Into my third full week of live trading... What a trip. I remember back to a year ago when I first really went full-tilt on the 2 full-time job mentality and entered into my self-imposed hermitage. I guess I live like a monk. On sunday I clean my house and prepare for the week. I cook all of my meals for the coming week on sunday because I do not have time during the week for anything but heating up a meal. Get up at 4am and educate myself and prep for the market open, trade the set-ups I can find, do some yoga, a small workout and go to work. Get home for some more education. I cannot remember exactly when but I watched a youtube by ESP, Eat Sleep Profit in which he showed an actual set-up , entry and exit. It was like being hit by a bolt of lightening, up until that moment I just could not grasp what everyone meant by a set-up and an entry and exit. I guess these are the closely guarded secrets of the profession we all pursue and you generally do not get to see them until you have bought so and so's DVD collection. Now I see the set-ups and I see more set-ups than I can take advantage of so now I am working on trying to quantify the quality of the set-ups and choose the right ones. I believe the one conclusion all of us will reach at some point is that the hardest part of all of our trading careers will be building up a small account. It is kinda ridiculous that the hardest part of our profession is the part that you have to do with no experience. Here you are with your small account and no experience... good luck. Right now I have about 3 weeks experience and I have made incredible leaps almost every day. From tweaking my platform, to taking screenshots of the charts I trade to go with my notes on profit.ly so that I can go through every trade and see what works and what does not. Every night at some point I wake up and I cannot help myself but to think this is going to be the morning that I am going to hook onto a runner. Until then I just maintain the discipline and make sure none of my losers get outta hand, I have been good at that to the point of cancelling out some winners by exiting one candle too soon, but I think in the long run this will make me a better trader by not straying from the plan that was set-up before I entered the trade. Today Christmas Eve I had three losing trades, but honestly I felt like they were good trades. On all three the entry was justified by the price action and 2 of them flat out failed and one of them I got out 1 candle too soon (RAD) but I stuck with the plan I had. If the stock does not do what you expect it to do, get out and cut your losses quickly. I know that the runner is one trade away and all I have to do is stay in the game long enough and I will succeed and I cannot tell you how satisfying that will be. Aloha

P.S. suggested reading a blog by Androo

MIND-BENDING Insights after 1000 TRADES