A Must Read for ALL Traders!

A Trader's Personal Journey

I believe the following is a MUST READ for anyone who is planning to either enter or re-enter the markets.

This trader emailed me his personal trading story in 2024 after first meeting me in 2005 at a Trading Expo held in Perth, Australia.

It’s very rare for traders to be so open, so honest and so detailed about their real experiences, real challenges, real struggles and real disappointments.

Anyone can talk about their wins, but rarely will they talk about their losses.

And particularly not their continual loses and continual failures as they continually attempt to join the winners circle.

And please do not be quick to dismiss this trader’s experience as being an unusual outliner.

Please do not believe their experience is not applicable to you or your own trading journey.

Please do not believe, or label this trader as a habitual loser and therefore not applicable to you.

Please don’t.

His experience represents a trader’s typical journey!

Everyone loses, particularly when starting out, and usually keep losing as very few join the elite 10% winners circle.

I personally blew up two accounts and suffered a 50% drawdown on a third account before I finally became profitable.

And recently I experienced back to back drawdowns in 2021 and 2023!

So please don’t be flippant and dismiss this trader’s experience.

It’s real.

Let me share two huge truths about trading;

... trading is the hardest way to make the easiest money ... and
... over 90% of active traders lose.

So please don’t be ignorant by being quick to dismiss this trader’s personal trading journey.

To dismiss this trader’s experience as NOT being applicable to your own journey.

Instead, you should be quietly thanking them.

If you’re thinking of entering this business of trading, or reigniting your efforts to continue to trade … know it is the hardest way to make the easiest money for a reason … because IT IS HARD!

Having received and read his personal journey I asked and received permission to post it here as a public service, to you, the private trader.

For obvious reasons the trader is anonymous.

As you read it please do not think their experience will never be yours but think there is every chance IT WILL BE yours.

Think about the risks and pitfalls ahead and develop a defensive mindset because despite what success you may experience in the future, your immediate experience will be one of pain, disappointment, frustration, anxiety and procrastination.

You’ll have to navigate your way through it all to reach the other side.

So prepare yourself, and yes I know it’s a cliché, but defense does win games so please learn, comprehend, embrace and execute, execute, execute 0% Risk-of-Ruin.

Risk-of-Ruin is King!

Sincerely,
Brent Penfold
Oct 2024

My Trading Experience

 

Well I used to work in construction, I was not a big fan of it, hard work. I used to go around and ask people what they invested their money into, most said nothing but a house or family and bills or a few shares that never really performed.

One guy said he was going to start trading the SPI 200 [The Australian sharemarket’s Index futures contract, similar to the SP500, but based on only 200 shares], I was interested. So, we got together and he spent a couple days explaining what it was. This was back in around 1998. He showed me on TV in black and white, on something called teletex or something. He said the market always moved a certain way and you could make money out of it, I thought wow, must be money in the that, because no one else is into it or heard of it. Mind you this guy had never traded at all, just watched the data.

I immediately went to the library and got out a couple books on trading and researched the SPI200 as much as I could. Prior to this I had never read books really on anything. My arms used to ache holding the books up in front of me for the first week. Unfortunately, there was only 3 books in Australia that made mention of the SPI 200 and was not much info. I decided I was going to give it a go. Most info in the trading books was basic and seemed to repeat itself, and I struggled to understand the short selling side of the SPI 200.

I bought a pack of graph paper, and started hand charting the daily bars, then got a pager from Orange and started to paper trade with live data, it all seemed pretty easy the Spi 200 generally went sideways and in a 150-point range for months on end from around the 3000-point area. I could easy pick the direction and after 2.5 months paper trading I had accumulated 40k paper trading, no real system or stop loss or profit target, decided to open up an account and give it a go, looked easy.


I had phoned both the only brokers in Australia who would let you do your own online account. One guy in Brisbane, I think his name was XXXX XXXX, he had a brother who was a trader I believe. Before handing money over, asked would he be able to have a look at my charts and the way I was doing it to see if it was right. I had about 10m of hand drawn charts when all joined together, I decided to jump on a plane and fly from Perth to Brisbane and go meet this guy in his office and turned up unannounced.


I turned up in a pair of board shorts and tank top in Brisbane and went into this huge fancy looking high rise building jumped into the elevator and went up to the brokerage office. After knocking on the door a few times, I could see one or two people look around the corner at me, but no one would come and speak with me. After 5 minutes this guy comes out, it was like they were ignoring me a bit standing behind a big concrete pillar. Anyways, I laid out all my hand drawn charts on the desk and showed where I was buying and selling with red and blue x on the charts. He said it looks like I was heading in the right direction and that was it.


