the business of trading
Romania
Joined December 2010
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zander retweeted
Anticipating the move is killing your trading.
Market in balance?
→ Trade the extremes of the range.
Market breaking out?
→ Wait for the pullback and join the trend.
can't find a entry point? don't trade, not everyday is going to be optimal for trading
You don't need to predict where price is going.
STOP trying to be right about the future.
React to what price is doing RIGHT NOW.
zander retweeted
Underrated life advice: Keep proof that good things happen to you. Old photos. Kind messages. Positive feedback. Notes from great days. Whatever. Store them in a single place. Call it a Rainy Day Folder. Pop it open on a bad day and watch your mood turn. It's a free reset button.
zander retweeted
II'm 24 years old and I've made over $2M trading in the last 6 months.
That's around $330k/month
But I don't want this post to be about the money
I want to talk about the 5 things that actually got me here, because these are the things nobody really talks about:
1. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel
This was probably one of my biggest mistakes when I first started trading
I thought I needed to find some hidden strategy nobody knew about
I was combining indicators, changing strategies, adding more things to my charts and constantly trying to find some sort of "secret" edge
You don't need to do that
There are traders who have already been successful for years
Study them.
Learn what they do.
Understand WHY they do it.
Then take the pieces that make sense and mold them around yourself
The strategy I trade today is honestly pretty simple
Trading doesn't need to be complicated to work
A lot of the time, adding more information just gives you more ways to second guess yourself.
2. Your habits will make or break you
You have to be extremely careful with the habits you build as a trader
-If you constantly average down...
-If you constantly add to losers...
-If you constantly move your stop...
-If you constantly break your own rules...
Eventually that becomes NORMAL to you
One mistake isn't the problem...
The problem is making the same mistake over and over until it becomes part of the way you trade
You want to catch those mistakes early
Journal them
Write them down
Figure out WHY you keep doing them
Then create rules that make it harder for you to repeat them
You can know everything about technical analysis and still lose money if you can't control yourself
3. Stop trying to do everything alone
This was another huge mistake I made
When I started trading, I basically tried figuring everything out myself
You don't get extra points for struggling alone
There are traders who have already made the mistakes you're about to make:
-Learn from them
-Join communities
-Ask questions
-Talk to people who have more experience than you
-Study successful traders and take pieces from each of them
BUT
Don't try to become a clone of somebody else
Take what you learn and make it work for YOUR personality
That's ultimately what I did
4. You're going to have to sacrifice something
Everybody wants the results....
Not everybody wants the process that comes before the results
Trading takes time, You need:
-Time to study
-Time to look at charts
-Time to backtest
-Time to journal
-Time to review your mistakes
-Time to understand yourself
You're probably not going to become consistent by staring at charts for 30 minutes whenever you have some free time
I spent countless hours doing this
& even now, I'm still learning...
You don't just "figure out trading" one day and you're done
You're constantly refining your strategy, your execution, your risk management and yourself
5. You have to believe you can actually do it
This one might sound corny, but I genuinely believe it's one of the biggest reasons I've gotten this far...
If every time something goes wrong you immediately tell yourself:
"I'm not good enough."
"I can't do this."
"I'm never going to become profitable."
You're making an already difficult process even harder
You need confidence!
Not the type of confidence where you think every trade you take is going to work
The type where you know a loss isn't going to stop you from improving
You're going to take losses
You're going to make mistakes
You're going to have periods where nothing seems to work
But if you keep learning, keep reviewing, keep fixing your mistakes and keep showing up, you give yourself the opportunity to become better
The biggest realization I've had throughout my entire trading journey is this:
Trading didn't become easier when I learned more things
It became easier when I stopped overcomplicating everything and started mastering the simple things.
zander retweeted
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zander retweeted
neuroplasticity works faster under high emotional intensity. if you can resist a craving when it's at its peak, you get a bigger rewiring effect. this is why the hardest moments matter most, they're not setbacks, they're high-voltage opportunities to change.
zander retweeted
The smartest people I know have strong opinions weakly held and change them when new information arises
The dumbest people I know keep their opinions the same just so they can remain consistent
Time changes too fast try remain consistent, better to sail the waves to wherever they are taking you!
zander retweeted
Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug.
It’s the dopamine you get from reading. From planning. From learning. But never doing.
Information gathering as sport. Jammed into neat little dopamine feedback loops that convince you that you're doing something productive and valuable.
You're just one piece of information away from the big breakthrough. You'll start when your business plan is perfected. You'll meet your partner when you've scrolled through another round of profiles. You'll get that dream job when you have one more degree in hand.
Your entire life will change when you realize the world isn't run by a bunch of geniuses. The world is being run by a bunch of normal people with abnormal bias for action.
