualify for a steady paycheck and benefits. 

This formula of “initial education investment + diploma + time and energy in someone else’s business, nonprofit, or government entity = financial stability and maaaaaybe satisfaction is starting to become more anachronistic and perhaps even mythical. 

 

Steady is no longer stable. 

A lot of my friends and family have what are considered “stable jobs” – sure, they receive a paycheck every two weeks, but their time to take care of themselves is limited, the amount they make barely scratches the surface of the student loan debt or living expenses they incur, and lurking in the shadows of this seemingly stable job is the threat of being laid off or fired at any given moment. 

Some of them like their work but others trudge along because there is no financial safety net to allow them the choice to leave. 

Thus, paying Fedloan Servicing or private student loan companies a ¼ of your budget each month and giving away ⅓ of your entire life, while failing to get enough sleep, have time to be with your family or friends, or just play, all for the sake of acquiring this illusion of a secure job is no longer a reliable formula for financial security, let alone a well-lived life. 

Now, This isn’t particularly enlightening of me to name this issue, as I believe most people are aware of this discrepancy. 

Some of you reading this may be feeling this pain right now. how to make +10k per month from home

(I will say that there’s also a special kind of motivation that comes with knowing you have debt, though. That’s a hidden ability we can use to our advantage. But that thought is best left for another post.)

While I think many folks have a hunch as to what a solution to this problem looks like, they may not have a clear formula for what to do to reclaim their time, energy, creativity, purpose, and financial well-being. 

So that’s what I want to share with you, today. 

A simple formula that I’ve seen others perform, time and again, to spend less time working, make enough money to assuage financial woes, and focus on the activities that create a better world and a more meaningful life. 

We know that relying on a sole paycheck won’t necessarily give you the safety it once promised. 

We also know that trying to drive for a ride-share company on the side or selling your used things on an app each month won’t necessarily grant you financial freedom either. 

So, what to do instead? 

Here’s my formula: We need to combine our favorite skills with income-generating activities OR develop skills that have a high return on investment and take those skills to market. 

Lucrative Skill + Skill Development (Time + Effort + Knowledge + Experience) + Marketability = Financial FREEDOM. 

This approach may require a lot of time and effort up front, but in the future it lets you acquire the resources to invest less time for the same return. 

 

Let me show you how to do this through 4 simple steps.

 

4 Steps to Making +$10k Per Month

Step 1) Research and Select Your Marketable Skill

As mentioned, there are two paths you can take with this. 

One is to select a skill that you’ve already developed and turn that skill into a business. 

The other approach is to learn a new skill that is inherently lucrative. These skills often involve the exchange of value for large sums of money and therefore have a large return on investment. checking new strategy works for forex EUR/USD

Some skills that fall under this category include selling real estate, learning a high-demand tech skill like coding, developing marketing or sales skills like copywriting and social media marketing, or, my personal favorite and the primary subject of this blog – day trading. 

Start by doing a little research on either starting a business or developing your preferred skill and based on what you discover from this research, write down your top five goals surrounding your project of developing that skill. 

This should include a financial goal, such as making $7,000 in sales or $10,000 in trading profit each month. 

The other goals should include important milestones on this journey that help you reach your financial goal, such as creating and launching your first online course, or passing a prop trading challenge, like the FTMO challenge. 

Step 2) Develop Your Skill

This is where we get to work. Your next step is to develop your skill. 

If you are taking a skill you already have and turning it into a business, then during this stage, your focus is to develop the skill of running a business. 

You’ll want to learn as much as you can about marketing and sales strategies, how to turn knowledge into a product, like a course or a book, as well as how to create a system that runs the business itself. 

So During this stage, you will put a great amount of time, effort, and probably money into learning this skill. 

Some ways you can go about this include finding information on youtube, blogs, reading books, paying for courses, and even finding a mentor to guide you in developing this skill. 

The secret to becoming great in anything is to find people who already do or have what you want and learning from them so as to avoid unnecessary mistakes and take a faster journey by learning your skill in an organized and systematic way. 

Let me reiterate that last part – this path of developing your skill should feel organized and systematized. 

Take notes and review what you learn regularly. 

Track your stats in order to figure out what to improve. 

Also, make sure you’re putting time into practicing your skill almost every day. 

There are certain things that can only be learned by doing them yourself. 

It can also be useful to find groups of people who are learning this skill and build relationships that help you reflect and grow.

Before moving on to the next step, I want to note that this stage of developing the skill will probably take more time than you think. 

Based on my own experience with day trading and learning about how to grow a business, as well as what I’ve observed in other people’s stories of capitalizing on a skill, I’m going to suggest that you can expect to stay in the development stage for at least 1 to 2 years. 

This doesn’t mean that you can’t earn money right away, but to get to that special level you outlined in your goals from step one, be ready to play the long game. 

Impatience will likely come with some costly mistakes that you might not be able to absorb without burning out. 

Think maybe half-marathon, not sprint and pace yourself. 

{If you’re interested in learning how to day trade as your profitable skill, I recommend reading the book I wrote on how you can leverage the most important habits of professional day traders to set yourself up for long-term success in the markets!}

Step 3) Take Your Skill to the Marketplace

This is the time when you take your business live, you land your first deal, or you trade your first prop trading challenge. 

If you’ve been working on a skill like coding or SEO optimization, this may be the point at which you start applying to and interviewing for roles that demand this skill. 

Make sure the numbers add up – if your goal is to earn $7k/ month then be firm on that amount when you get to the negotiating table. 

If you have other requirements you want to see in a job, like the ability to work from home or bring a dog to work, then keep searching for that optimal package. 

You should feel confident in your skill at this point and know that you are valuable. 

Step 4) Grow, Reap, and Repeat 

At this point, you should feel highly knowledgeable and effective in your skill, and some, if not all of your goals from step one should be accomplished. 

At this point, you can decide if you want to create new goals for yourself to take your skill to an even higher level, whether that means writing a book, turning your lucrative skill into a business, launching a social media platform around your skill, or if you’re a prop trader, then perhaps growing funds for your own account instead of only depending on prop trading firms. 

Also, it’s okay to be content with this new level that you’ve achieved and maybe use it to give yourself more comfort or rest in your life. 

Not everything we do has to be about endless improvement. 

You can come back to step four at any time. 

The one thing to watch out for, though, is to not become so complacent in our knowledge and expertise that we start backpedaling. 

This world is continually changing and often our skills need to adapt to new environments and circumstances. 

So make sure to keep a habit of regular personal development and skill improvement. 

Now that we’ve reached the end of this lesson, I hope you can step away from this video feeling like you have more clarity around what your process to success could look like. 

I believe this is an organic formula that most high performers use to achieve greatness in what they do.

{If you’re interested in learning how to day trade as your profitable skill, I recommend reading the book I wrote on how you can leverage the most important habits of professional day traders to set yourself up for long-term success in the markets!}

It’s also not to say that you need to quit your salaried or hourly position in order to have a better life – as there are plenty of meaningful and necessary jobs that serve a great purpose that requires working for someone else. 

You can use this formula to become more valuable and effective in your field or even develop a business or skill on the side. 

Remember that success is not reserved for the talented, the privileged, or intellectuals. 

Anyone can get started on learning a skill. 

Patience, Perseverance, and Proactive reflection can see you through. 

If you have a skill you think you’d like to learn or grow a business out of, or have already achieved these four steps, please share your aspirations, wisdom, and stories with us in the comments section below. 

 

I want to participate in helping more people feel empowered to achieve a level of success and meaningfulness in life than ever imagined before. 

 

I wish you all the best of strength and luck, take care!

How to Make Your Own Mechanical Strategy

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Hey there folks! Andrew Bloom of Disciplined FX, here, where you can find resources to help build your trading mindset, trade mechanical strategies, and learn how to achieve profitability in forex markets! 

For those who don’t know my story, I started teaching myself how to day trade after developing a chronic illness that left me unable to reliably show up to work or to live independently. 

By developing the skill of day trading with technical analysis, I was able to finally acquire an income that didn’t require more than a handful of hours of concentrating on the charts each week. 