(After a few months, I later learned why no one wanted to speak with me, I had a long goatee type beard back then, which was black, and a back pack, this was also the time September 11 occurred, so the whole crew in there must of thought I looked like a terror suspect at the time and were hiding behind the concrete pillars in the office waiting for a bomb to go off I would say.)


Later, I went and purchased a new 5k Sharp laptop (never touched a PC before) opened up an account with Trader Space Brokers, (too embarrassed to go back into the other brokerage company after last time) and deposited 25K into the account, which was everything I had back then and a lot of money to me. It took a long time before I was able to get the whole set up working, I remember dealing with a guy XXXX XXXX there. The following months were a nightmare, the guy helping me set up the software and computer over the phone were tearing their hair out and just about done with me, as I had no skills or knowledge with computers and couldn’t find the letters on the keyboard. It was a massive learning curve for me.

I had a little savings for I was trading full time, no real system or money management let alone proper stop losses. I kept charting on the wall marking my trades, took a few losses but got going ok, picked a few outstanding trades , one that I remember, a top of a range at major resistance area, the daily range was 12 points, and it was a fight in the market between the longs and shorts, so I would buy in on the low, make 10 points reverse the position and short it, would take another 10 points, and reverse it, after that 12 point daily trading range, I pulled 30 points all up in the trading session. Seemed pretty good at the time, what a feeling, but now I look at it and just laugh, as it would be very slim chance I could do that again.


Another time, I had a few people around for drinks as it was my birthday, someone asked what I was doing with a flash looking laptop like that, so after a few drinks I fired it up, and showed them the trading platform and order pad. A few more drinks in, we decided to buy and sell a few orders in the live market. It was all a fun night, but cost me brokerage and $500+ at the time. A few weeks went by and I had looked at my trading statement, there were some price fluctuations on my account capital. I was not too happy about that and phoned up the broker and asked to check, he said I was one SPI contract long in the market, I said I didn’t have any trades going at the moment, he said on a certain date I logged in and bought a contract, it was then I realised after a few drinks on my birthday, I must of overlooked what I had done and accidentally left a live position open. The broker said , well that’s not a bad birthday present , your up $1750.00, I quickly closed out the open position and thought, in future, I need to be more careful and not play around with it after a few drinks.


Months went by a few wins and losses, I had build the account to 30k , I even shorted the market when it first touched 3500, I got that right and pulled 50 points out of it (I think it fell away 300 points later, got out too early). It was quite emotional at the time, I would ring my mate and tell him I just made 5k , and I was so elated with that and excited, but then a few day later you would loss it all, it was like winning tats lotto one day and then having losses that would feel like you just watched your entire family be slaughtered, so after months this was taking its toll on me, I had no one to talk to, every person said don’t do it, but I was so driven to succeed I wouldn’t stop or give up. Cut a long story short, I decided to hold onto a long position, as my account was getting down, I started to sell everything I owned, even my much loved motorcycle, so I could survive longer trading, and I also got a margin call which I put more funds into, my account was getting low, I rolled the contracts over and just held onto them hoping the market would come back, it went even lower and breached its major trading range, and I was panicking. I watched that position for 6 months praying for it to come back, then started sitting up at night watching it, it eventually did return to my buy price, and I closed out that at break even.


I purchased another pager from market source because it had a moving average on it and was fancy looking with basic charts and candle sticks, which I thought at the time was going to be a great help. But that didn’t help either. I was becoming undecided and confused why I couldn’t pick the market much, then purchased 3 separate lots of SPI 200 daily recommendation’s, each one was giving different views and highs and lows and was difficult to pick, then the market would do the complete opposite, even asked for advice from the brokers at times. Each day I was getting worse and worse and could not get anything to work. I sat up half the night looking at the market as well, even tried getting into the night trades at times, which was around 600 in volume of a night back then.


Lots of stuff was happening and I tried all sorts, eventually after I think after 18 months I got called out for a margin call, on one contract, and that was it, end of account, lost all my 25k, I put into it. I dropped on the floor to my knees in disbelief, I had failed, I had a bad knotted up stomach and felt sick, could hardly breath, I had black bags under my eyes and ulcers in my mouth from all the stress I had created for myself.

It was the worst gut feeling of failure I had ever had, I had always proven people wrong and achieved my goals, but this destroyed me the trading stuff.


