Listen to Tim. Not just to his lessons on how to trade various patterns, but his teaching about mindset, hard work, studying, practicing, and taking the time to learn before you actually put your money into the market.

I didn't.

And I had to tell my wife earlier this year that we were out $38,000 because I had tried to make a salary with trading in my first year.

I joined the Trading Challenge years after I had heard of Tim Sykes. He had been on my friend's podcast talking about his humanitarian work and I heard a bit of Tim's story. Yes, I liked that he was building schools, but I also liked the idea that the stock market was accessible to anyone, even me. Over the following months and years I looked further into what he was doing weighting whether or not to take this leap.

For the first time realized I did not need to have an income that was dependent upon an employer. You see, I was living in Amsterdam at the time and was trying to figure out how to keep living abroad. One mantra of my life had recently become "free to go, free to give." I wanted to be financially free to take my wife and kids abroad to learn from the world and serve it without needing people to pay me. Day trading penny stocks sounded like the answer.

After several years of waiting, thinking, watching Tim's videos and reading his blog, it seemed like it was finally time to take action. An insurance payout I was owed had recently come into my possession, so I had money for the Challenge and money with which to trade.

Joining the Challenge and seeing the money being made was exciting. Intoxicating. My report for 2019 illustrates just how addicted I was. Just to give you a picture of how many trades I made in 2019, in December alone I had made nearly 600 trades. As a newbie.

This is some of the dumbest crap to do as someone who had only looked at the market for the first time earlier the same year.

Sure, I'd planned to do all the learning. And at first I did. I blasted through Pennystocking and Pennystocking Part Deux taking notes and marking up the hard copies of the DVD notes that were provided. I was watching the video lessons being sent to my inbox. I asked questions in the webinars. But I was getting impatient and my job seemed more and more like something in the way of earning potential. So, in late May 2019, I put $2,000 in.

My patience wasn't having it. Just a few weeks later I put $27,000 in and figured I'd keep myself above the PDT rule but be sure to trade like I only had $5,000.

Over the next few months I would slowly bleed my account. Some losses were huge (I had a few couple-thousand dollar losses), but most were just a hundred dollars here and there and, hey, I still had money in the bank...

I also stopped paying attention to the teaching. Stopped watching webinars and would spend my mornings in a local coffee shop feeling like a badass because "I was a day trader who is gonna make money from his laptop while sipping on the best brewed coffee in town" and I was losing most every day. This is delusional.

"But I'd get better," I told myself. I saw rewards sometimes, so why shouldn't I believe that would be true on my current trajectory.

The handful of wins I had fed me. I was long over the weekend at one point and when the market opened Monday morning the stock had gapped up and I made the exact same amount that had been on my paycheck the Friday before. While on a family getaway I covered our expenses for the first day in a trade I made in the 20 minutes before we loaded up in the car to leave. I covered the next day's expenses while taking a dump. Why was I busting my butt and missing out on evenings with family and friends for money I could make in minutes through the market. Sure I was massively in the red, but I saw the potential.

Yet, I didn't see how delusional, how undisciplined and how ignorant I really was.

I kept losing money, "learned my lesson," and in December I saw a turn. I was green for 2 weeks straight, knocking out $200-$400 trades a day on early market momentum. Yet, like I said, it was only for 2 weeks. Then, after a few losses it was back to emotional revenge trading, trading way to often, and with way too much money. Finally, at the end of the month I quit. I had burned through $38,000 in 6 months.

I didn't look at the markets for months. My mindset had to change. Fortunately this year it has been changing. Yeah I have a lot of technical things I still need to learn, but I needed to grow in self-discipline.

Who knows if anyone will read this. I'm a nobody here. But on the off chance that a newbie reads this, I would suggest these things:

Learn from my shameful story. You don't want to do any of this crap. Keep working your job and focus on making good trades.

Additionally, I recommend using real money so you have the experience of having skin in the game, but take tiny positions. Whatever position you'd like to take, remove one digit and then execute (1000 shares -->100 shares). The win right now is not in getting a large payday, it's in growing in knowledge and discipline so you learn how to execute good trades. Sykes is even proud of some trades that don't look great on paper. Why? Because he executed well. He was disciplined. He did his research, applied his knowledge, had a plan, and acted on it. Take an inconsequential position on a stock you're looking to trade. Was it a good setup? Were you disciplined? Did you follow the rules. No matter the outcome of the trade, if you can say "yes" to those questions then give yourself a pat on the back because your way to making some money.

Also, don't see the PDT rule as an annoying restriction. See it as a helpful external source of discipline and accountability to help you grow and protect your assets from your inevitable newbie mistakes.

I did not keep a journal, but I highly recommend it. If you can't see what's working and you can't remember what you did wrong, how are you gonna grow? I'm setting up my trading journal this week. 

Watch the video lessons. Re-watch them. Search the patterns/trading styles your interested in learning and just watch those videos over and over again. When you can go through Tim's trader checklist in your head in a few seconds for a given setup, then start learning something else.

Stay humble. Ambition is good but can quickly become destructive. So restrain it with patience and self-discipline and make peace with the fact that you're new and won't have a trading career for at least a year. 

My story is massively embarrassing. In sharing I hope to save you fellow newbies some shame and heartache (financial, relational, and emotional). Study. Study again. Practice. Focus on the trade, not the money made. Discipline yourself and you won't share my story.

 

—Kevin

P.S. I don't think I'm the best story teller so my apologies for any clunky-ness.