Furthermore, some of you may know just how expensive healthcare is, especially if doctors aren’t sure what’s wrong. 

By making use of the opportunities available through developing trading skills, I now have the resources to afford top-notch medical care and to be able to live on my own again. 

Whether we like it or not, we live in a world where having more money means having more options. 

So now I want to be able to help you all develop your trading skills so that you can finally afford a better life that lets you achieve goals and dreams that may break the status quo and perhaps relieve you of any financial burdens that keep you struggling to live your best life. 

With that said, I want to spend today talking about the style of trading I used to achieve not only profitability in current markets, but also to pass the FTMO prop trading challenge. 

Mechanical Trading

I am what some may call a “mechanical trader”. While there isn’t necessarily a firm definition for what this entails, I’m labeling my trading style as mechanical because every step of the strategies I use has very clear and strict rules about what I can and cannot do during a trade. 

Mechanical strategy craftingMechanical strategies are like machines that run a protocol of actions, such as with a pinball machine that uses levers to flick the ball back up towards the holes on the board, where you can trust that when you press the buttons on the side of the machine, those levels that they’re attached to will always flick the ball up without fail, so long as you time it right. 

The pinball might not land in a winning hole, but the mechanics of your actions do not change often and overall stay fairly consistent. 

A rules-based, mechanical strategy is similar to the pinball machine. 

In this way, your strategy becomes a habit that is easier to perform the more often you do it. As long as a mechanical strategy is profitable, the rules don’t change and likely don’t allow for much room to make your own interpretations. 

Mechanical strategies usually have a set of rules for when you can and can’t enter, for where you set your stop loss and take profit targets, and often these strategies will rely upon chart indicators, like moving averages or an RSI,  to help pinpoint these locations. 

When you hear about expert advisors and programmable trades, those are likely a form of mechanical strategy. 

If you want an example of a mechanical strategy, check out the free scalping strategy I created. While this strategy isn’t robust enough for a prop trading challenge, it is a nice addition to a set of other types of strategies and styles.

What I like best about mechanical strategies is that they take the pressure off of having to analyze and decide what the current market is doing. 

Instead, the focus of your role as the trader is to follow your rules with discipline. 

How do you know if you have a good trade? It’s easy, when you trade your rules, you are trading well, even if you lose from time to time. It’s when you make impulsive decisions intratrade that problems arise. 

Another reason why I love mechanical strategies is that they are far easier to backtest than strategies that require discretionary decision-making. 

With discretionary decision-making, you don’t always know what is forming until the aftermath. If you look at historical data through a backtest, it’s likely you’ll call the candle formations in favor of their final form, but in real-time, your fears and concerns may prevent you from reading the formation right. 

With a mechanical strategy, you have very clear yes or no answers from historical data as to whether the strategy worked on a given day. 

That way, you are able to get an idea as to how profitable the strategy is and get to gather other information such as how frequently you experience strings of losses and for how long they tend to last. 

Such information can be useful when deciding on risk management strategies.

How To Craft Your Own Mechanical Strategy

So, before I end this lesson, I want to show you how you can craft your own mechanical strategy over a few easy steps. 

It’s not the only way to create a strategy, but it’s a good overview of the things I personally consider when I need to craft a new strategy, such as the one I used to pass the FTMO challenge. 

**By the way, if you want to use the exact strategy I am running for my prop trading, check out the Disciplined FX Scalping Course** 

1) Determine Your Trading Requirements

Do you want to be trading an hourly chart?

Do you want to scalp and be in and out of a trade within an hour or two? 

Do you need a strategy that lets you trade at night since you work during the day? 

I’ve come to find that if you set the boundaries of your trading to what your schedule, skill, and comfort level are, you’re more likely to stick with a strategy, than for instance, if you forced yourself to watch the charts six hours a day, every day, with no clear direction as to what you’re looking for. 

So here are some things that I like to look for before establishing a mechanical strategy: 

  • I want to trade lower time frames so I don’t have to keep trades open for a long time, thus I look to the 30m, 15m, or 5m charts. 
  •  I live in Southern California and consider myself a morning person, so I’m most interested in trading during the cross-over of the London and NYC markets, around 630am PST. 
  • Lastly, I don’t want to spend more than a handful of hours in front of the charts each week, since I need a lot of time to take care of my health and other responsibilities – such as studying for my doctorate level courses and creating informative content for my students. 

Thus, I like strategies that don’t require any complicated exiting maneuvers, such as trailing stops with position reduction, and I only want to take one trade a day, so that I can get in, let my attached stop loss and take profit orders do the work, and then get to work or go back to bed if my energy is low. 

2) Determine your Edge

This can look like only trading trends or trading around scheduled economic news. Research trading edges to find out more.

3) Pick your Pair(s) and Trading Time

Now, after creating your own parameters for your trading session, you’ll want to select a currency pair or pairs that fit these needs. 

I currently only trade the EUR/USD and find that focusing on one currency pair helps me get a really good feel for the typical behavior of that market, but you’re also welcome to trade multiple currency pairs as long as you backtest for each one.how to make a mechanical strategy

One thing to consider when looking for a pair is that it’s best to trade a pair that has at least one underlying market open, not closed, during the time you trade. 

So if you’re in the Caribbean and you’re looking to trade in the evening you might want to look at trading a pair that has the AUD, NZD, or JPY, as those markets will just be getting started for the day. 

4) Select Your Indicators or Signals

Next, pick an indicator or two that supports the market-style you want to trade – for example, if you’re looking to trade trends, a moving average plus an indicator that helps track trends can be useful, such as the ADX or MACD. 

 

5) Formulate Your Mechanical Strategy

The next step is where you really need to get creative. 

You want to be able to create a set of rules around your chosen indicators and price that help tell you when it’s a good time to get into the market, in what direction you want to trade (buy/sell), and where to put your stop loss and target profit. 

This could mean entering when price returns to a moving average and then trading in the direction of the trend. 

I find it really useful to call on any previous strategies you’ve used before or seen in videos to help get an idea of what indicators to implement. 

Again, check out the free scalping strategy I created for an example of what this could look like. 

When it comes to stop loss and take profit targets, try to get a feel for the typical number of pips that move over the span of your time frame during your trading hours or create a formula for determining appropriate stop loss and take profit targets as adjusted for the current market behavior. 

One indicator I love to use for this is the ATR, or average true range. 

Making a stop loss that is equal to or a factor of the ATR can be useful, such as making a stop loss that is 1.5x the current ATR reading. 

Lastly, depending on your strategy, be sure to include any other rules, such as how long you let a trade run, like opting to close the trade after six hours, or rules for when you stay out of the markets altogether, such as when the price is ranging.

Using something like the ADX, which tracks trend strength, may be useful to include. 

If trying to craft your own strategy is still feeling overwhelming, I invite you to use the same strategy that I trade with to win and profit from prop trading challenges. 

Forex coaching Andrew BloomThat summarizes my approach to crafting mechanical day trading strategies. I hope you’ve been able to discover just how organized and useful a mechanical strategy can be, especially when you want to achieve clarity and minimize confusion while trading. 

 

I wish you all the best of strength and luck out there in the markets!

5 Steps to FTMO Challenge Success

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Welcome to Disciplined FX! My name is Andrew Bloom, and my vision is to provide simple and effective Forex day trading tutorials that help diverse individuals from all walks of life become profitable and responsible traders. I am also an affiliate of FTMO, but this is a decision I made on my own. I firmly believe that FTMO is the most reliable and trustworthy prop trading firm available. This post contains affiliate links.

I want to share with you all a short list of 5 important steps you need to take to strategize your FTMO trading challenge for success.

 Just last week, I passed the verification stage for a $200k account under FTMO, and next I’ll receive instructions for how to proceed as a funded trader. 

I started this challenge on July 29th and passed through verification in a little under one month. 

However, the time and work that went into completing this challenge with success started long before I ever learned about FTMO or prop trading. 

I should emphasize now that this is an opportunity that is meant for traders who already have experience with consistently profiting in Forex markets. 

On that note, let’s dive into what I believe are 5 succinct steps you can take to ensure success for your FTMO challenge. 