It was the best thing that happened to me really at the time, my mind and body couldn’t take much more of it. My goal of becoming a full-time trader was finished.


A few years later I heard the brokers at trader space used to have bets on how long a 30k online traders account was going to last, they said first time traders usually had an expectancy of 6 weeks on a 30K online account.


XXXX at trader’s space, said I must have been doing something right to survive 12-18months with my first account. But really, it was luck, nothing else looking back, a few good winners and too many contracts traded built the account up temporarily, I was chopping and changing the stop losses and profit targets along with methodologies, at the time in total denial I could not control or read what the market was doing each day.


I worked as hard as I could for a few years to try and recover the money I had lost, quite shameful to face everyone on the losses. I picked up one of the trading books and read it again one day, it said 97% of traders first time loose, their first accounts, and most people, 60% get so badly burnt financially from trading they never ever return to the markets.


So I thought there is a chance then I can do this, I don’t know a man alive who would try it again, so I found a guy in Perth who owned a book store that had lots of books on trading, I was introduced to the psychology books, trading indicators and all sorts of stuff, off I went again, I was buying books that sometimes were $140 each and plenty of them, I was going to have another go, and get it right.


A trading mentor was what I needed as well, I had to find someone who was a fulltime trader, so I knew what it was that I had to learn or do correctly. It was about that time I picked up your Trading the SPI book, it was full of great information and was an excellent learning and grounding for what to expect from trading and how to go about it in reality.

Brent, you come to Perth sometime after at a Trader’s Expo [2005], so I attended your brief seminar on your book promotion and trading. I was so hyped up and in desperate need of help so I could get going trading again and get it right. I met you and spoke briefly hoping to get some help, you just smiled and waved the Trading the SPI book at me and asked me if I had purchased and read that. I remember going into a room full of people all asking questions and I remember one bit you got everyone to draw a series of daily bars on a page and said this was a low frequency set up that didn’t occur much, but had a high profitability of 80%-win loss. I still have the book with that page in it somewhere that I wrote on. After sitting in a room full of people I didn’t think you would have been much help to me due to the large number of people trying to talk to you. Everyone in the room appeared inexperienced at trading from what I could see, and no better than what I had done. I had learned a lot from that book and your experience you documented.


Some time later I purchased your second book you wrote, which was good in some parts, but repeated a lot of stuff you had in the previous book.

I opened up an account and tried to start trading again, got some free software with indicators and started to trade with the stochastics indicator and looked at a few others, seemed the best for the SPI because it kept giving out the good signals when it was in a range most of the time. I had purchased the best trading programable software on a disk, but had no hope of programming anything, and went in with other trading people who could program the software, they were all interested in programming language, but not much on trading markets so much. I was even more lost. I read as much as I could on trading systems, the turtles and plenty of other books on back testing, including your stuff, but realised most of it was all programming, I couldn’t even type properly on a computer at the time.


I came across an engineering guy who had developed a trading system for the SPI 200 some time later, he didn’t trade it because he was unsure if it would work in real time. After some convincing, he showed me his system, it was pretty simple on a 9 point stop and had basic entry signals, it was traded on the day and night market nonstop. He gave me a couple of his hand drawn charts and the page of trading rules, I sat down for 2.5 weeks for 18 hours a day going over all the tick data and trades, he had made claim it would return 150% over 13 months of data. I counted every time it hit the stop loss on the chart, as a loss, didn’t cheat the system. I came back with a net of 30% return. I then got the premium charts tick data, then hand charted 12 months on tick data on graph paper in a different spot on a different historical year, as you said to do, that came back with a similar result. It worked ok, and was profitable in theory. I even got you to send me your Risk-of-Ruin spreadsheet, entered all of the trades into that and it showed 0% risk of ruin. However, the guy was so devastated with that result, I think he gave up on it all. I think it would have done better than that, but I provided a real-time worst-case layout of performance. (some of those stops may not have been activated even though price hits the target.) The rules for entry were same for long or short trades. The profit target of the long trades was slightly more than the short trades. I didn’t trade it due to having to watch the market 24hr, and god knows if you could get that on a software program to work.


A year later I was introduced to XXXX XXXX mentoring which made claim to help traders and so forth, so I attended that, each group spoke so well, talked so much on profit and lifestyle, and with confidence, and I new this was where I was going to get help from with trading!!!


Through these guys I set up a PTY LTD company and trusts, purchased a few trading programs and was ready to get it right this time, a lot of money outlayed.