The answer you seek is hidden in the action you avoid.
Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug.
Get your dopamine from action.
zander retweeted
Video coming tomorrow: "One of the things you must do if you want to do this. It's not for everybody. It's not spoken about enough. Your emotional construct is a very important part of how you survive this game. It looks lucrative, it appears exciting, but it's not. It's a grind. It's behavioral. It is knowing yourself. It is getting into the weeds of understanding your emotional construct. That's the most important part of being a bloody good trader." Andrew Perry (time stamp 21:50)
zander retweeted
The worst mistakes in life are made when you try to do fast what’s meant to be done slow. Real, durable things take a long time to build. Careers. Businesses. Relationships. Health. No hacks or shortcuts. The long way is the right way.
zander retweeted
Anyone with a functioning brain can trade stocks successfully—so then, why do few succeed on a big level?
Because few are willing to admit one simple truth: you suck!
Your head is full—sucky opinions, sucky assumptions, and “logic” that feels right but produces the wrong results.
As long as your cup is full, there’s no room for anything that actually works.
Empty it!!!
Strip away the ego. Discard everything you think you know.
Then find someone who’s already done it—at a high level—and shut up long enough to learn.
And finally, the hardest part: commit.
Commit to a strategy. Commit to your coach. Commit to the process. Commit to the belief that you can do it.
No dabbling. No second-guessing. No halfway effort.
Because success in this game doesn’t come from intelligence—it comes from discipline, humility, and coachability.
And most people fail because they lack all three.
You don't know shit! If you did, you would already be worth tens of millions of dollars. But I'm here to tell you that you CAN do it. Because I did. Anyone who tells you can't, never did it themselves. That's the final peace of the puzzle. Stop listening to losers and self proclaimed gurus. If they are so smart and they know how to teach you. Why haven't they done it for themselves. Do you really think someone who hasn't made 100 million dollars can teach you how to do it? If you do, then, that's why you'll never achieve it.
Stop overcomplicating trading!
-Buy the breakouts.
-Cut your losses short.
-Get aggressive when trades are working.
-Cut back when they are not.
Is that so fu&^ing hard?
If it is, your probkem is in your head... read my mindset book.
a.co/d/0ieuMg4l
zander retweeted
I TRADE CHARTS, NOT VIEWS
I can’t believe that the market is ripping to ATH so quickly. I can’t believe that oil is back to $80. Both don’t make sense to me.
How much have I lost short the market? $0
How much have I lost long oil? $0
It’s because I’m not trading my views. I know my views are total shit and useless. I trade hyper-specific chart patterns that have proven statistical edge. If my view aligns with it, that might help me size it. But never is a view ever sufficient for me to put risk on without the technicals backing it up.
zander retweeted
Josh Brown on dealing with other people's opinions:
"Well, they can kiss my a**. Everyone gets things wrong. You need to care enough to be able to put your ideas out there."
zander retweeted
Your entire life will change when you realize it’s never too late. You can wake up and choose to see things differently. You can completely reinvent your life. Too late is an internal fantasy, not an external reality. Every time you think it’s too late, it’s probably still early.
zander retweeted
Linda Bradford Raschke has been consistently profitable for decades. That alone should make you stop and pay attention to everything she says. Here are the five lessons from her latest interview with Jason Shapiro that hit hardest:
1. Most of your profits will come from a small number of trades - and that's completely fine.
Linda is very clear about this. Regardless of whether you're a day trader, swing trader or long-term trend follower, roughly 20% of your trades will account for 80% of your profitability. The implication is enormous - stop treating every session like it has to deliver. Your job is to stay consistent, protect capital, and be positioned correctly when the real opportunity shows up. The big moves in cocoa she referenced - ten solid weeks of downtrend - don't come around every week. When they do, you need to still be in the game;
2. Never make public predictions about market direction. Not even to yourself.
This one caught me off guard. Linda told Jason that when he asked her before the interview to share her market outlook, she refused - not to protect anyone else, but to protect herself. Once you verbalize a directional bias, it embeds itself in your subconscious and quietly destroys your flexibility. The market is a fluid, dynamic environment that demands constant adaptation. Locking yourself into a narrative - publicly or privately - is one of the most expensive things a trader can do. Stay fluid. Let the data speak.
3. Technical analysis is a risk management tool, not a prediction tool.
This reframe is critical. Linda argues that the primary value of technical analysis isn't telling you where the market is going, but telling you where it shouldn't go if your thesis is correct. Support and resistance define your risk. Everything else is just noise management. The traders who use charts to project targets and call directions are misusing the tool entirely. The ones who use it to define the conditions under which they're wrong - and act accordingly - are the ones who last.
