Transcription
It took me six years to be able to figure all of this out, and I'm going to give it to you guys in under 30 minutes. My name is Tyler. Everybody online knows me as TJR. I went from being a broke college student to now a full-time day trader. And these are a whole bunch of lessons that I wish I knew when I was getting into day trading that literally would have saved me so much freaking time to end up going from that unprofitable to that profitable stage within literally 30 minutes. So hopefully this video can help you guys smooth over and get a clear and narrow path on what you guys should be doing, especially when getting into trading. And even if you guys are an advanced trader, I'm sure that there's something that you guys will be able to grab from this video that you guys are probably doing that is affecting your guys' journey and probably putting a stop on you guys turning from unprofitable to profitable. So with that being said, let's get right into it.
There are three main skills within trading that you guys have to master in order to become profitable. And believe it or not, if you guys just focus on these three fundamentals and get really [ __ ] good at them, that's really all you need in order to turn into a profitable trader. So, what are these three skills? I'm going to break them down one by one, and then I'm going to add a couple more tips that are going to help you guys out. But the three skills that you guys need to focus on in order to turn profitable. And it's not any of this like 1% things like figuring out what type of basketball shoe you're supposed to wear. That's not going to make you better at basketball. Doing the fundamentals is going to make you better at basketball. And it's the same thing with trading. So, what are the three skills that you need to get really freaking good at in order to become profitable? You need to master your mindset, your psychology, your risk management, and then your strategy. All three of these are equally as important in order for you guys to turn into a profitable trader. A lot of people overeducate themselves on the strategy side of things. And that's going to be one of the easiest things for you guys to learn because literally every single YouTube video that you guys see online is telling you some new and improved strategy on how you guys can make whatever $5,000 in 2 minutes and then turn profitable. But what a lot of people abandon is mindset and risk management. And that is equally as important, if not even more important due to the overeducation that we have on strategy when trying to turn into a profitable trader. So, now that we know the three fundamentals, let's get into each one of them and break down how you guys can actually build these skills so that you guys can turn into a profitable trader much faster than the majority of these other people.
So, let's start off with mindset. That's one of our three skill sets that we need to master in order to become a profitable trader. This is probably the hardest skill set to master because unfortunately us as humans, we have a very strong emotional attachment to money. We think about every single dollar transaction. It hurts us to be able to make those payments. It hurts us to be able to lose money and then we get super excited when we make money. Okay? And this is what we need to avoid feeling when we're in the markets. Or else, if we are feeling sad when we lose money and we're feeling excited when we win money, we might as well go to the casino and gamble that money instead. And honestly, your probability is probably a little bit higher. If you're gambling and feeling those emotional swings than if you were to do it trading because trading, you can lose a lot of money really quick. Same thing with gambling. But if we treat this like a casino, it is going to end up like a casino where the house is going to win. The brokerage is just going to take your hard-earned money and take it to the bank and say, "Haha, you are part of the 98% of traders that fail."
So the first thing that we needed to do is break that emotional connection that we have with money. This is one of the most difficult things for us to do. Cuz especially as beginner traders, we are starting out with low capital. How can we try and at least break that emotional connection to money? Well, the first thing is starting off by trading on a demo account or a paper trading account. Most brokerages have these things that allow you guys to build the skill set of trading without having to risk your own money. But you're obviously wanting to turn into a profitable trader making real money from trading. So obviously we're going to have to eventually transition from trading on demo and fake money over to real money. But the best thing that you guys can do is start off with demo and fake money so that you guys can build the skill set of being a profitable trader. So that when you do move to real money, you're still going to have some emotions tied to the money, but at least you'll have the confidence to take the trades that you're supposed to because you have the skill set of trading. So one, we need to establish the skill set of trading, and that's going to be helped through risk management and strategy. So by establishing these two fundamentals, we're actually going to be helping this fundamental of mindset. We're going to get to those two fundamentals later on in this video, but again, we need to establish that through demo and paper trading before we actually move into live trading.
And then once we move into live trading, that's when these emotions may come back. We have the fear of losing money. We have the greed of wanting to make more money. So how can we get over these things? This is something that is again, it's really difficult and it's really hard for me to articulate. But one of the easiest things that I can say is don't trade with money that you aren't willing to lose. I remember back when I was an unprofitable trader, I was pretty much dumping my entire bank account into these live accounts because I was like, "Hey, I just need to full port and then if I hit one or two trades, boom, I like two or 3x my bank account." And the problem with that is you get really greedy. And then also, you're trading with money that you can't lose. You can't afford to lose. Your rent is on the line. Your food for that night is on the line. I know it's easy for me to say as somebody that's in a financially, you know, safe position and you guys are not necessarily in the same financial situation as I am, but trust me when I say this, build up a trading account balance and like save money, stash money on the side so that when you guys are working these side jobs that you guys are using to support your life, you guys are taking money out and stashing it to the side to the point where this money on the side, it's not going to affect you necessarily if you guys are going to lose money or make money on on it because you're already paying your bills with your current job. Okay? You guys need to think about it like that. You guys should not be risking money that you can't afford to lose or think, "Hey, I'm going to go into this trading thing and I'm going to pay my rent with this." No.