Want to know more about what FTMO is? Click this link to learn about their funded account challenge.

Step 1) Make Sure You’re Ready

You need to pass your own litmus test for determining whether you are currently ready to take this challenge. 

Me personally, I’ve been day trading for over two years, and finally started achieving consistent profit in the markets about eight months ago. 

I would say that at a minimum you’ll want to see three months’ worth of consistent profit in your own live account, regardless of whether it’s a small or large one. 

Note that I did not say DEMO account. 

Trading with a demo account is an excellent way to get started learning how to trade without risking a lot of money, demo trading is not the same as making decisions when you have your own money on the line. 

I’ll be completely honest with you all and admit that I never bothered with demo trading. 

It definitely led to a handful of painful learning experiences, but it took losing a lot of money to help develop a strong dislike of making trading mistakes because of how badly I wanted to avoid losing that much money again. 

Nevertheless, if you’re watching this and you’re new to trading, while you will have to face the growing pains of live trading at some point, you might as well minimize the amount of money you’ll lose by learning the basics of trading with a demo account first. 

So once you have some experience, make sure you’re then able to see at least three months’ worth of consistent profit with a live account. 

Furthermore, make sure you have a strategy or set of strategies that you trust. 

I personally only trade with mechanical strategies that use very strict and clear rules for entering and exiting my trades as dictated by a set of indicators and overall market direction, but if you’re grounded in your discretionary trading skills, then that works too. 

The bottom line is that you need to be able to go into this challenge with evidence of your own profitability with a live account, and a strategy or set of strategies that you are familiar with and comfortable trading.

FTMO.com - Funding for successful traders

Step 2) Adapt Your Strategy

You’ll likely need to adapt your strategy or your risk management plan to meet the goals of the challenge. 

You’re going to need to be able to hit a 10% return on your initial FTMO demo account balance and avoid losing more than 5% of your account in a day or 10% of your account overall.

So if you’re used to risking 2% a trade and you take three trades a day, then you’ll want to reconsider risking less of your account so as to avoid losing 5% or more should all three of those trades result in a loss. 

Similarly, if your trading history or backtest of your strategy shows that you only manage to return 9% or less each month with what you’re currently risking, you may need to increase the amount you risk or change your strategy so that you return more while also risking less. 

Before doing the FTMO challenge, I was comfortably returning 6% of my account each month or less. I ended up trashing the strategy that I was using and crafting another mechanical strategy that would hit the 10% profit target without having to risk more than 3% a day. 

I also changed my strategy to trade only once a day, tops, so I could get more out of a day’s trade than if I had traded multiple times in the day. 

Because I only trade mechanical strategies, I know I can trust myself to follow my rules, no matter what the rules are, as long as a backtest proves to me that the strategy is profitable. 

You can make decisions about your strategy and adapt accordingly by running the changes through a backtest first. 

Another risk management tactic to use is to adjust your risk as you get closer to your profit target. Disciplined FX FTMO Funded Trader Challenge

For the first part of my challenge and verification stage, I was risking 2 to 3% each trade, and as I grew the account, I would trade less, by risking only 1-1.5% of the account, or even less than that, depending on how much return I needed to finally hit profit. 

So when I was around 8% in profit, with a 2.5 risk-reward ratio, I risked about a percent of the account, while adding a few extra hundreds of dollars to accommodate for commission and slippages. 

I hope you see by now, that this is very much an analytics game. 

You should be checking your stats and changing your numbers throughout the challenge. 

To summarize, you’ll need to adjust your strategy to meet the challenge parameters, which may look a lot different from when you’re trading to make the most profit possible.

Step 3) Do Your Research and Sign-Up

Once you have evidence that you’re profitable and that your strategy has a high probability of meeting the challenge targets within the limitation of the rules on risk, your next action is to start the signing-up process. 

This is the time to gather as much information about FTMO as possible. 

Start by going over the parameters of the challenge and read through the entire FAQ section.

Furthermore, seeking out other videos about trader’s experiences with FTMO is also useful in getting a feel for what the experience is like, as well as gathering any tips on how to navigate your challenge. 

The sign-up itself is pretty straightforward, you will need to provide your general contact information, as well as select the platform you’d like to use for your challenge. 

I will say now, that I am highly biased towards using cTrader, because its interface is far more intuitive and clean than metatrader. 

If you’re coming over from Oanda or like using Trading View, then you’ll definitely want to choose cTrader. 

If you’d like to see what this platform looks like, I’ve included a link below to a video I made that goes over its best features. 

As you prepare to sign-up for your challenge, you’ll also want to make sure you can comfortably afford the trading deposit. 

Ideally, this is money that isn’t needed for basic necessities, like food, rent, or other living expenses. 

Similar to the axiom “trade only what you can afford to lose, pay for a challenge with money that you won’t feel stressed about never seeing again, just in case your first challenge doesn’t work out. 

To be extra cautious about international online payments, make sure you pay with a debit or credit card that has strong cybersecurity services. 

You may also need to contact your bank or credit card company to let them know that you’ll be making an international purchase that doesn’t need to be flagged as suspicious. 

Doing this beforehand can minimize your wait time until you receive the login information for your challenge. 

Once you submit your form and your payment, within a few days FTMO will get back to you and give you login information for your platform of choice, including your user name and password. 

Step 4) Set Up Your Charts and Your Strategy

Once you receive your account info, be sure to explore the resources available to the client on the dashboard. 

You’ll want to download or access the web platform on your computer. 

I don’t know if this is also true for metatrader, although I suspect that it is – Keep in mind that you don’t need to create an account with cTrader, itself, you only need the login info provided by FTMO. 

Once you’re in the platform, you can begin exploring its resources and start setting up your chart with the indicators and tools you need to trade your strategy. 

Note: Become familiar with the platform BEFORE you start your challenge.

Mentally walk through each step of your strategy, from entry to exit, and note where on the platform you’ll need to type inputs and click buttons to make it happen. 

Once you “start challenge” on the FTMO you begin the countdown to your maximum 30 days. Once you take your first trade, you begin your minimum 10 trading day counter. 

Remember that you have to have a trade on a day for it to count towards your minimum of 10 trading days. 

Step 5) Trade and Follow Your Rules. 

This is when it’s crucial to have already developed your trading discipline. 

Trading discipline is my specialty and if you’d like to learn about more ways to hone your discipline as a trader, check out my book The Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders on Amazon. The Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders Andrew Bloom

Keep in mind that you may feel more stress and nervousness while trading a challenge than you do when trading your own account. 

I thought I’d just show up and do what I always do with my strategy, but the pressure to hit a target and avoid precise loss limits changes the dynamics of your trading experience. 

When you feel stress rising, pull on your own healthy coping mechanisms to see you through. 

This can mean taking breaks from watching the trading screen, reminding yourself of the success that you’ve already achieved up to this point, and giving yourself permission to retake the challenge if it doesn’t work out this time. 

If you don’t already, I highly recommend that all responsible traders take up meditation. 

It’s not only valuable for trusting yourself to stay calm and disciplined during your trades, but this practice can also positively change the way you respond to stress in all aspects of your life. 

If you have evidence that your strategy works, remember that your one job is to show up and stick to the plan. 

If you’re running into problems during your challenge and you’re led to believe that your strategy won’t cut it, then be sure to get to work and do a solid backtest of any changes you want to make to your strategy before trying it out on the charts. 

Weekends can be a good time to reflect and improve on your performance. 

Do not let yourself get creative and make up new strategies when trading live. 

Anything you do in real-time trading should first go through a backtest

Lastly, be sure to take care of yourself during your challenge by making sure to get enough sleep at night, eating nutritious meals, and giving yourself down time to play and relax. 

Prepare as an athlete would for trying out for a pro team, because with this challenge you are setting up to prove yourself as a pro trader. 

So, what do you think? Can you put these five steps into action to take the FTMO challenge? 

I wish you all the best of strength and luck, and I’ll see you out there in the markets!

 

 

 

FTMO Verification: PASSED!

