These five changes will make you profitable within three Months

Stock trading is one of the toughest professions for making money. Achieving profitability in trading often feels like an uphill struggle, but it doesn't have to be that way. The path to becoming a successful trader is fraught with challenges, and many traders give up before reaching profitability. The reasons for this are straightforward, and just a few simple changes, which I’ve shared in this post, can lead to the life-changing money you’ve been dreaming of.

Trading revolves around personal discipline, and without dedicating effort to cultivate it, you will never achieve consistency and profitability. When you embark on your trading journey, you're filled with excitement. You've just funded an account, dreaming of transforming it into life-changing money. You're working hard, reviewing charts, following many on X, observing their setups, and making trades. While you might initially hit some jackpots, there comes a time when you start losing, eventually losing all your gains and even your initial funds. This is where most people become discouraged and abandon trading.

While a disciplined approach might seem cliché, my perspective is somewhat different. In my experience, being disciplined involves eliminating NOISE and avoiding WASTE.

NOISE - This refers to the influx of information from news channels and social media. It can relate to a specific stock or the overall market, such as tariffs, chip bans, rate cuts, and so on. If you are a technical trader, the only thing you need to focus on is charts. Charts determine your risk-reward and that's all that matters. As long as you regard charts and price action as the sole source of truth, everything else is unnecessary. You cannot control when news will break or its impact, but you can control your decision to enter and exit trades based on your charts.

WASTE - This refers to the losses you incur when you take multiple trades out of fear of missing out or due to greed, straying from your strategy. You might see a post or a trade alert and jump in, or notice market movement and enter with zero days to expiration trying to achieve triple-digit gains. Alternatively, you might take 4-5 trades from various Discord groups without fully understanding them. Lottos, Yolos, etc., are what I consider Waste or Leakage in your portfolio.

Once you control the above two, you turn profitable. Below are five key changes you need to make to achieve your goals and cut the noise and waste.

Strategy Hopping - Stop It

One big mistake traders often make is jumping from one strategy to another all the time. This usually happens because they're chasing quick profits. Trying out new strategies can be tempting, but it often just leads to confusion and mixed results.

Instead, focus on one solid strategy. You can learn a strategy pretty fast, but seeing real results means sticking with it for a few months. No strategy is perfect, but once you get the hang of one, it'll start to feel natural. Even if you only win half the time, you can still make money.

Having a mentor or an experienced trader to guide you can be really helpful if you're willing to put in the time. Instead of copying other traders to make quick cash, focus on understanding the strategy and doing your own back testing. This will boost your confidence and help you avoid chasing too many trades, cutting down on mistakes (WASTE).

Use Stop Losses

Risk Management is everything and hence the use of Stop Loss. Stop Loss is important to reduce NOISE and WASTE. If you are following a single strategy, You have a defined entry point, profit target and a stop loss. Now you are trading technically, and if your trade has gone south and dropped below your stop loss due to a news, invalidating your setup, then there is no point to stay in that trade. You cannot afford to turn a technical trade to a hope trade and pray for it to come back, specifically with options. Its a WASTE.

When I take a trade, my entry points allows me to have at least 1:2 risk reward and at times more than that. With that even if I win 50% of the time, I am profitable. As long as I don't waste money in trades outside my strategy chasing or just copying others.

Long Dated Options or Stocks

Right now, 60-70% of options trading is all about those 0 DTE options. Sure, they can bring in crazy gains of 3 to 4 digits, but that's pretty rare. Unless you're super experienced and trading full-time, you're probably going to end up losing money. It's a risk you can skip, especially if you're new to this or have a regular 9-5 job.

For newbies and those juggling a full-time job, trading with long-term options or stocks can be a game-changer. By choosing long-term options or stocks/leveraged ETFs, you dodge the wild swings of intraday trading and focus on the bigger picture. Markets run on algorithms that chase liquidity across different timeframes. The shorter the timeframe, like 1 or 5 minutes, the faster the price moves and the quicker you have to make decisions. Going for long-term options or stocks means you’re looking at trades on higher timeframe charts like 1 hour or 4 hours, giving you more time to make smart moves.

Say you jump into a stock trade at $50 with a stop loss at $45, and some news briefly pushes the price below $45 without the hourly candle closing below it. The stock might bounce back to $50. This could just be an algorithmic trick to grab liquidity, and the price might go up as you expected. By being patient, you make sure your support level stays intact, avoiding a stop-loss hit.

On the flip side, if you're trading 0 DTE with a 1-minute or 5-minute chart in the same situation, you have way less time to react, and your 0 DTE option might tank by 80%. Even if the price turns around, you're racing against the clock as the option's value drops fast, possibly hitting zero by the end of the day. That's just a waste.

You build your portfolio by riding the compounding wave of solid, long-term trades, not from those 0 DTEs.

Journal

Keeping a trading journal is super important for building discipline. Just like back testing out your strategy gives you a confidence boost, journaling helps you stay consistent. A journal lets you track your decisions, emotions, and results, giving you a better understanding of your trading habits. Writing down your trades helps you spot patterns and figure out where you can get better. It helps you fine-tune your strategy based on what you’ve learned, cutting out the unnecessary Waste.

To make your journal effective, be sure to include these details:

• Trade Setup - Did the trade met your Strategy requirements ?

• Emotions felt: Were you taking a informed decision based on your strategy or was it a FOMO?

• Results: If failed, what went wrong?

  
  

Make Trading Boring - No More Than Two Trades at a Time

Cutting back on the number of trades you make can really improve your trading journey. Focusing on just one or two trades at a time helps keep stress levels down and boosts your decision-making skills. This way, you can dive deep into each trade, leading to smarter choices and more profits.

Markets can move fast, and juggling too many trades at once might make you lose track of your strategy or miss out on price changes across the board.

By sticking to one or two trades, you can stay more focused, and your profits can grow based on the size of each trade.

For instance, instead of spreading $10,000 across five $2,000 trades, it's smarter to go for two $5,000 trades. With a 50% win rate and a 1:2 risk-reward setup, you'll stay profitable compared to being all over the place with five different trades. It's all about cutting down WASTE

Embrace these Changes for Better Trading

The journey to profitability in stock trading requires a disciplined approach and effective strategies. By avoiding strategy hopping, utilizing stop losses, investing in long-dated options or stocks, keeping a trading journal, and limiting your trades, you can significantly enhance your trading performance. Test it to believe it.

Remember, consistency and discipline are keys to achieving your trading goals. Embrace these five strategies, and you may start seeing improvements within a month. With patience and dedication, your trading success could be just around the corner. You can join our team to learn and practice this approach.