Today was the first rough day I've had since the opening of the Live Room. In my trading past I've dealt with plenty of days, weeks and even months like this so it's not really a big deal, but to many (especially the newer traders) this was there first experience dealing with one of those "getting punched in the face" kind of days.  As I stated at the start of the session, I expected the day to be a little odd simply because it was the last trading day of the month and many professional traders like to close out positions for their monthly records or what not. However, I have never done any testing on this theory, therefore I have no rules set about trading on the final day of the month.  Regardless, today was a great learning experience. As a member of the room stated "my ski instructor used to tell me your not learning if you're not falling down." Same with trading, to truly test your market psychology you need to have days like these and persevere.  Do we want them to happen? No, but they do so we need to deal with it.  A good question was brought up in the room about switching to a different system when things aren't going our way.  I responded by saying that I tried that in the past out of frustration and it ended up with me just doubling my losses and getting mad because I misses a few winners that I would have had if I stuck to my original plan. No matter what system or strategy you use whether mechanical or harmonic based, the key is being consistent.  I started off the month winning 9 out of my first 12 trades (75%) which was great but I was fully aware that in the long run this win percentage wouldn't hold so I was expecting some losers to come.  Unfortunately one of the losses we took today happen to be more of a swing trade, so the draw-down was a little more than what we're used to. But none the less we still finished with an overall profit for the month for the Live Room as well as my personal account (assuming some of these longer term swing trades don't get stopped out by tonight). See you guys next month!

*I forgot to add this to the original post but one of the things I like to do on days like today is go back later in the day (after I clear my mind) and run through my trading hours again to see if I would have taken the same trades. If the answer is yest then you know that you traded correctly and that the market just had one of those days. However if you don't see a reason to get involved in the trade again then you know it may have been emotional and revenge based. If you do find mistakes make sure you write them down and put them someplace where you can see them so you don't make them again. That is something that helped me greatly #Kaizen
 
Lone warrior Monday so there is no live room today, However, that doesn't mean that I can't give a little update on whats going on in the market. Early last week I mentioned that I got filled in five longer term swing trades (AUDUSD, AUDJPY, AUDCAD, NZDUSD, NZDJPY).  You'll also remember me saying that I wasn't too excited about it because they are all correlated pairs basically.  I don't think about pair correlations at all when I place order but it doesn't take a genus to realize that if I am going short on 3 Aussie pairs, then there is great chance that if one rolls over the other will, and vice versa.  So in the live room I jokes around by saying that when all five of these trades complete I'm either going to be a very happy or very upset customer.  Obviously, I was joking a little bit as I completely knew my potential risk by entering 5 swing trades with triple digit stops and the same time, but let's be honest it would hurt a little to be stopped out of all 5. I make it my goal to operate like a robot but I still am human after all. Throughout the week the majority of these trades moved against me. Some only being slightly down, and some being in the red by more than 150 pips. But because of my experience in the market (aka making mistakes in the past), I wasn't scared because although I was down, none of the pairs had broken the key structure level that I made sure to place my stops above.  I was away Friday afternoon so I didn't get a chance to see how the market moved, but when I opened up my charts this Sunday I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of the trades took a turn in my direction. The rookie me would have quickly took my profit off the table after going from down 150 to up 150, but I'm not rookie. Hopefully I'll get some targets filled today, but congrats to everyone that is involved in these setups and have survived the pain to see the glory of profit. That's what trading is all about. Hopefully I'll be joining you soon. 

On a side note, the last chart is of the EURUSD pair. I think I mentioned this trade in a Chart Talk post last week or two weeks ago, but price action had finally reached that area that I was watching (ABCD, 161.8 ex, 38.2 re). 
 
I would say, and I think that the majority of the 100 plus people in the live trading room would agree that today was one of the best days in the room. Do keep in mind this room only has a 3 week existence...but regardless today was good. This morning we identified a trade right off the bat and had to sit back and watch as the market tested our psychology.  Being involved in a trade like today that took us from nearly being filled on target 1 to almost stopped out by a single pip was truly mental warfare.  It was pretty cool to witness because different people in the class handled it different ways. The polish traders sat back and watched as they were used to this occurring on a regular basis, while the novice traders began to get frustrated. One person even admitted to "chickening out" and taking of his profits early. This made for a great conversation on trading psychology and I think the entire room enjoyed it.  Eventually the trade went on to hit target 1 before being stopped out, which was good because it added some weight to the points I was trying to make.