4. Wear one watch.
One of the most memorable lines in the entire interview. If you're wearing two watches, you'll never know what time it is. Linda applies this directly to information consumption - five subscriptions, ten different voices, constant FinTwit noise. All of it creates confusion and erodes the one thing that actually makes you better: your own judgment. Do your own work. Build your own framework. When you get to a key level, you need to be able to trust your own read of what's happening - and you can only do that if you've done the homework yourself.
5. You need two things in any performance-oriented discipline: humor and patience.
Linda heard this from an Olympic equestrian coach in her 80s and immediately applied it to trading - and she's right. Humor keeps you loose and relaxed, which is exactly the mental state where your best decisions get made. The traders who are white-knuckling every session, anxious and desperate, are the ones who miss the obvious setups staring them in the face. And patience - everyone grossly underestimates how long this actually takes. Linda said she's been working on dressage for 40 years and still feels like an amateur. Trading is no different. The timeline is longer than you think, the immersion required is deeper than you think, and the ones who make it are the ones who accepted that reality early enough to stay in the game.
Go watch the full interview. Then watch it again.
@LindaRaschke @Crowded_Mkt_Rpt
youtube.com/watch?v=czdJYn9m…
zander retweeted
The interview with @LindaRaschke is now live! Sincere thanks to Linda for sharing her knowledge on trading & life. Easily a must watch for all traders.
youtu.be/czdJYn9mCEg
zander retweeted
Risk management is the most underrated trading skill.
You can win 5-10-20 trades in a row,
but lose everything with 1...
zander retweeted
The market is the only place on earth where effort does not guarantee reward.
You can wake up early.
Backtest for months.
Refine entries.
Journal daily.
And still lose.
Not because you’re wrong.
But because randomness doesn’t negotiate with preparation.
This is what breaks people.
They expect fairness.
But markets are not moral systems.
They are probabilistic systems.
When you finally accept that,
something shifts.
You stop asking, “Why me?”
And start asking, “Did I execute correctly?”
That question is power.
zander retweeted
Missing the move isn’t the problem.
Letting frustration dictate your next #trade is.
Most traders don’t blow accounts because of one setup they didn’t take.
They blow them because they chased, forced, or tilted right after.
Risk management starts with emotional management.
zander retweeted
I talked to 10+ full-time traders making $200k+ per year
asked them all the same question: "what's the biggest lie in trading?"
31 of them gave the same answer
it's the opposite of what every guru teaches
here's what they said:
THE QUESTION:
"what's one thing every beginner believes that's completely wrong?"
THE ANSWER (from 31 of 34):
"that you need to predict where price is going"
I thought they were fucking with me
"isn't that literally what trading is?"
TRADER 1 ($340k/year):
"I have no idea where price is going. ever. I react to what happens. prediction is for weather men and psychics."
TRADER 2 ($780k/year):
"my entire system is built on NOT knowing. I enter. if it works, I stay. if it doesn't, I leave. there's no prediction involved."
TRADER 3 ($210k/year):
"prediction is ego. reaction is money. I stopped trying to be right about direction 6 years ago. that's when I became profitable."
I pushed back:
"but you're entering trades. you must think price will go somewhere."
TRADER 4 ($420k/year):
"I think price MIGHT go somewhere. big difference. my edge isn't prediction accuracy. my edge is what I do when I'm wrong."
"explain that"
"when retail traders are wrong, they hope. when I'm wrong, I'm out instantly. when retail traders are right, they take profit. when I'm right, I add size."
"same entries as everyone else. opposite management."
THE FRAMEWORK:
these traders operate on what they called REACTIVE TRADING:
PREDICTIVE TRADING (what you do):
- analyze → predict → enter → hope → exit
REACTIVE TRADING (what they do):
- enter → observe → react → adjust → extract
"we're not fortune tellers. we're response specialists."
TRADER 5 ($290k/year):
"I enter trades expecting to be wrong. sounds insane but it removes all the pressure. if I expect to lose, I cut fast. if I happen to win, it's a bonus I maximize."
TRADER 6 ($510k/year):
"prediction creates attachment. I predicted UP so I NEED it to go up. now I'm holding a loser hoping. reaction creates detachment. I don't care which way. I just respond."
THE STATS:
asked them to estimate how often their "predictions" are right:
- average answer: 48-52%
- basically a coin flip
"so you're profitable with coin flip accuracy?"
"bro some of the best traders I know are right 42% of the time. it literally doesn't matter."
THE REFRAME:
TRADER 7 ($630k/year):
"stop asking 'where is price going.' start asking 'what will I do if price does X.'"
"the first question has no answer. the second question is entirely in your control."