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Hey there, folks! My name is Andrew Blom, founder and CEO of Disciplined Fx. If you’re new here, welcome! I first started teaching myself how to day trade after developing a chronic illness and needing to find a way to make money from home with a minimal amount of time and energy. Ever since then, I’ve developed so much confidence and hope because of how much day trading has left me feeling successful and empowered to actually make money from home on my own time. I’m also a Ph.D. student pursuing a doctorate in business with a concentration in entrepreneurship. The intention of Disciplined FX is to provide a safe space that supports diverse traders from all walks of life as we learn how to hone discipline and a trading mindset to succeed in forex markets

Update!

I didn’t think I’d make another post so soon, but I just wanted to jump on here real quick to let you know that after just three days of trading the verification for an FTMO funded $200k account, I’ve passed the verification profit target!

All of my verification targets have been met except for the minimum number of days traded. 

This means that I will spend the next seven days taking microtrades each day to meet the 10 trading day minimum, and from there, assuming everything checks out okay on FTMO’s end, I’ll be qualified to begin trading as a FTMO funded trader. 

If you aren’t familiar with FTMO:

In a nutshell, FTMO funds traders who pass their 2-step trading challenge with a $10,000 to $200,000 account to start, and disperses 70% of monthly profits to the trader. 

I can’t express just how excited I am to begin working with FTMO and to put my trading discipline and strategies to work! 

If you want to learn a little bit more about my trading style and experience with passing the FTMO challenge, as well as tips for starting your own FTMO challenge, be sure to check out this first post I made.

The Breakdown of My Verification Experience:

 I used the same strategy as I did for the end of the challenge and took three trades, with only one trade per day I sat in front of the charts. 

My first trade was a loss but the next two were winners. 

Each had a risk-reward ratio of 2.5 and I risked about 1.5% of my account for each trade. 

I trade only once a day because I like to use a “set and forget” strategy that minimizes the amount of time I send in front of the charts, and therefore, also minimizes the opportunities for my emotions to get in the way. 

This has worked well for me but I’m also at a point in my trading where I can watch my trades without experiencing much of any emotional reaction. 

I will say, though, that trading for a funding challenge does come with more pressure, and therefore I felt like this “set and forget strategy” was particularly useful for the kind of higher stakes trading that comes with attempting to hit a profit goal despite what’s going on in the markets. 

 

Overall, I am so relieved and excited to have the privilege to be able to trade for a prop firm. 

If you have any questions about the FTMO challenge, their FAQ section is a good place to start. 

 

I wish you the best of strength and luck, and I’ll see you all in the markets!

I PASSED the $200k FTMO CHALLENGE (And Tips for Your Challenge)

I PASSED the $200k FTMO CHALLENGE (And Tips for Your Challenge) 9426

Hey there, folks! My name is Andrew Blom, founder and CEO of Disciplined Fx. If you’re new here, welcome! I first started teaching myself how to day trade after developing a chronic illness and needing to find a way to make money from home with a minimal amount of time and energy. Ever since then, I’ve developed so much confidence and hope because of how much day trading has left me feeling successful and empowered to actually make money from home on my own time. I’m also a Ph.D. student pursuing a doctorate in business with a concentration in entrepreneurship. The intention of Disciplined FX is to provide a safe space that supports diverse traders from all walks of life as we learn how to hone discipline and a trading mindset to succeed in forex markets

Today, I’m excited to share with you all, that I’ve passed the FTMO challenge for a $200k account and am starting the verification round as of 8/16/21.

By the way, I want to acknowledge that I’ve registered with FTMO to be an affiliate for the program because I truly do believe this is a solid way for responsible and experienced traders to make a living from their trading skills without needing to wait to amass a large account. 

What is FTMO?

If you’re not already familiar with FTMO, it’s one of a handful of professional prop trading firms available, which provide six-figure funding to traders who exhibit discipline and use profitable strategies and strategic trading skills. 

As with other prop trading firms, FTMO requires participants to first pass a trading challenge that has strict rules for a target profit you need to meet, how many days you can trade, how much you can lose on any day, and how much you can lose at any point during the overall challenge. 

 

There is a fee to participate in the challenge, depending on how large of an account you’d like to manage, as well as the exchange rate between your currency and the Euro*. 

Once you pass the challenge, you trade with FTMO provided funds, and every month you split your profit with the company. This works by sending FTMO an invoice in the amount you’d like to withdraw from your account. You get to walk away with 70% of the profit and FTMO takes 30%. 

If you’re able to make 10% on a $200,000, you can end up with $14,000 paid out to you. 

There are restrictions, of course, for how much you can lose on the account, and if you’re not responsible with your trading, you can lose your status as a funded trader. 

While there’s quite a bit of healthy and reasonable skepticism about the reliability and trustworthiness of prop trading firms, I really do believe FTMO is one of the most well-documented firms to provide an honest and fair prop trading experience. 

Before I decided to go for a prop trading challenge, I did quite a bit of research to determine which firm I’d like to trade with, and I felt FTMO was the best fit. 

I will share what has worked for me and leave it to you, dear viewer, to come to your own conclusions as to whether you’d like to take a FTMO challenge or not.

My Trading Style

So Before I dive into what my FTMO challenge was like, I want to give you a little context regarding my trading style.

 Here are three important aspects about the way I trade: 

#1: My strategy is about 90% mechanical and 10% discretionary decision-making. 

That means I keep very clear-cut rules for each step of the trade: the signal, the entry, the stop loss, and the take profit target. 

My trading rules can be written down as a checklist which I can cross off one by one for every trade I take. 

The only bit of discretionary decision-making I allow is for visually determining the direction that price is moving towards. 

Otherwise, every other element has set rules. 

Theoretically, I can put my strategy down on paper as one of those Yes or No flow charts if I needed to. 

This leaves very little room for my own opinion and I like to keep it that way.

#2: I keep my trading very, very simple.

I only take one trade a day tops, and that’s if there’s a proper signal on the chart. 

I also only allow an entry between 630am and 930 am PST, to trade during the crossover of the London and New York sessions.

Lastly, I only trade the EUR/USD. 

So to summarize, that’s one trade, at one time of the day, with one currency pair. 

#3 Once my trade order is submitted with a stop loss and take profit orders attached, I’ll either close my screen or read a book and only glance at the progress from time to time.

I don’t currently use complicated exit strategies, although I’ve found trailing stops to be helpful in the past. 

I try to keep my time watching the charts to an absolute minimum. The Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders Andrew Bloom

By turning the screen off, I don’t tempt my creative brain to make spur-of-the-moment trading decisions. 

However, doing a lot of backtesting on my strategy gives me more than enough confidence so that I can now watch my trade if I want to, without having any hard feelings if it goes sour. 

***If you want to learn more about some of the best practices you can keep to develop your trading discipline and to avoid making costly mistakes as you learn, download your free excerpt to the book I wrote called The Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders, which is available in ebook format on Amazon***

My Experience with the FTMO $200k Challenge 

Okay, so this $200k account is actually my third attempt at getting funded after starting my first challenge about two months ago.

 My first attempt was for a $100k account and while my demo account was in profit, I lost 5.5% on a given day due to some position sizing mismanagement. 

Feeling like I still had the potential to hit the target with my strategy, I ended up jumping back into another attempt two days after losing my first one. 

Unfortunately, I found out too late that the tempo of my strategy depended on early wins from the beginning of the month that I had lost with the last attempt. 

So I realized that while my strategy worked well for me when I was casually trading with my own small account without any profit targets, I needed something far more durable for a trading challenge that involves stopping and starting with different times in the economic calendar, and requires a larger profit target than the 4-8% per month that I was used to. 

And perhaps that’s one of the important things to realize before jumping into the FTMO challenge. 

While you’ll want to carry over your trading skills around risk management and discipline, even a profitable, homespun strategy may need some tweaking to meet the time-bound requirements of the challenge, as well as the profit targets. 

My second challenge failed. 

So before starting this third challenge, I got down to work and had a few ten hour days of focusing solely on crafting and backtesting a strategy that would both hit the profit target and stay profitable at any time of the month, not to mention, in any kind of market environment as well. 