Other than that we had a losing trade on another pair which proved to be a great example of why using proper risk/reward ratios are important. Even though we lost on 2 contracts on one trade, the 1st target winner on the other trade covered it. So today we had 1 winner and 1 loser and still came out with some profit. A very small profit but profit non the less.  With 1 trading day left in the 3rd week we're currently over 300pips on trades we took in the room.  Let's see if we can end this week with a bang!
http://www.triplethreattrading.com/live-rooms/ 
 
Like Tuesday today was another slow trading day in the live room. During the 3 hour period in which it operates I was only able to get entered in a single trade. What?! 3 hours, 8 pairs, and only 1 trade? What are you thinking Akil? I'm thinking "stick to your plan, and trade only the opportunities that fit into it." So that's exactly what I did.  Less than an hour into the session I noticed a trade that I missed due to me being caught up talking about some other longer term stuff. Fortunately, the market gave us another opportunity to get involved and we were able to take advantage.  We stayed in this single trade nearly the entire class period bouncing up and down before finally reaching our first target with about 15 minutes to go.  Because we missed our original fill we only gained 17 pips of profit on target 1, but for those who trailed their stops correctly and hung in there for the full ride, we were able to collect another 46 pips on the second target. Aside from that there were know other trades that we got filled on. We had a few limit orders set on a day-trade (which would have been stopped out for break even) & a swing trade (that would have profited pretty nicely). Unfortunately the market didn't quite get us filled on our entries, missing by a few pips on 1 and being on finished our day-trading hours on another. Anyway it was another good day for two reasons. First of all we didn't lose any money, and secondly we added 63 more pips to our account putting us close to 300 for the past 9 days.  We'll see if we can keep this pace up tomorrow. See you guys in the Live Room. 
 
So today was our first day-trading day of the week in the live room. The 2 week free trial was over so I was very excited to see who would be joining me in the room today.  We had over 100 people of various trading experience which was pretty cool. This shows me, that some were in the class to supplement what they were learning through Jason's Pro-Trader course, some were there to gain some trading experience and turn around their personal accounts, and some traders were strictly there because they liked the feeling of being in a room with another trader that looks at the market the same as they do. 

On the actual trading side of things today was pretty slow. There were only two trading calls made and I personally only entered one of them due to an existing trade on the other pair. Again, do to my experience in trading I've learned how to deal with these days and not chase trades. I could tell that a few people int he room were getting a little anxious, but for the most part everybody kept their calm. As I write this I'm watching the youtube video that I posted on the homepage and he is talking about the same thing, patience and waiting for only the best setups to trade. Or as he said "waiting until the money is sitting there on the table waiting for you to take it." Using this mindset has helped my trading a bunch. Yes I enter a lot less trades, but on the positive side I have become a lot more efficient and more profitable.  See you guys tomorrow, and hopefully we'll get some more action. 
 
If you've been following me in the live room this week then this trade will be familiar to you. To give a brief recap this was an aggressive C buy on the GBPCHF. After entering this trade we instantly shot up about 50pips during the live room. However, when we returned the next day we noticed that instead of hitting target 1 or hovering around the break even mark, we were down almost 70pips. I can only imagine how I would have reacted two years ago.  Let's see probably a lot of complaining, yelling at myself for not taking profits when it was up 50, followed by threatening to toss my computer out of the window. Glad those days are over.  Since those times I have learned a lot about proper trade management and how the market likes to move. Therefore when I woke up to being down 70pips I wasn't really upset because I was prepared for that move to happen. When checking the charts a few minutes ago after being away from my charts all afternoon, I see that price action has again moved in my direction and in closing in on my first target. IF and that's a big IF, this trade goes on to win it won't be because I'm some super-trader that can predict every move the market makes. It'll be because I was smart with my trade management and even smarter with my trading 
 
Some is better than none. Today was another positive day in the Live Trading room. No we didn't earn a hundred pips, but we didn't lose any either.  Today we entered 2 trades, the first earned us 14pips on target 1 before being taken out for breakeven, and the second is still in progress and is not expected to reach targets until... well who knows when. The point is even though we only made a slight profit, it's much better than losing money.  More importantly is shows that we are really patient in what trades we take and only look for the BEST trading opportunities. So far in five days of trading we only took 9 trades. However, out of those 9 trades 6 have been winners, with 1 loss, 1 breakeven, and 1 in progress.  With that (disregarding the breakeven and in progress trade) we're looking at an 85% win percentage. LOL crazy right! Don't worry I don't expected this to be the case throughout the rest of the year, but there is nothing wrong with getting out to a quick start. 