I got going with an options trading recommendations brokers on the Gold Coast, used that to earn me some income whilst I learned to trade. They had also showed a 12-month results on a glossy brochure, with a lot of winning trades and very few losses. Looked really convincing at the time. You had to outlay quite a bit of money to complete their options trading understanding course first. (3 years later I found exactly the same info on the ASX website, for free I think, but didn’t know at the time)


Also, XXXX XXXX’s lifestyle trader that traded currencies and commodities. This had software and indicators already programmed into it, and a basic set of rules to follow, I paper traded off live data and placed all the end of day trades as per the rules, it was a trend following system of something like a couple of moving averages in different time periods with cross over rules, you were in the market all the time, and just reversed your position on trading rules and confirmation.

After 6 months of paper trading their system, lots of trades, the commodities had a net return of $1500.00 with lots of losses and stopped out due to side trading and not trending, which seemed good considering it was not trending, however the currency pairs trended quite well, and returned 40% on your starting capital. I then tried to get help in their monthly meetings, however there were 30-40 people in there and didn’t get a chance to speak to anyone at all much during their monthly meetings. I decided if they didn’t help me with questions, then imagine the trouble you would be in if everything went wrong or needed immediate help when going live. So, I never traded live due to the lack of support. A year or two later the whole company went broke and shut up shop. All the new traders at the time, couldn’t follow the trading rules live, nor could they go through multiply losses at a time with trading a trend following system. I followed all the rules and didn’t cheat the system, anything that touched price action on a stop, I classed it as a loss. (paper trading live data) with their software.


I spent hours and days listening to the broker recommendations on the options trading as well, they were always doing credit spreads, most of them went well and we made money, however they were like a $300 brokerage fee to trade them. So, after a while with a few losses, and capped profit, I realised that they were using your money, high brokerage returns for themselves and we got nothing, but risked everything. After a year or more I stopped that as well.


I got into the XXXX XXXX Eminis Day Trading looking for help, they said they had a live trading room and made 6 points a week on average trading of a night. It was done at night for a few hours so you could learn to trade, follow recommended trades make money and still hold down your day job. The guy running the show, XXXX XXXX said he had 30 properties and had made 1 million out of eminis trading and they were profitable at the end of each week most of the time averaging 6 pts a week. They were also going to get an auto trader working as well shortly.


I signed up, set up the software, ended up with 5 computer screens for all the different eminis and the main one S & P 500. Traded 1 minute and 5-minute charts, support and resistance and following a few other basic rules and set ups. Watched all 4 US eminis on the charts as well.


Trouble with this one was the US market opened at 10pm WST in Perth, so we traded that around till 2-3 am in the morning, then I was off to work trying to hold down a job,on a couple hours a night sleep, I spent most of my weekend in bed sleep deprived from the week, struggled to hold down work during the day as well.


There were about 50 -100 in the trading room, all trading different account sizes, I was trading 20 odd contracts with 50k, and also had a personal account that I traded myself with 20k in it.


Was good to be around other traders and to talk and meet them, but all of them seemed less experienced than me at the time. After 6 month they came to Perth, everyone had flown over for the weekend, I went in a day before the seminar to meet a couple people, then I met the guy that run the whole show in the bar, we talked, I then told him of my trading experiences so far and all the terrible things that had happened, and things I had done wrong, he was in such fits of laughter, he couldn’t even stand up at the bar, and had tears in his eyes from laughing, was pretty funny night looking back now on my short comings with trading.


On the first day in the seminar, they lost all power to the projector and computers, the guy quickly asked me to stand up in front of the 100 people in the room and tell them my trading story and experiences, which was scary at first speaking in front of everyone that I didn’t even know, but they all really listened to those experiences and asked questions. All of a sudden, I became pretty popular with them all, even though I didn’t have any good outcomes from trading yet.

Anyway, after a year they got an auto trader going and people started setting up accounts and letting them trade it live, they made one profitable trade, then went into a lot of losses, I didn’t put money into yet as I didn’t trust it too much, anyway I waited until the auto trader took 6 losses in a row, I jumped in and allowed them to trade one of my accounts. Many people were putting sizable amounts of money into this so-called auto trader. The auto trader which was really the guy running it basically initiating the trades without too many rules and a stop loss of 2 points didn’t do so well, he lost a fair amount of trades, but kept people assured it would catch up ok. Even the trades he was calling in the trading room didn’t go so well. I was even wondering about some of the calls he made. (he was putting up orders into the market at set prices with 4-6000 contracts at a time with his auto trader, less than 30 seconds they would be swallowed up and filled most of the time, then roll into losses.)