So, you guys haven't even established that you guys are good at the skill set yet. If you guys are working a 9 to5, I know you guys aren't making too much money. That's okay. Slowly but surely, keep stashing money away. And guess what? While you're doing this, you guys can be trading on a demo account, on a fake money account, on a paper trading account, so that you guys can build that confidence and build that skill set of trading to the point where once that little safety reserve, once that little stash of money that you guys have been putting away for a while is built up to a solid amount, you guys have one built the skill set of trading, but also you guys have built up a good balance for you guys to go into a live account with to the point where you understand that, hey, it's okay if I lose all this money. Why? Because the work that I'm doing, it still pays the bills. And two, I know that this money is something that I'm willing to risk in order to potentially change my life. And guess what? If you lose all that money, no harm, no foul. Why? Because it's a lesson learned and it's a mistake that you guys can grow from. So again, there was countless times where I lost literally my entire bank account when trying to trade. But the biggest thing for you guys is being able to build that skill set of trading while you guys are stashing money on the side and understand that this money that you're stashing on the side is going to be a tool to help you guys get to where you want to go. Until you guys get to the point where you are consistently getting withdraws, consistently getting payouts from funded accounts, the money on the side is not supposed to support you financially. And that's where a lot of people [ __ ] up is they get into trading because they think it's going to get them rich in a month. And if you guys have that mindset, you guys are going to crash out immediately and you guys are going to lose everything immediately because that's greed. Okay? And if you're trading with money that you can't afford to lose, then you're going to be trading with fear. And those are honestly the two biggest emotions that traders struggle with because they aren't handling their finances correctly. And a lot of mindset just purely comes to lack of financial responsibility on the trader side of things because they're trying to make it happen in a split second. When if you guys just focus on building the skill of trading while slowly stashing money away to potentially change your life while also supporting yourself financially from your regular job, you're going to be able to get there a lot quicker.
And this was something that I wish I had learned when I was an unprofitable trader trying to turn profitable because again I was not smart with my money and I was pretty much throwing hard-earned money that was supposed to support my life that was supposed to pay for rent that was supposed to pay for food and I was spending it on these accounts because I was like hey by doing this I'm going to get rich quick and then boom I'll be able to make three times my rent I'll be able to pay my rent and then I'll also be able to go buy a Louis belt and guess what? Every single time you do that, you're dealing with money that you can't afford to lose, that you need to make money on, and then boom, you're screwed because you're trading with fear or you're trading with greed. So, be able to identify those two emotions. If you guys are ever feeling like, "Hey, when I'm in a trade, I'm scared of losing, you're trading with too much money." If you're ever in a trade and you get excited when you win or if you get excited when the trade is going in your direction, you are trading with too much money and you're trading with money that you can't afford and you're much better off lowering your account size to the point where you need to be able to build that emotionless relationship with money. And this is what a lot of business owners and a lot of successful people now have with money where we see it as a tool rather than a necessity. So, think about the money that you're stashing away as a tool to get you to where you want to go and make sure all of your regular living expenses are covered and that will help you guys build that emotionless connection to money.
Now, with that being said, let's move on to risk management. And this is also going to be dealing with money. Just like I was mentioning in the mindset portion and the psychology portion, risk management is super important. And again, a lot of people get into trading and are just thinking about the big wins and how excited they would be if they were able to hit like a $50,000 win. That's the problem. If you're getting excited about a win, like you guys see my trade recaps where I'm making $100,000 in a trade or like $25,000 in a trade and I'm emotionless throughout all of it. Even sometimes I'll lose $25,000 or I'll lose $50,000 and I'm emotionless through all of it. So you guys need to be thinking, okay, what amount of money is that going to amount to me? And that's how you guys should initially treat your risk management where you guys shouldn't be getting excited about the wins. You guys shouldn't be getting sad about the losses. Ideally, when it comes to risk management, you guys are going to be risking anywhere from like 1 to 3% of your trading account per trade. But again, going back to that mindset point where if your account is with money that you can't afford to lose and you guys are risking 1 to 3% of that account and that 1 to 3% of that account is money that you can't afford to lose, you are still going to be feeling those emotions because risk management is two things, okay? It's risking the right amount per trade, but it's also understanding that, hey, we need to be risking the amount to the point where we are still emotionless with the money that we're trading.