"I have plans for every scenario. price up? plan. price down? plan. price sideways? plan. I don't need to predict because I've already decided my response."
HOW TO SWITCH:
step 1: delete the word "predict" from your vocabulary
step 2: before every trade, write: "if wrong, I will ___"
step 3: before every trade, write: "if right, I will ___"
step 4: execute those plans regardless of what you "think"
"thinking is for analysts. doing is for traders."
THE TRUTH:
the gurus sell prediction
"learn to read the market"
"spot reversals before they happen"
"know where price is going"
because prediction sounds VALUABLE
reaction sounds BORING
but boring makes money
every profitable trader I interviewed:
- doesn't try to predict
- expects to be wrong often
- has bulletproof reactions ready
- doesn't give a fuck about accuracy
every struggling trader:
- obsesses over prediction
- needs to be right
- has no plan for being wrong
- tracks win rate like it matters
stop predicting
start reacting
Dm me "EDGE" if you want access to my private community where I break down reactive trading systems.
zander retweeted
I will share some Trading Advice that I think many beginners will find helpful. I did this when I started, and I'm grateful I did.
1) Trading in silence is not your friend. You need to setup some sort of notes // discord channel // notion etc.. where you can write (in REAL TIME) your thoughts as the market moves.
Write your trades in real time, why you expect what you expect, your stop loss, why your SL is there, your profit target etc. After the trade ends you review it.
2) You need to develop a Playbook. A pretty consistent batch of setups that you consistently use. Some examples are: Morning gap & Flush or Reversal Strategy off a higher low after reclaiming overnight lows or whatever your strategy is. It needs to be repeatable. This eliminates you from taking random trades and helps you realize quicker what works and what doesn't. What you're good at and what you're not.
3) Trade as if someone is watching you. Whether that is your mentor or other people etc. You need to have a sense of responsibility and self-awareness, this will eliminate many stupid decisions you may make.
4) You need to take base hits. Don't overtrade, most aren't qualified to keep on going.
There are 2 types of traders.
Trader A: Overtrades // Hyper Scalper etc
+700, -300, +200, +600, -1200 = Zero
Trader A can have huge days, but it goes BOTH ways. Lots of red days cancel out many green ones. They feel like they worked for nothing. They know they can do it, but no results to show for it.
Trader B: Couple Trades, knows what he's looking for and they're done.
+250, +300, +150, +300, +200 = $1,200
Trader B can have outlier days like +1K, but won't have huge days, which also goes both in ways. They find peace in knowing they can wake up tomorrow, find a couple of trades and leave with some profit. It won't be huge, but remember, it doesn't matter now because trading is SCALABLE. If you can do it on $400, most likely can do it on $4,000 etc (especially on Futures with Prop Firms!) Trader B doesn't have a lot of exposure to the market like Trader A, thus his data is more likely to be uniform and consistent vs Trader A.
5) You need to not miss a day. If you miss a day then go back in replay mode on 10-15x speed and try to trade it. If you are a specific trader like reversals, then replay the part where that happens and see if what you look for in a trade happens or not. If not, jot down what happens for future reference. Every day is a different opportunity with different players, it is an invaluable experience. Lots of people do not go back and review trades or review missed trades, this is one of the few ways to gain experience under your belt, and that is not teachable. This is one of the only ways to train your EYES.
6) You need to always be aware of what type of market this is. Are we in a range? Are we trending up? Are we trending down? Set clear rules for each type of day so you don't find yourself trying to buy every dip down, shorting every pop in a trend day up, or getting destroyed in Chop when all you can be doing is trading the edges.
7) Lots of people say they exit "Early", and I will argue otherwise. It's not about exiting "Early" or "Late", it's about knowing WHEN to exit. Far too many traders prioritize Entries, but not EXITS. The reason for that is understandable, because you can control your Stop Loss, but can't control where the market will go.
Just like you find an entry criteria, you need to find an exit one. This will enable you to stay in trends longer when you are right. There is NO PERFECT Trade, you will NEVER consistently exit at the top and buy the bottom, but you can improve from where you do right now. Just like you review your entries and Stop Losses, you MUST review your exits. Why did you exit there? What did you think the market was showing you? This will come from Step 1. As you do this in real-time, you will quickly come to realize where and how you think wrong.
The market is pretty consistent, you will come to the quick realization to how you're wrong, and that the same setups form pretty consistently, you just need to know what to look for.
8) Do not do anything you will regret at the end of the day. You must be well aware of the consequences before upping your size 10x. If a little voice inside you says don't... then don't. It knows better.
There is more, but for another time. This is getting a bit long. This is just from my personal experience from the years I've had. Remember to always be alive in the game, this is how you get "lucky."
Be Well.