If I want to stay optimistic and focus on the benefits that come from frustrating experiences, I could say that the fees I spent on the first two FTMO challenges were the price of admission I needed to pay to get so worked up and determined to craft a far more profitable strategy than anything I’ve ever traded before, which I probably wouldn’t have bothered doing if I hadn’t made an attempt at prop trading. 

I’m sure some of you reading this who have done this challenge, too, may also feel like doing a funded account challenge forced you to become a better trader than you were before. 

I know for myself that I often have to put skin in the game to really learn from an experience, which is sometimes a very costly way to live my life, but I also implant lessons in my memory much better when emotion is involved. 

Actually, I think this is true for most learners, as well. 

So by actually paying for a challenge, I was more willing to find a solution than, say, give up, which is more of a reasonable choice when trading a free demo challenge. 

I decided to go for a $200k account instead of a $100k account on my third challenge because after doing copious sessions of backtesting, I determined that trading a $200k account on my worst trading month would still result in enough profit to cover my monthly budget. 

Third times the charm, right? 

Disciplined FX FTMO Funded Trader Challenge

As you can see here on my equity chart, I started off with a number of successful trades and I think that having early wins really helped me carry into a string of losses with far more comfort and confidence than if I had started with only those losses. 

With this challenge, because I traded only once a day, I allowed myself a slightly larger risk amount at 3% of my account . 

I didn’t feel like trading a 200k account was any different from a 100k account or a $5k account which is what I was coming from.

I’ve trained myself to think in terms of Risk points or percentage points, so the account dollar amounts don’t mean anything to me. 

If you haven’t already, I recommend conditioning yourself to think in terms of percentages. It can help take a lot of the emotion out of watching dollar amounts going up and down when you trade. 

Remember that money is a placeholder for value and value is relative to the environment it exists in. Think about how you can earn 500 to 1000 points per hole when playing something like Skeeball, but only win one to three points when shooting arcade hoops. The winning skeeball player may need to gain seemingly more points than the winning basketball player, but either way, they both won. 

If you’re used to risking $100 on a $10,000 account but then get scared when risking $1,000 on a $100,000 account then just remember both of those positions are 1%. 

You can handle a 1% risk, it’s no different whether that account is $1,000, $2,000, or $200,000. 

Now, normally I would set a standard 2% risk on a trade as adjusted for the weekly balance in my account. But with this FTMO challenge, every time I would get close to the 10% target, I would start cutting down my risk to the amount that would allow for the account to hit 10% with that one win.

I’d also add an extra couple hundred of dollars to the risk as a buffer against slippages and commission. 

So that means, as my account increased, I went from trading 3% a trade to 2% or even 1% a trade. 

This allowed me to withstand a few losses without getting too far away from that 10% target. 

FTMO challenge passed

After eleven days, I finally had my winning trade just this last Friday and boy did it feel SO good to see those green “Passed” statuses on my client homepage. 

Beating the challenge is incredibly validating for my sense of skills as a trader, as my first few years of day trading involved plenty of disastrous mistakes, and reaching this stage to be able to pass a trading challenge with a solid strategy and trading routine feels like the effort and work put into learning how to trade were not for nothing. 

Now, before I get too confident, I do still need to hit the verification challenge, which requires a 5% profit target instead of a 10% one, while maintaining all other restrictions, but I already know that I’m going to risk about 1.5% trade and will also progressively lower my % of account risked as I get closer to that target. 

3 Things You Can Do to Pass the $200k FTMO Challenge

So on that note, let’s dive into what I believe to be three important things you can do to set yourself up for success before jumping into a FTMO challenge. 

Whether or not this is obvious, the first thing you need to do before you pay for a FTMO challenge is to be fully honest with yourself regarding your profitability. 

If I were to come over to your place and sit down at your trading desk, could you pull up some kind of document tracking your trades, or even your trading records on your brokerage account, could you show me evidence that you’ve been able to make a profit month after month? 

It’s imperative that you wait until you have had success with trading before trying to get funded. 

It’s already difficult to make a profit when trading on your own terms, but when you throw in the restrictions placed by FTMO, the pressure, and challenge that comes with trading increase. 

Therefore, the second thing you need in order to ensure success before starting a funded account challenge is a profitable strategy that can meet the profit requirements of the FTMO challenge, whether you were to start trading at the beginning, middle, or end of the month. 

Sometimes you don’t need to change your strategy in order to accomplish this, but instead change your method of risk management to hit this amount. 

If you haven’t already, be sure to gather some data about your trading strategy by performing a solid backtest from at least the last three months. 

Lastly, make sure you have a plan for meeting the requirements of the challenge. This can look different from your typical trading. 

Consider the difference between studying a subject for retention versus studying to take a standardized test like the SATs. 

There are often little tricks and tips you need to keep in mind to win the test that has nothing to do with actually understanding the content. 

There are a couple of things like this that apply to prop trading challenges. 

For example, if you hit the 10% target before the minimum ten trading days are up, you need to remember to sell a hundredth of a lot on all other days to meet the trading day requirement. 

If you want to be sure to finish your challenge sooner than later, be sure to set these microtrades on days you don’t normally trade, as well. 

For me, that means setting microtrades on Sundays, a day on which I normally don’t participate in the market. 

So with that said, keep doing your research about the FTMO challenge before actually paying for anything. 

Make sure you fully understand the requirements of the challenge, even if it means reading through the faq section multiple times and continuing to find personal anecdotes regarding other trader’s experiences. 

It’s absolutely possible to develop yourself as a trader to make a living from your skills. 

While it’s not necessarily a fast process, it’s definitely one you can achieve given the right amount of persistence, reflection, willingness to learn, and confidence in yourself. 

I hope you all found this informative. Best of luck and strength, traders, and I’ll see you all out in the markets!

  • Andrew

How to Use a Rocketbook as Your Day Trading Journal

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For today’s tutorial, I want to show you how you can keep a digital record of your trading while still enjoying the freedom that comes with writing a journal with pen and paper. I’m going to walk you through step-by-step how to turn a Rocketbook into a day-trading journal you can use every time you have a trading session.

I’ll be transparent and say that I am an affiliate of Rocketbook, but I want you to know that they didn’t ask me – I asked them to become an affiliate because I absolutely love my Rocketbook and I want to help others find convenient ways to use it in their day trading, as well. All good?

Let’s Dive in!

What is Rocketbook?

First, what is a Rocketbook? Some of you might not be familiar with Rocketbook.

The company launched a little over five years ago and came out with an early version of a notebook that you could write on, microwave to wash it off, and reuse it endlessly.

Since then, they’ve updated their products to use special ink from the Frixion line of pilot pens and added designer paper that can be wiped clean with a spritz of water and a swipe of a towel.

Rocketbook has an app that lets you take a screenshot of your page and send it to one of the destinations you link to the symbols on the pages.

For example, you can send it to a file in your Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, among others, or even have it sent to your email.

Handwriting recognition software can also translate your printed copy into a typed digital one.

You can find out about more features by checking the Rocketbook website

Also, here’s a link to free samples of their notebook pages so you can try it out without paying a thing.

I personally own the Rocketbook fusion, which I like to use for what I call “brain droppings.” You know, all of those notes you need to write down when you’re on the go.

And just recently, I started using my Rocketbook for day trading.

Why is Rocketbook a Good Solution for Keeping a Trading Journal?

So, why would you want to use Rocketbook as a trading journal?

There are a few ways I’ve kept trading journals in the past.

  • At first, I had a physical notebook but I’d often get lazy and not write out all of the important details each time because I had to write a new template every session. Sometimes I’m not at home when I trade, so I wouldn’t always have my journal on me, since it was kind of bulky and added extra weight.
  • I tried keeping an electronic document for a while but found that I didn’t like this setup either. I genuinely like the feel of paper and pen. I know that I look like I’m 18, but I actually just turned 30 this year and never owned a smartphone or laptop until I was in college.  I still really enjoy the feeling of handwriting and I believe I remember more of what I write than what I type. Also, I tend to stay more engaged when I’m writing than when I’m typing.
  • So For the last year or so, I found a solution through using an iPad and pencil and keeping a journal through a new document on the app Goodnotes. This works really well for my needs, but I still ran into issues when my pencil or the iPad when they would lose battery and I’d be left without a journal for the trading session.