What I'm more excited about is the fact that people have been telling me that they are learning a lot in the room. One member even told me that he made 137pips today using the strategies that we go over in the room. To me this is the exciting part simply because the main reason for me hosting this Live Room, as well as this site, is so I can give back. I feel as if I was very lucky to stumble into a great mentor like Jason who taught me the tools needed to be successful in this industry. I know that they're many others out there that were just as I was and I want to provide them a similar opportunity. Obviously, I'm not going to run a training course or anything like that, but if I can simply act as an example of somebody that made it, then thats good enough for me, 
 
I would categorize this past week as being one of the more interesting weeks in my trading career. For those who are new to my site, this week was start of the Triple Threat Trading (T2T) Live Ratio Room. We stared the week off with over 700 people joining us for our introduction presentation on Monday and kept about 450-600 people in the room for the thee days that I traded live. Less than an hour ago we topped it off with a great presentation on trading psychology from guest speaker BJ Nash. Talking to Jason and just going off of the feedback we have received I would say that this first week of our two week trial run was a BIG SUCCESS! Not only did the room run smoothly (with the exception of a few issues with the projector), but the people in the room were amazing. Lots of intelligent questions, nobody was out to make me look bad or really question my position, and most of all I could tell that the majority of people in the room were hungry and really ready to learn. This was great for me to see because about two years ago I was on the other side and was one of those hungry people. So each time I get a compliment or hear a really good question it really reminds me of myself and where I stared at.  

The room is suppose to act as a support for traders that are just starting out and want to see how they can related their newly learned skills into the live market and I believe that having that support system is just as important as learning the initial skills. I remember that when I first started trading, I knew what strategy I wanted to trade and I knew how to correctly analyze the market, but I still got very nervous before executing trades.  However, when spending some time in Jason's free training or live rooms I was able to gain confidence when I saw that his analysis matched up with mine.  I believe that confidence is key in trading and the quicker you can grow it, the better trader you will become.  Hopefully, i'll be able to help some of the members of the room gain that confidence in their trading.

With that being said, I'm looking forward to FREE week number 2. We started off the first week with a bang wining 5 out of 7 trades (with 1 scratch) for about 190 total pips. Do I expect to continue winning 80% of the time? No. It would be great if I could but I would be fine with winning 60%. But to have a week like that from the jump is pretty good, that way the people in the room don't have to deal with the psychological difficulties of dealing with a drawdown. I think it is needed at somepoint to gain mental toughness, but I'd rather make money lol. See you guys next week.

If you want to check out the T2T Live Ratio Trading Room we still have 1 free week left. Join us Tues- Thurs 8am NY time fro Live trading and on Friday at 8am NY time to hear Jason Stapleton speak about the training opportunities that he offers.  http://www.triplethreattrading.com/protraderroom 
 
It seems like I've been hearing the word "patience" over and over again as of late. Whether it was a quote of the day given to me by a fellow trader, directions from my head coach at the university I coach at, or the self talk that I constantly have been giving myself.  Yes, I talk to myself, I mean after all I am a trader, and if you're one too then you know it's often a lonely job. Add to that if the market is having a slow day then it's like watching paint dry. That is, if you're trading the right way. Patience is on of my biggest downfalls as a person and was not a good trait to carry over into trading. I remember when I first started out, if the market wasn't offering any good trading opportunities I would hunt and hunt and hunt until I found one.Sometimes this would work, but the majority of the time I would be taking very risky setups that I really had no business being in.  

As I look back on those days I have really come full circle and the main thing that shows me that is my ability to run a live room and keep my cool. One of my biggest fears in running this live room was that we would start off the week with no valid trading attempts and I would revert back to my old ways of over analyzing in order to give the people in the room some action.  Even though we haven't had any extremely busy days, we've had enough action to keep things rolling and not have that awkward moment nothingness.  This was exactly the type of start I was hoping for and because we've been able to start of with 3 wins, 1 loss and 1 trade for break even, there is really no pressure to trade. Honestly there wouldn't be any pressure to trade even if we were down a lot, but lets just be honest, life just seems better when your up instead of down. 

I'm going to end this post early because I have to grab some eats before the Ratio room opens, but if you'd like to join me we still have the FREE 2 week trial offer going on so I'd love to see you in there.  

http://www.omnovia.com/pages/sc2/room_login.php?companyID=2928&roomID=14755&isPresenter=0
 
So my updates are a little off since I'm not able to write during my trading day anymore, but that's a sacrifice I'm more than willing to make. Yesterday was my second day in the New Live Ratio Room, but it was the firs time that I actually had to trade and run the entire show by myself. Of course ten minutes into the day my computer crashed. I mean there were almost 700 people in the room so why wouldn't it crash lol. Luckily, Jason and Darren were in the room watching my back and were able to hold down the fort while I was waiting for my computer to reboot.  Anyway, once I got rolling (for the second time) everything went fine.  I was able to answer a lot of questions while the market was choppy and later on in the day we actually got to take three trades.  On those three trades we had one winner that hit targets 1 & 2, another trade that got stopped out for break even and the last was a target 1 only winner. In total we made about 69pips on day one which I'm really excited about. 

Experienced traders understand how the markets work, and know that you can do perfect analysis and still have a losing trade (which is fine by the way). However in a room full of 700 people, I would assume that there are a lot of people that are new to the market and still don't have the experience of going through winning and losing streaks. We'll see how today goes but busy or not busy I'm going to stick to my plan since I know it will work out in