Trading & Risk 101
Trading is simple but not easy, please do it safely and don't rush, it takes a lot of practice & stoicism, and winning and losing cycles are expected! 5 quick tips to consider!
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- Impatience: FOMO - Fear of missing out, never rush to live money trade! Get consistent success sim trading for 1 to 3 months then decide.
- Trade Capital: Get funded to day trade futures with a trading capital provider, no need to use your funds learning to trade.
- Micro Futures: Start with the smallest futures instruments such as Micro lots 1 to 3 lots to scale out
- Risk: Always use the smallest risk position sizing possible for example 1% or less of trade capital per trade
- Trade a plan: Don't chase the market or over-trade, focus on a systematic approach get consistent, trade the plan & keep stats.
- Learn & Trade risk-free on the sim, demo account in NinjaTrader for free forever - AFT has no time limit, when you are ready and have proven to yourself that you can be successful at your own pace, you can consider live trading futures with AFT and NinjaTrader at your discretion.
- Winning & Losing Cycles. You need to experience at least 1 to 3 months to see the typical cycles of the market and news cycles weeks of the months. You might start on a winning cycle on sim and suffer from recency bias, thinking it is always easy to trade and rush to go live only to get hit by a losing cycle in live money trading and then pull the plug and freak out then you will miss the next winning cycle taking all the losers and missing all the winners the double whammy of trading!
- There is no short cut, it takes time, get a routine, practice and wait until you are consistent month to month on the sim at your discretion and then consider live money, or if you are certain you have the ability at the start, at the very least get funded to trade with a 3rd party trading capital so they take the risk...! You may well catch a longer-term easy phase of trading from the get-go, and make good but eventually, it will happen that you will get a drawdown and a string of losses...losing days and even weeks may occur. Still, if you the trader are consistent over the long term month to month you could succeed, time will be the judge.
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