But now I think I’ve found my ultimate answer to this conundrum.

The ROCKETBOOK FUSION.

Using a permanent marker, I could create a template for my day trading journal on one of the page layouts. Then, when I’m trading, I can write what I need to record by hand, and after the session, I can upload it through the Rocketbook app so the entry is saved on my google drive. Then, I can wipe it clean and have it ready to use for the next trading session.

How to Turn Your Rocketbook into a Day Trading Journal

Here’s What you need: a Rocketbook Fusion set, black and/or colored Sharpies, a blank piece of paper, and a pencil. (Optional: a ruler)

First, brainstorm what kind of information you want to record in your trading journal.

You may want to add or keep off more information depending on how many pages you want to dedicate to your journal template. I only want to capture and upload one page per trade, so I’m going to stick to the necessary information I’ll need to properly review my trades at the end of the week.

So what’s the most important stats we should record for our trades?

For me, this looks like writing down the date, day of the week, time of the trade. Whether it’s a short or long, how much money is risked, how many lots were bought or sold, as well as the profit and loss and overall percentage of account gained or loss.

But most importantly, I want to be sure to include a good amount of space to write out my thoughts, feelings, and ideas that come to mind while I trade.

This is the kind of information that you’ll want to regularly review in order to improve your trading discipline and strategies. I’m going to want to split these into different sections, one for recording my thoughts intratrade, and one for any ideas or follow-up tasks I should consider doing after the trade.

When I go over my trading journal at the end of the week, I want to be able to add any tasks to my planner from this section that I can work on over the weekend or the following week. 

Next, depending on how much you trust your writing and design skills, you’ll probably want to test out what your format could look like by taking a sheet of paper and outlining the size of the Rocketbook page.

For the Fusion, the dimensions are “5.25 by “8.6” inches. Then, with a pencil or pen, you can map out some possible designs that would meet your needs.

Then, pick a page that you want to use for your template.

Once you create this template, you won’t be able to wipe it off again, so be sure you’re okay with allocating this page to just your trading journal.

I personally like the dotted graph pages best, but you could also do this on a ruled page, too. Also, decide what color sharpies you need, if you like to add color. I like to use a red and green for my short and long options and a blue for my long-form journal sections to help visually organize the page.

Plot an outline on the Rocketbook sheet with a pencil

For those of you who are gifted with great penmanship and drawing skills, you won’t have any problem here, but for yours truly, I’m going to need to put down a pencil layer first and be sure to take my time. You’re going to recreate your template on the Rocketbook page.

Once this is done, it can’t be removed, so take your time to make it look as clean as you like!

Lastly, let’s put this baby to use.

Be sure to have your Rocketbook, Fuxion pens, some water, and towel ready when you start your trading session. Record as you go and be sure to avoid using any other pens with the Rocketbook than the Fuxion ones.

Since I have a mindless habit of reaching for my pen holder, I’ll make sure my desk is perfectly clean while I trade to avoid making a mistake.

At the end of the session, you can select the preset file you want it to go to (mine is set to google drive), record your sheet with the Rocketbook app by taking a picture of the page, and once the file is uploaded, you can add any screenshots you took of your trade to this document as well.

It’s so freakin simple! And might I add, minimalistic!

So in 5 easy steps and for the same price as a fancy notebook and for 2% of the cost of an iPad, you can have your hand-written cake and digitally eat it too.

I sincerely believe the Rocketbook is one of the most underrated tech tools that can help people minimize paper waste and keep an organized, minimalistic workstation. Again, if you want to learn more or purchase a Rocketbook, feel free to use my affiliate link here. By doing so, you also help support me in my endeavor to provide you free and useful tutorials on trading discipline and forex strategies through this blog and Youtube channel.

I can’t wait to hear about how using a Rocketbook as a trading journal helps you, too.

Best of luck and see you out there in the markets!

How to Use cTrader’s Best Features for Your FTMO Challenge

How to Use cTrader’s Best Features for Your FTMO Challenge 315

How to Use cTrader’s Best Features for Your FTMO Challenge

[Note: This blog post features paid affiliate links for FTMO. I personally sought to become an affiliate of FTMO because I genuinely trust them to provide a reliable and realistic model for prop trading]

Hey there, folks! My name is Andrew Blom, founder, and CEO of Disciplined Fx. If you’re new here, welcome! I first started teaching myself how to day trade after developing a chronic illness and needing to find a way to make money from home with a minimal amount of time and energy.

I’m also a Ph.D. student pursuing a doctorate in business with a concentration in entrepreneurship, and the intention of disciplined fx is to provide a safe space that supports diverse traders from all walks of life to learn how to hone discipline and a trading mindset to succeed in forex markets.

For today’s tutorial, we’re going to tour my favorite platform FTMO offers its traders, the browser-based cTrader platform.

I’m currently taking the FTMO challenge and will report soon on those results!

I’ve chosen to use cTrader as my platform of choice because it’s the option most similar to TradingView, which I’ve used through Oanda for a few years now. I’ve tried my hand at mt4 in the past and never fully adapted to its interface.

I’ll explain why this platform is easier to use than mt4 or 5, list some of its best features and how to use them, as well as how to set up a chart for a free 5-minute scalping strategy I made for you. (Watch the video on this page for that last bit of information!) Okay, let’s dive in!

Why cTrader is Better Than MT4/MT5

So first, I want to sing praises of cTrader as it compares to mt4 and mt5.

I’ll admit that I never lasted with either of tcTrader ftmo challengehose programs for more than a few days, and my opinion of them would likely be different if I was forced to learn that platform because of a lack of options.

However, I actually think of myself as a lazy trader and will pick resources and strategies that minimize the amount of effort I need to perform during a trading session.

My biggest issue with mt4 and5 is that they’re not very intuitive and, frankly, they’re really archaic-looking despite how far technological design has advanced in just the last ten years alone.

I believe at this point in time highly technical programs almost act as a form of gatekeeping. Setting up and closing trades does not need to be complicated, even if making trading decisions is challenging, and charting software by TradingView and cTrader are much better examples of intuitive and clean design compared to mt4 or mt5. 

How to Use cTrader’s Best Features

To show you the ways in which this platform outperforms mt4 or mt5, let’s go over some of its best features.

1) Easy and Informative Order FormcTrader order form FTMO

cTrader makes it so easy to make sure you’re trading the right position size and will even calculate the percentage risked for you. It’s so convenient! Also, setting up take-profit targets and stop losses, as well as trailing stops, is easy and can be set up right on the order form as part of one whole trade order. 

2) There is a lot of freedom of use when it comes to applying drawing tools and chart stamps.

There’s the cross-hair, which is the tool you’ll need to measure price ranges and pip sizes on the chart.

I’ll often use this to mark the points at which I’ll need to set an alarm for when I move my stop loss closer. This one feature alone makes me love FTMO’s cTrader more than Oanda’s offering of trading view.

Snapshot is also a neat tool for discovering the details of individual candles and price points. Then we have a list of charting analysis drawing tools, such as your fibonacci tool, as well as stamps and lines for marking up candlestick patterns and notes. You can also use their snapshot feature or your own computer’s snipping tool to capture chart screenshots.

What’s also cool is that you can draw on your indicators, as well. This is really handy if you use any of your indicators as setup, entry, or exit signals. 

3) BUY/SELL FTMO open position scalecTrader buy sell button FTMO

Another neat tool is that upon the ask and sell chart button, you can see this green and red bar that shifts according to how many other FTMO traders are in buying or selling positions. 

4) All of Your Account and Market Information Next to Your Chart

You can pull up economic news, data about your account, and even a kind of level 2 analysis of trading orders on the panel without having to open up another screen or go to the brokerage website. 

5) Time-Until-Next-Candle Countdown

Lastly, another useful feature for scalpers, in particular, is the countdown to the next candle that you can see right under the current candle. I personally time my entries with the closing and opening of certain candles so this little feature is gold!

FTMO.com - Funding for successful traders

What do you think, is cTrader your kind of platform? As you can see, everything you need is nested in one place without being displayed in a way that’s overwhelming.

