Good morning Profi.ly. As may has come to an end, so has my first month of trading live the whole month and wow has it been a learning experience so far. The month definitely had some positive points and some negative points as well. But, this is just the beginning and having paper traded for a while, I must say trading with your OWN money, money that you made, is definitely a whole different experience. With trading your real money, emotions definitely play a huge factor when first starting, at least for me. Just thought I would do a blog talking about some things I learned from this first month of trading along with some of the positives and negatives of the month for me. 

First I'd like to talk about a few things that I learned throughout my first month. A big thing for me was just honestly having the balls to actually put on a trade. A lot of the times I felt scared and was worried about losing money. But the fact is, losing is inevitable, and not taking a trade because of being scared will make matters worse. One thing I noticed was that I was afraid to take a trade because of that fear, and this lead to me trade lower quality set ups as I would miss a few and get that FOMO feeling so the next one that looked somewhat good I would take it. This only happened a few times but definitely something that I noticed in my trading this month. Another thing I noticed was that I wasn't obeying price action on trades that I took. What does this mean? Well to start off let me share an example with you. A couple of losses I took actually started as winners, mostly just small winners, but winners none the less. And what would happen was I had a target of where I wanted to exit, but then the stock looked like it was holding a certain area maybe like .05c from where I entered, and I would tell myself this is probably going to keep going up and I am going to get stopped out I should probably exit and I can always reenter. But, the things was I never would exit I would keep to my stop and almost, if not every time, I would end up getting stopped out. What can you and I learn from this? Follow the price action, don't fight it because the market will humble you. If the trade is not doing what you planned take it off for the small gain or loss to prevent it from being a bigger loss than you wanted to take. I could of prevented quite a few losses had I followed price action and taken off the trade when I saw the momentum reversing again. 

Moving on to some positives that came out of this first month of trading for me. The biggest for me, was that, at least for the most part, I stuck to all my trade plans that I had when going into a trade. Whether it was where I was going to stop out of a trade, or where I was going to take my profits. I stuck to those plans mostly, except for the two or three times I took a bigger loss than I needed, but everyone is going to make mistakes, just have to minimize them. Another positive was that, although I was up and down this month on profits and losses, I am learning a lot more about the losses by reviewing all my trades, losses mostly, and spotting things that I have seen show up in the future as well .I encourage everyone to keep a journal of losses and analyze everyone of them. Also what I do is keep charts of my winning trades to be able to go back and look at the differences in the way that my strategy sets up and to be better prepared for when perfect set ups come about.

Some negatives for me this month, was for one, taking too big of losses. Party of that is due to I think using max size on a trade a taking a loss then automatically taking down my size to half of what I was using before. This really made it so lots of my losses may have been less cent and % wise, but bigger because I had a bigger position. Next month really going to work on maintaining one size and only use smaller size once I have a good cushion on the day to protect profits. Another negative from this month was taking some trades because FOMO and kind of following other alerts. I need to make sure that I am trading my own plan and own setup and not getting FOMO because someone else in chat took a trade and I tried to follow because I know that person is profitable. And lastly, I let my emotions cloud judgement a may have gotten into trades too early because of it, or even taken off a trade too early because of it. Long story short, I want to do better at staying patient with my entries and exits, as long as price action permits, and also just taking my emotions out of it and taking good solid trades and not worry about losing or making money.

Overall, I learned a ton in this first month trading. And, while I was up and down in profits, my goal right now is too trade good setups and take good trades consistently, and if I do that profits will start to come. I didn't come in thinking I would make money right away, I know its takes some experience and time to get consistently profitable. So for me these first couple months are really learning months to make sure I am taking good trades, and keeping losses small and slowly grow my account up. I wish you all the best!