I was trying to trade my other account as well as the trading room account, I run 1 % capital stop loss on all trades, I didn’t have much of a system, tired half asleep, agitated, but got that 20k to last 12 months before I lost that as well. I didn’t take half the recommended trades the guy was calling with my other account, because I couldn’t see the market going in that direction at all. In fact, when he heard I was taking opposite trades to him on his entry’s, he then invented a trade that went the same way. I was doubting this guy a lot towards the end.


One night I was so run down and agitated from sitting in the one spot in front of the screen for so long, I decided to pull over the recliner chair, put a couple of blocks under the front of it to make it more comfortable to sit and trade from, however that didn’t go so well one night, I must of passed out in the chair from lack of sleep , I just remember waking up to a bell ringing sound on the computer that just kept going, by the time I had realised what was going on, I had lost the wireless mouse down the side of the chair, rolled on it when I was sleeping, and must of clicked on it, which in turn was dumping large orders of eminis contracts into the market, by the time my eyes adjusted to see what was going on, and wriggled more looking for the mouse, I had a fairly bigger than normal load of contracts going live, I quickly sold at market in an instant, took another substantial loss, terrible at the time, but funny now I look back. Lesson -always put a limit or contract size limit and daily account loss limit on your account to protect your capital, even if you don’t think that will happen to you.


Sure , I can brag about a few text book trades, that made people look at me, and think I was a freak of a trader in the trading room at times, when the room would take 2 points profit, I would get in at the bottom of a daily range, hold the position all night, then 20-30minutes before market closes the session, sell out a bought position right on the high of the session, 10-12 points up, just before a influx of people would start closing out long positions for the weekend and the market moves down a few points toward the close. But really, to pick those you took a hell of a lot of losses before ones like that would occur. In a trading room, everyone would ask who is up for the night, but you never hear people speak of the losses they take or mistakes too much.


So, after 3 years in there, I had almost lost all my starting capital again, trading all night and had quit my day job because I was so sleep deprived after 3 years.

One time I got up and drove to work, wondered why there was no traffic on the road, then realised it was Saturday morning and no one was at work, not a work day. In the end I was one of the longest standing members of the trading room, and lost the least amount of money out of everyone I think, we had also heard the guy running the show, lie to a new person signing up to the trading room, he told him the trading rooms account was up 100k this year, but he had not made any returns at all from his trading and had put in 100k to make it look like he was performing good.


I had mentioned this too quiet a few others and said none of this was going anywhere, and decided to quit that as well. At the time they just kept encouraging everyone to keep going and you would eventually get it. (Get What?) Everyone was being lied to about the whole program, it was all just a sales and marketing ploy to get more people to sign up to it. It took me quite some time to recover and get my mind and body working again after all the night trading, lack of sleep and another failed attempt at trading.


Some of those people lost large sums of money trading, one guy was trading a few of his mate’s and family members accounts in the background and lost all their money as well. Some months later I heard one of the guys who was trading was omitted to a psychiatric ward in a hospital, he went down hill after all the losses he suffered and finding out the whole trading system was just a hoax must have been too much for him to handle and appeared to have had a breakdown.


People were so upset after all the lies, they cancelled their subscriptions, and they were still stealing money from people’s credit cards, me included without consent for subscriptions after cancellations.


After all that, I was exhausted, could not trade anymore, so run down mentally, I couldn’t even deal with numbers or figures for quite some time, in fact I still I haven’t done tax returns for quite a few years and wouldn’t even turn on a calculator.


I had lost so much money and spent so much on trading systems and learning to trade that I accumulated 220k of tax credits in the business name, I had set up to trade in. I gave up buying real estate so I could become a full-time trader, didn’t even buy a house, so I could focus on trading and commit money to funding accounts, so now at 53 yr old, I have nothing at all to my name.


Whilst your mates bought a house to live in years earlier, worked and paid it off, or picked up a rental property, as time went by, sitting in the chair drinking a beer doing nothing, they accumulate some sort of wealth over time, even without effort or knowledge of the real-estate market. Meantime, I committed all that time and money without return, lost earnings potential from fulltime work and don’t even get to keep the money I initially outlaid into the market for trading, lost the lot.


I have learned one lesson from your books, you said you will never learn to trade until you can learn how to take losses, well that is one lesson I have truly learned to do, you don’t even realise you hold some sort of emotional attachment to money, until you keep losing it many times over, breaking down your own personal psychological attachment to the word money.