If you haven’t already, I recommend checking out FTMO if you’re confident in your risk management skills and have a strategy you trust. A big hurdle for most traders who are new to the experience of consistently profiting is having too small of an account size to actually make a decent income. FTMO provides traders who pass the challenge with a 5- or 6-figure account and PAYS OUT 70% OF PROFIT to you, the trader, at the end of the month. It’s a great way to make an income off of your trading skills and discipline!

 

 

 

 

5 Tips for Day Trading in Graduate School

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Is It Possible to Succeed at Day Trading While in Graduate School?

Hey folks, Andrew Bloom, here! If you’re looking to learn day trading while in graduate school, you’re not alone! It’s completely possible to learn how to day trade while also pursuing academia or professional education.

Me, I’m a Forex day trader who uses only mechanical strategies. My main style of trading is scalping.

I am also currently working on a Ph.D. in Business with a concentration in Entrepreneurship.

Here’s a little backstory

I first started investing in stocks via Robinhood when I was pursuing a master’s degree.

The summer after I graduated with my master’s in nonprofit management and before I started doctoral studies, I started teaching myself how to day trade. Ever since then, I’ve been day trading through the entirety of my Ph.D. education.

Now, to give you some context, I am taking the minimum number of course credits to maintain my status as a full-time student while also giving myself enough time to juggle other priorities.

Therefore, I make a point to trade in a way that allows me to spend less than 15 hours a week in front of the charts.

Thus, I only take a small number of scalping trades with a mechanical strategy that tells me exactly what I need to do and when.

That way, I can just show up and focus on following my rules and then close out early enough in the day to be able to meet all the requirements of my courses, research, and the needs of my business, as well.

It’s completely possible to day trade while you’re also pursuing a graduate degree so long as you tweak your trading style, your schedule, and your expectations to the rigor of both day trading and your academic lifestyle.

I want to share with you five things to keep in mind as you seek to make money from day trading while also working on a graduate degree. 

Let’s dive in!

1) Adapt your trading sessions to the time you can commit to sitting in front of the charts 

First, as you probably already know, when you’re in a demanding graduate program, time is worth gold.

You are often expected to juggle hours of reading research papers and textbooks in addition to showing up to class. Academia is notorious for expecting students to “fake it” because in all reality the amount of work assigned is never practical or realistic.  

day trading in grad school

And because school and life cost money, you probably are working, as well, alongside any research or academic internships required of you to complete the program.

Therefore, what time you do have to commit to day trading will likely be limited. It’s probably not a good idea to expect to use a strategy that requires six or more hours a day of watching the charts.

Personally, I like to use a scalping strategy that’s limited to about three or four hours of chart time each day that I can commit to doing first thing in the morning.

Make an audit of how much time your academic work and personal life require and see how many waking hours you have left to commit to day trading. Then, when choosing or creating a strategy to trade, keep your time limitations in mind.

2) Keep a Beginner’s Mind

By the time you’ve reached graduate school, you might be feeling some pride in your ability to learn and achieve. Some of you watching this might have aced your entire way through school.

So when it comes to the early months of day trading when you’re making mistakes left and right and it’s costing you money, it can feel painful to realize that you can’t perfect your trading experience.

I’m telling you this from a place of empathy because perfectionism is something I’ve struggled with off and on throughout my own life. It’s crucial to accept the losses that come with day trading and to give yourself plenty of self-love as you stumble along and gain your bearings.

In this way, remember to keep a beginner’s mind, kind of like how it might have felt to take your first college introduction course on the subject that you are now studying in greater depth at this point in your career.

Remember that curiosity, passion, and willingness to keep learning will help keep you confident enough to persist. Maintain that kind of mindset when you’re discovering how to trade the markets and overall, stay humble.

WANT MORE TIPS AND TRICKS FOR MAINTAINING AN OBSERVANT, BEGINNER’S MIND IN FRONT OF THE CHARTS? Be sure to read The Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders: A Quick Guide to Profitable Day Trading PracticesThe Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders Andrew Bloom

3) Take breaks and days off from trading as it supports the demands of your program

Day trading for profit requires discipline and discipline requires a strong mental fortitude.

If certain periods of your studies require extra time and demand on your energy, such as with finals week or when writing a thesis or dissertation, consider taking a break from the charts during the days or weeks that require your full focus on school.

I know it’s not ideal to miss out on opportunities in the markets, but you’re shortchanging both your ability to make responsible decisions in your trading and your ability to perform your duties as a student if you force yourself to trade when you’re overworked or feeling more stress than usual.

Another tweak you can consider is changing your trading frequency, such as looking to swing trade during these more intense periods of the academic calendar.

In my experience, I’ve actually found taking breaks from the market to be relieving and even a form of recovery as it releases the pressure to trade and allows me to sleep in a bit. 

4) Treat learning how to day trade with the same diligence and effort that you apply to your studies

At this point in your academic career, you’re probably aware of what helps you learn best. Whether that means utilizing video resources over books or making flashcards for terms you’re unfamiliar with, you can apply this self-awareness of your learning style to studying trading skills and markets.

For me, I like book learning a lot because I have an affinity with the quiet thinking that comes with reading. I can go as slow or as fast as I want when I read a book and I can take notes and review the material easily.Day trading in graduate school

Speaking of taking notes, even if you’re only watching videos, I highly recommend designating a notebook for trading notes and keeping it with you while you’re watching.

We are more likely to learn and remember that which we regularly reflect on and review, so having notes you can go over regularly will help you remember the key tactics and rules to succeed at trading.

5) Have realistic expectations about what you can afford to trade and how long it may take to achieve profitability

If you’re new to day trading and Forex, don’t expect to see much of a return during your first year of trading.

This is not a get-rich-overnight kind of endeavor and it’s not a steady paycheck, either.

Trade only what you can afford to lose, so if you need your cash to pay for textbooks, rent, or other necessities, put your money towards those things instead of your trading account.

Be willing to stick with this over the long haul, as you will need time to get used to day trading and with building your trading discipline.

Remember how long it took to get through your undergraduate courses to meet the requirement of your major or to study for the GRE? Succeeding at trading will take time and effort, too, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable process so long as you do everything you can to improve each week you return to the markets.

That concludes our quick list of tips for day trading while also pursuing graduate school.

Neither trading nor graduate school is necessarily easy but it’s not impossible to succeed at both either! I wish you the best of strength and luck, and I’ll see you in the markets!

WANT MORE TIPS AND TRICKS FOR MAINTAINING AN OBSERVANT, BEGINNER’S MIND IN FRONT OF THE CHARTS? Be sure to read The Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders: A Quick Guide to Profitable Day Trading Practices

 

Why You Should Day Trade Forex Instead of Stocks

Why You Should Day Trade Forex Instead of Stocks 153

Today, we’re going to cover 3 reasons why day trading FX is easier than trying to day trade stocks. Forex is an especially good choice for new day traders who have less than $25,000 to start.

#1) You don’t need to search far to find something good to trade

What makes for a good trade?

Ultimately it comes down to two things:

Volatility and Volume.

With high volatility, this means the price can move enough for you to earn a decent return.

With high volume, there is more liquidity, which means that there is a greater likelihood of your orders getting filled because someone will be there to take the other end of your trade.

Usually, high volume correlates with high volatility 

So when a day trader goes to find stocks to trade after the market opens, they are going to have to choose among thousands of potential stocks to find that high volume and high volatility.

Now, any good day trader of the stock market will likely use a scanner to find these desirable stocks. However, even with this tool, she will still need to make a decision as to what deserves her focus.

Sometimes this means watching multiple stocks all at once.

* Note: A Key to keeping trading simple and easy is to limit the number of decisions you need to make during your trading session

With forex, on the other hand, there are only 8 major currency pairs to trade.

Forex or stocks

And when I say major, I literally mean Major – The most actively traded currencies that pair with the US dollar are called the Majors: These include pairs such as the EUR/USD and USD/JPY. 

