Darren said it best in the Live Room today "we told the market to...BOW TO YOUR SENSEI!" In all honesty we did have a great start to the week traders. Below are a few examples of the trades we took in the room today but as you guys know, that's not what I like to talk about. Don't get me wrong, making profits is great and all, but what I like to see is the maturation of the traders in the room. I don't know how to explain it but today everybody seemed to be on point with there trading. Not only did we do a great job of analyzing the market, but I through in a few questions on trading psychology and was very please with the responses I heard.  We've been running about 200 deep in the room for the past month, many of which are inexperienced traders. Many of them are still in the backtesting or demo trading phases of their trading journey and although they could profit financially, they did profit in the way of gaining experience. If you look below you'll see that we got to see an example of every type of setup that we usually trade in the room. We had a Bat pattern which is an advanced pattern, we had a Cypher pattern which is our newest patter, we had a 2618 trade which is a conservative structure trade and we had a pure structure and fib trade with an aggressive entry. Good day indeed! See you tomorrow traders
 
This past week was a very slow week for me in the live room. Although I usually point out many valid trading setups per session I've personally been averaging about two trades per session since the room opened in January. With that being said, last week I only entered two trades the entire week.  Some of you are probably thinking to yourself, "I don't get it? How could this be such a magical week of trading when you only took two trades?" Well the answer is this, on those two trades I had a 100% winning percentage and was able to grow the Live Room account by 10%. And before you ask, yes these two trades did occur on our normal day trading timeframes (5min & 8 Range). However, that's not why I'm so excited. Although I love making money, as I suspect all of us do, I get more excited off of proper trade execution more so than sticking money in my pocket.  This may sound odd but try thinking of it this way. In the long run (assuming you have a sound strategy with a positive expectancy) proper trade execution will lead to more profits than poor trade execution and getting lucky will.  Since this is the case, I feel that the better I can execute trades by following the rules, the more potential profit I set myself up for in the long run and both of these trades were executed perfectly. Stops were placed at a point where the market would test them but not break them, 1st targets were set at a level that the market should go to before running into trouble, and in the case of our GBPJPY trade, second targets which were over 200pips away were predicted exactly correct using our higher timeframe analysis.  

Although I'm excited for these trades for personal reasons, I'm even more excited at the timing of them. Last week a group of 250 traders joined my room (many) for the first time after completing Jason Stapleton's Ratio Master's series.  There were many experienced trades in this group, but the majority of the new comers were just starting their trading journeys.  Although the first day started off as a non trading day, they were able to see some real time action the next day which had a very power psychological impact on many of them. I entered a trade early on in the session and boy it was a fighter.  The market started to reverse soon after our entry causing the new trades to praise my prediction and analysis skills.  But as most trades go (and experienced traders no this) the market then proceeded to reverse and shoot its way up towards our stops. After getting about five or so pips away from my stop loss, the market leveled out and basically sat there for an hour or so. Again the experienced traders in the room weren't phased at all as we've seen this day in and day out. However, many of the newbie's began to get nervous and ask questions like "would it be better just to cut our losses and exit the trade?" or "do you think about moving your stops since the market got so close to it." Although taking these actions wouldn't be good, for a new trader to ask these questions is very good. After all how do we find out an answer if we don't ask a question.  Long story short, the market began to rally and capture us some profits, leading me to get pumped! Again, I wasn't pumped because of the profits made I was pumped because I knew that for many traders in the room, the memories of this trade would be engrained in their minds. For a new trader there is nothing better than sitting through a trade where the market just begs you to make a mistake, yet you sit tight and it ends up paying off. Ladies and gentlemen, that is what trading is all about. 

So 2 trades, 2 winners, 10%  growth in the account. Why don't I take time to brag about this some more?  Honestly that number means nothing right now. Just as a trade isn't a winner until the targets are actually hit. To me being up a certain percentage for a month doesn't mean anything until I close out the month with that percentage gain.  Just as last week was great, this week can easily be a disaster. I can easily hop on a losing streak and bring the account right back down to break even. I hope this doesn't happen, but it is a possibility and that's why that number means nothing at this point in time. 
 
Yesterday was a record day in the room and yes the picture above is exactly how I felt.  Okay, well maybe I didn't strike that exact pose but I was pretty excited.  Because of the impulse movement from various news releases and the ECB Conference it was also a rare non trading day in the live room. So you're probably asking yourself this question. If you didn't take any trades then how was it a record day? Well it was a record day because I got to play host from a group of 250 new guests. In total we had about 300 traders in the room which is the most by far since we offered the free two week trial when the room first opened.  With no offense to my current members who i love to death, it was pretty cool to have that many new faces. Many of the current members have grown to the point where they understand my style very well which leads to less questions. On the plus said allows for us to do some pretty in depth analysis, but at the same time it was pretty cool to have some of the newbie questions again, especially on a day that would have normally been slow without them.  

I love seeing new members in the room and hearing those types of questions because it reminds me of where I came from.  A may give off the impression that I've been trading forever but it wasn't too long ago that I was in the same situation watching and listening to Jason Stapleton as he discussed trades. It's an honor to be in this position now and I just hope that I can help change a few lives the way that mine was trades. S