On top of that, we need to be trading to be able to trade another day. The way that I like to think about this is understand that losing weeks are going to come, losing days are going to come, and if you are risking too much of your account to the point where it's going to drastically affect your account balance when you guys are losing these trades or winning these trades. A lot of people think like, "Yeah, if I get a big win, that's going to be beneficial." No. And trust me, coming from me, I turned an account from $10,000 into $112,000. And you're probably thinking, "Wow, that was great." No, because it reinforced bad habits for me. And guess what happened the very next day? I lost all of it because I was risking the same amount. And I was doing that same really crazy, really dumb risk that I was doing in the past that helped get me from $10,000 to $112,000 over the course of 2 days. And then in turn, what happened? I ended up losing all of it the following day. So again, we need to be thinking with our account balances, how can we live to trade another day? and how can we make this account last for our entire timeline of being a full-time profitable trader? And I know you guys are probably dealing with smaller account balances right now, but with that mindset of like, how can I leverage this account size and use this account size to my advantage to the point where okay, I'm trading with one a dollar amount that I'm not afraid to lose and I'm not excited about whatever the profit that I'm going to get on it. And then also, I'm risking an amount where it's not going to drastically affect my account balance if I lose. and it's also not going to drastically affect my account balance if I win. Those are two very important things. And by risking 1 to 3% of your account, that's going to help you guys live to trade another day.
Now, let's get into the third skill set, which is going to be strategy. Now, I'm honestly not going to go too deep into this. I have a free course that you guys can learn literally every single confluence that I ever teach online. I'll leave a link in the description for that where you guys can learn all of that. I also teach people directly as students, okay? If you guys want to be mentored by me personally and a bunch of other profitable traders as your guys' coach, if you guys want like specific answers to your guys' questions, because again, when I'm making these YouTube videos, it's like one thing for me to get on here and just kind of make a vague assumption of what all, you know, unprofitable traders are going through. But some of you guys may have specific questions that you guys want to ask me personally or another profitable trader coach personally, and that's what we give you guys access to in my blueprint. So, I'll leave a little link down in the description for that. But again, a lot of that can be solved with just these YouTube videos. So, let's get into strategy. Strategy, I really don't want to cover it too much because like I said, it's the overeducated part of day trading where a lot of people already know their strategy. But one thing that I do want to cover is the overeducation of strategy. So, a lot of you guys are watching multiple strategy videos per day. You guys are watching multiple confluences videos per day. and you guys are just looking for some secret key, some magic key, some magic confluence that you guys are going to learn one day via YouTube and then boom, that's just going to change the trading game for you. News flash, that is not going to happen and it's never going to happen. And if you keep looking for it, you guys will never turn profitable. And this was a mistake that I made when I was trying to turn profitable where I was just watching endless endless endless content on YouTube versus if I had just stuck to the strategy that was somewhat working for me or stuck to the confluences that I understood why price was moving off of them and then just completely turned off all of day trading YouTube and stopped looking for confluences that were going to help my strategy get a 50% better win rate. Like [ __ ] all of that. The best experience that you guys are going to gain when it comes to strategy is actually applying it to the markets.
So instead of spending hours on YouTube trying to learn the next best strategy or the next best confluence that's going to help you guys become a profitable trader, you guys probably have already digested thousands of hours worth of strategy content on YouTube. You guys no longer need strategy content. You guys need to apply it. It's like the difference or the analogy of someone that sits down and watches 1,000 hours worth of basketball training videos versus somebody that spends a,000 hours without knowing anything about basketball just on the basketball court. Once we put those people on the court at the end of both of those durations, who's going to be better at basketball? When we give the person who's never touched a basketball in their life, but watched 1,000 hours worth of basketball training videos, guess what? They're still going to [ __ ] suck. Yes, they may know like certain drills or certain moves that may help them, but they don't know how to [ __ ] dribble. They don't know how to [ __ ] shoot and it's going to be their first time attempting to do these things versus if we give someone a ball and have them actually try and train for a,000 hours, they're going to be in a far better position than the person that just sat there and watched. So, it's the same exact thing with trading. We need to actually be building this skill set. How? By [ __ ] trading. Okay? You wonder how you get better at trading? By putting in repetitions. It's just like the gym. You need to go into the gym every single day to build those muscles, to build that muscle memory of actually trading and getting better at it. Okay, there's several different softwares that can help you guys back test. There's Trading View, obviously. That's how we actually like can practice live trading. There's demo. There's paper trading accounts that you guys can actually be placing these trades and then figuring out how you guys can get better in real time in these markets, okay? Because again, it's one thing to be watching these videos and understanding the confluences, but it's another thing to actually go out there and apply it. You guys need to be doing both. And if anything, I'm sure you guys have already watched too many of these YouTube videos, so you guys might as well start putting in more work on Trading View rather than on YouTube.