During E-minis Trading the most amount of losses I took in a row was 20, and I kept trading the next evening, every time I lost I would drop down in the contracts not risking more than 1% capital per trade, which is why the account lasted so long, especially with my low probability trades, 12 months taking 5 trades on average a night. A loss does not even worry me now, I could walk out the front and set fire to 40k in a wheel barrow now, or give it to a homeless person, and just laugh at it. So that was one lesson I learnt out of it so far, ha ha.


Even with a few profitable trades, by the end of it all, I was not even elated with excitement making 10k in a night, I had about the same emotional thought, like when you pick up a coffee cup off the end of a bench, the heart beat doesn’t change now, or increase like when I first started, kind of like there’s no fist pumping and smiles anymore.

I found a guy 5 yr back who done specialised investing in the shares in Perth who done managed accounts on the Australian and USA market, so after saving like hell again going without, got enough capital to open an account with interactive brokers in USA, and got him to send us his reports on trade recommendation’s that he would trade after responding to emails and texts. That way I could work and try get some results that way at the same time. He went well in the first 3 months I took every trade he recommended, we were up about 45% net after his fees which was good to start with in 3-4 months. All up in 3 years that 45% gain slowly got chipped away and we just took losses a lot, I looked at a straight bunch of losses and a odd few winners holding well, for nearly 3 years without any upside, decided to stop that also before it lost money or my starting capital there as well.


Where do I go from here? Well I am going to have one more go at it, now I have gotten most of the ground work done, I believe I am positioned well, with enough practical experience from trading, account losses, and see the only way forward is to have a systematic approach, good money management, a back tested system, and know what to expect from that, moving forward, and stick at it.

And here is my reply;

From: Brent Penfold <bpenfold@tpg.com.au>
Sent: Monday, 21 October 2024 8:34 AM
To: xxxxxx@xxxxx.com
Subject: RE: XXXX XXXX- Trading Help needed!

Hi XXXX,

Thanks for the contact.

I can’t say I remember you however what I do remember about the Perth Expo was that it was one of the quickest Expos I had attended … I think flying in and flying out on the same day!

Also a big thanks for sharing your back story.

Please don’t think you’re the only one with your experience, as over 90% of active traders lose … and very few are open enough like you, to share their struggles.

First up – If you’d allow it … I’d like to share your experience on my web site … as a huge service to all aspiring traders … you’d be anonymous … but I believe it would be a huge public service with you pulling back the veil on a trader’s typical journey … as your journey … despite your deep personal angst …is typical of most traders … and apart from missing some trading knowledge … another big impediment to many aspiring traders are less then genuine trading educators/service providers.

If you’d be ok with it … I’d put it up for anyone to read as a “heads up” before they start trading …. because trading is the hardest way to make the easiest money…. and everyone needs to be aware of how hard … hard due to the amount of proper knowledge that is required … hard due to the level of ordinary trading education on offer … hard due to unscrupulous actors.

If you’re up to it please let me know.

Going forward I believe it’s a must that you know a program so you can independently validate/test trading ideas.

If you’re keen to attend my Workshops then you’d be pleased to know that only last year I decided to recommend Real Test as a program.

You can learn more about Real Test here;

https://indextrader.com.au/software-realtest/

I have a trader who is happy to help others code up my models in Real Test.

There’s nothing I can really add to my Workshop pages … except to point out that I trade off end-of-day bars.

This means I do all my work (downloading data, managing open positions and placing new trades) between sessions where I set and forget.

In other words, I don’t have to watch the market.

What this means for traders like yourself is that you don’t have to give up your day job … which will remove the pressure on you to success as a “fulltime” trader.

Yes, you’ll have to be disciplined .. everyday downloading data, running the models, managing/executing trades etc … however you don’t need to be glued to your screen.

In addition you’ll find mechanical models make everything easier … where my 90 days of live trading … is simply repeating what is taught during the Workshops … so there is no confusion about how the models work and how they are executed.

In addition …if you attend and learn Port^X3 … my suggestion would be to only trade a small 8 market portfolio…for the first 12 months.

https://indextrader.com.au/portx3/

My suggestion is to first trade small, to make sure you’re comfortable with mechanical trading.

Your objective should not be to make a killing, but to demonstrate that you’re capable of executing a mechanical strategy.

Because your objective is not to make money this year, but to make $$ next year, the year after and the decade after.

Your objective should be to build a sustainable trading business …. And it has to start with baby steps.

Achieve that over your first 12 months and you’ll be in a completely different head space then you are today.

I hope this helps.

Regards

Brent Penfold