**WANT TO SEE THE REST OF THE PAGE THAT THIS LIST COMES FROM? DOWNLOAD THE VISUAL GUIDE TO FOREX TRADING HERE**

Note: A currency pair with one currency traded against another is the unit we trade in FX, like how one stock in a company is a unit traded in the stock market. 

So on any given day when trading FX, it’s super easy to find where the action is.

Every day trillions of dollars are traded in FX markets – you don’t have to look far to find that high volume and high volatility.

In fact, if you’re like me, you pick and trade only one currency pair as your strategy. I personally trade only EUR/USD at a time of day when this pair is most active.

Nothing elseforex or stocks

#2) FX market is open almost 24/7.

See, the US stock market, on the other hand, is limited to about three or four hours of ideal opportunity.

If you work or go to school during the hours that the stock market is open, you’re not going to be able to day trade.

With foreign exchange markets, you get to choose when you want to trade. Because it’s an international market, there is always a market open somewhere in the world.

For example, if you trade in California and you’re nocturnal, then you can look into trading something like the GBP/USD around midnight when the London exchange opens. 

Since good day trading revolves around good trading behaviors, it helps to be able to trade when you have time and can be in a space where you can sit and focus without any distractions. Forex markets provide that kind of accommodation

forex or stocks#3) The FX market can be a bit more stable than the kinds of stocks most beginners can afford to trade.

For example, a lot of beginners are attracted to trading penny stocks – I know I was when I first started out trading.

However, these stocks are super volatile and just as quickly as one may make you a huge profit, so too, it can turn around and drain your account dry.

That level of volatility is also really emotionally stimulating and it can be harder to stick to your rules under such pressure. Sure, there are bigger stocks to trade that are less volatile, but often beginner traders can’t always afford the price of entry (example: TSLA is currently priced at $679.70).

Forex, on the other hand, tends to make cleaner and easier moves that you can time.

On our path to consistent profits, we want to be sure to trade instruments that also exhibit a degree of consistency. 

This leads us to our bonus reason  

#4) WITH FX YOU CAN MAKE AS MANY TRADES AS YOU WANT WITH ANY ACCOUNT SIZE

For those who are familiar with stock market rules, there is something that regulators came up with called the Pattern Day Trading Rule – This PDT rule prevents anyone with less than $25k in their account from taking more than 3 day trades…a week!

That means you can enter and exit a trade on the same day only three times a week.

If you’re looking to become skilled in day trading, you’re probably going to have to wait a long time to build your account up enough to be able to achieve a consistent routine with day trading. 

Forex, though, is far less regulated. You can trade multiple times a day whether you have $25k in your account or just $500. However, it’s not a good idea to constantly be trading just because you can

(Note: Profitable day traders limit themselves to about 2-6 trades on any given day, so long as certain conditions are met. )

But, having that freedom to day trade gives you the opportunity to practice the right habits early and make more money than having to learn how to swing trade then learn to day trade, since the key habits and skills for each of these trading types do differ. (There’s a different kind of psychological tug when you have only a minute to make a trading decision versus a few hours or days for swing trading and investing.)

Okay folks, we are at the end of this lesson. Today, we covered three reasons why day trading forex is easier than trading stocks because you don’t need to search far to find a good trade, the fx markets are open nearly 24/7 allowing you to trade on your own time, and the currency pairs tend to be less scary volatile than the kinds of stocks most beginners can afford to trade. Lastly, we discussed how the PDT rule in the stock market prevents small account traders from day trading while Forex is available to day trade for all account sizes.

3 Changes to Consistent Profit with Day Trading

3 Changes to Consistent Profit with Day Trading 107

This year I finally was able to experience consistent profit with scalping Forex markets, and it’s my third year day trading in the markets in total.

If you’ve been trading for a hot second, then you probably already know just how difficult day trading can be.

Most traders have to focus on surviving the learning curve for the first one to two years of live trading.

Once you can read charts and find a strategy that matches your personality, I personally don’t think the issue with what takes so long to gain profitability has to do with not knowing enough about markets but instead has to do with developing enough trading discipline to be able to follow your strategy and rules. For me, there were a few things that happened that led to the tipping point from consistent losses to consistent profit. 

There were 3 things I did during that time that likely led to this big shift in my performance. Of the three, the last one I will share with you was probably the most beneficial of them all.

But before we get into the thick of things, I want to let you all know that last week I published my first book, The Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders, a quick guide to profitable day trading habits. If you want to learn how to structure your daily and weekly trading routines, how to always take your stop losses, and how to shift your trading mindset to stay comfortable and calm in front of the charts, CLICK HERE to get your copy through amazon.

So, ready to dive in?

Consistent Profit Change #1 Take Only One GOOD Trade Per Day

One of the first big actions I took that got this profitability ball rolling was to stop trading multiple times a day and just focus on taking one good trade a day. At that time, I was struggling with following my stop loss and take profit rules. I would frequently shift my stop-loss if the price got too close because I was afraid of losing on a trade that could turn around. 

I took the strategy that I was using, gave it a backtest to see if it would be profitable if I only took one signal instead of the three or four I would usually get, and sure enough, it still held.

Thus, for about a month, I focused on following all of my rules on just one trade a day.

During this time, I wasn’t worried about the money, I just wanted to finally know I could trust myself to follow my rules.

Remember the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall? It’s like how the surf instructor tells Jason Segel’s character to do less and less as he’s learning to get up on a surfboard, to the point where all he can do is just lie on the board and lift his head. It’s a funny scene but doing less is still a useful antidote for handling chronic trading issues.

If scalping or day trading is feeling overwhelming, maybe dial it back a bit and see if you can take just one good trade a day or even per week before trying to ramp up the intensity again. Who knows, perhaps by trading less, you will be able to achieve consistent profit.

Consistent Profit Change #2 Get Enough Sleep/Trade at a Time That Works For You

The next important change that I made was to make sure I was trading at a time that let me get enough sleep. I currently wrestle with pretty severe insomnia, an issue I’ve had since I was a teenager. I live in California where the end of the London session closes really early in the morning. I wanted to be part of this crossover into the New York session but sometimes waking up at 530 in the morning would lead to a lot of mid-morning or afternoon naps to make up for lost sleep after the nights I experienced insomnia.

I decided to create a strategy that would let me trade right when the stock market opens, so I could at least get an extra hour of sleep. It doesn’t sound like a big change, but this was huge for me to be able to have enough brainpower and energy to follow my rules and stay awake through the session. 

If you’re waking up exhausted to trade or don’t sleep well at night in general, making sure you get enough rest and take care of your body can have such a big impact on your trading performance and help you achieve consistent profit.

Do you have a hard time sleeping at night? Can you tell if it affects your performance? Let us know in the comments below and add if you have any good tips for staying clear-headed and energized while trading. It’s seriously a game-changer.

Consistent Profit Change #3 Track How Much Your Mistakes Are Costing You

Lastly, there was one more big shift I made that was probably the most powerful trick I’ve ever used to stop making trading mistakes and finally get into profit and that was to track how much my trades were costing me.

Some of you may be familiar with this kind of habit like when keeping track of your expenses when you want to get out of debt, sticking to a budget, or saving for a big purchase. When you record every one of your expenses, you start to notice where your money is going and can make a conscientious effort to cut back on the areas you splurge most, such as buying takeout too often or over-funding your weed addiction.

Because the issue isn’t losing money. It’s not like you’re going outside and dropping money on the ground. It’s certain actions and choices you’re making that lead to loss over time.

This is true of trading too. We need to be able to track and find out which behaviors are costing us the most money so we can prioritize what to improve first on our path to consistent profit.

So to track how much my mistakes were costing me, every time I made a mistake, I would write on my excel sheet of my trades what mistake was made and how much it cost.

If my mistake was pulling a winning trade too soon, I would write how much money I missed out on between where I exited and where my planned take profit was.

If I took a trade that wasn’t part of my signal criteria, then I would record what I’d lose.

If I made money on any of these mistakes, I would just record the mistake cost as $0.

This helped me generate some data about my mistake making. After about a month of doing this, I started making money in the markets with the same strategy I was using while I was still consistently losing.

Final Thought?

Sometimes all it takes to turn your life around is a big epiphany combined with simple actions.

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