The last little tip and thing that I want to cover in this video is just understanding that everyone's timeline is going to be different. Okay? And I'm sure you guys can like follow a whole bunch of day traders, including myself, whether it be on YouTube, Tik Tok, or Instagram, and a lot of social media is just highlighting the wins. In fact, it's really annoying for me because I try and be super transparent about all my wins and all my losses. But even on YouTube, if you guys scroll through all of my trade recaps, guess what videos get more views? It's the days that I'm winning, the days that I'm making $150,000 in a day, the days that I'm making $25,000 in a day. Just recently, trade recap, I made $22,000 in a day. That video got 45,000 45,000 more views than me losing $25,000 in a day. The balances were the exact same, except people just wanted to watch the win way more than they wanted to watch the loss. When in fact, if they had watched the losses, they would probably be learning more because it's a mistake that their mentor made and it was a mistake that they probably made on that trading day as well. Unfortunately, in this social media era that we're in, a lot of the wins are highlighted instead of the losses. And again, like I said, I like to be super transparent with you guys, but you sometimes have to do your digging to be able to find these things because again, the wins are just highlighted far more than the losses, especially when it comes to being an unprofitable trader. That's something that can be super discouraging because you guys see all these traders winning on a daily basis or, oh my gosh, this person made this much and I lost today, man, I'm not going to make it. or how come this person was able to get this amount of money in a payout and they've only been trading for 6 months and I've been trying to do this for 2 years. Why why did they get it, not me? You guys need to tune out all of that [ __ ] And honestly, one of the biggest things for me was literally unfollowing every single day trader on YouTube. I stopped watching all these strategy videos. I stopped watching their trade recaps. I unfollowed every single trader that I was following on Instagram. And at the time when I was trying to learn how to trade, Tik Tok wasn't a thing or I don't even think I had it downloaded at the time. But unfollow all of these people, including myself, especially if you guys are really trying to get get this done. Like this video is awesome and it's great for you guys. And maybe you guys see a video or two of mine that like pops up that you're like, "Hey, this is actually addressing a specific question that's going to help my trading journey." But for the most part, you guys need to focus on your own success. Comparison truly is the thief of joy. And it's also going to be holding you guys back because if you keep comparing yourselves to all these other people who are online and again like I was saying the wins are escalated. You guys are just going to forever be thinking like what do they have that I don't? And then that causes the overeducation cycle that causes you guys to want to look more and deeper into YouTube videos. You guys need to stop that. Just focus on your own journey.
And this is another big thing is just like journaling your trades and seeing the difference of trades from a month ago to now or seeing the difference in your trading and how you guys understand price action from like a year ago compared to now and actually seeing that progress. Something that sucks about trading is there's like the super black and white of like boom, you're either unprofitable or you're profitable. And when you're in that unprofitable stage, it's just very apparent like you are consistently losing money. So it's super hard to be able to actually track your progress. But if you guys are journaling your trades, you guys can look back on like several years or several months worth of trades and you can say like, "Oh, damn. I've actually made progress, even though I'm not necessarily profitable yet." That's going to keep you guys going. And the last thing is just understanding that everybody's on a different timeline. Okay? So, if you and your friends are trying to do this and one of your friends is able to like find success a little bit quicker than you, it's okay. Okay? Every every single one of us as humans is different. Everybody is in a different head space and people learn and pick up things at different rates. So just focus on your own success, focus on your own growth and you guys are truly going to become better traders by doing that.
Again, like I said in these YouTube videos, I can only cover like little bits and pieces of what I think just the overall vague umbrella of unprofitable traders. If you guys want to be taught or mentored by me personally, you guys can join the TJR Trades blueprint in the description. Again, this is something similar where it's like you guys would actually be able to get on a Discord call with me, ask your direct trading questions, and that is something that is actually beneficial where you guys can get in there and that's where I'm able to smooth out all of these like direct trading mistakes that you guys are making on a daily basis. And how do I know that you guys are making them on a daily basis? You guys are coming to me and you guys are telling me saying, "Hey, I'm making this mistake." And I'm just like, boom. I've made this mistakes so many times where I know the exact cure for it versus these videos. is like, look, I'm just trying to put like an overall umbrella, like, how can I help these unprofitable traders just get a good overall base to be able to get them where they want to go. But if you're somebody that's been at this for a really long time and you guys already know all the [ __ ] that I covered in this video and you're like, man, there's really just like a couple things that I think I'm missing or a couple things that I need like actual professional coaching with, and that's where I'm going to be able to help you. But for the most part, if you're an absolute beginner, bro, don't even bother with that [ __ ] and just focus on these YouTube videos. But don't get too involved with them, okay? Focus on these YouTube videos, build that overall base and those fundamentals, and trust me, you guys will be well on your way to profitability. That being said, I love and appreciate you guys. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace out.