---
title: 'Day Trading: How to Start from Zero (Beginner''s Guide)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bqo2XGDZtVU'
video_id: 'Bqo2XGDZtVU'
date: 2026-07-20
duration_sec: 3469
channel: 'Ross Cameron - Warrior Trading'
---

# Day Trading: How to Start from Zero (Beginner's Guide)

> Source: [Day Trading: How to Start from Zero (Beginner's Guide)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bqo2XGDZtVU)

## Summary

Ross from Warrior Trading outlines a comprehensive seven-step plan for beginner traders to start from zero and achieve consistency. He explains the five phases of the trading learning curve, emphasizing that most beginners lose money due to lack of strategy and discipline. The guide covers adopting a proven strategy, sim trading, analyzing metrics, setting up a trading station, and the critical role of discipline.

### Key Points

- **Two Main Causes of Failure** [00:54] — The two primary reasons traders fail are: 1) trading without a strategy (gambling), and 2) having a strategy but lacking the discipline to follow it.
- **Five Phases of Trading** [01:09] — Phase 1: Beginners luck followed by reality (drawdown). Phase 2: Break-even trader (treading water). Phase 3: Pulling away (slowly profitable). Phase 4: First real drawdown after success. Phase 5: Stair-stepping up to consistency.
- **Education Phase** [07:42] — Learn terminology, volatility, supply and demand, fundamental analysis (news), technical analysis (candlestick charts), and stock selection. Use free resources like YouTube and platform documentation.
- **Adopt a Proven Strategy** [12:42] — Don't reinvent the wheel; adopt a strategy that is proven profitable by someone else. Ross shares his small account strategy PDF, which includes stock selection, entry, and exit rules.
- **Sim Trade and Analyze Metrics** [15:51] — Practice the strategy in a simulator to test aptitude and skills. Track metrics using software like Trader View or Excel. Analyze data to identify strengths and weaknesses, then make improvements.
- **Right Tools for Trading** [23:26] — Essential tools: simulator with level 2 data, charts, scanners, news feed, and research tools. Scanners require payment due to market data costs, but news and research can be free.
- **Setting Up the Perfect Trading Station** [30:36] — Minimum setup: laptop plus two external monitors. Use one monitor for sim/execution, one for watchlists, and one for scanners. Ross prefers a laptop for mobility and uses USB monitors when traveling.
- **Discipline is Key** [38:46] — Discipline means following the rules, such as setting a max loss (e.g., daily goal) and walking away after giving back half of profits. Emotional control is crucial; trading is a marathon, not a sprint.
- **Recommended Books** [52:34] — Books: 'The Happiness Advantage' by Shawn Achor (attitude), 'Thinking in Bets' by Annie Duke (decision-making), 'Quit' by Annie Duke (knowing when to walk away), 'How to Day Trade' by Ross Cameron (his book), and 'Trade Mindfully' by Gary Dayton (emotional management).

### Conclusion

Success in trading requires time, dedication, and incremental progress. By understanding the phases, adopting a strategy, sim trading, analyzing metrics, using the right tools, and maintaining discipline, beginners can build a foundation for long-term consistency and eventually scale their strategy.

## Transcript

in today's episode I'm going to teach you how I would begin trading if I were is actually a question that a lot of Traders ask me they'll say Ross if you're starting over as a beginner how would you ensure that you made your way
to trading with consistency and confidence without blowing up your account we know the majority of Traders lose money so is the N9 out of 10 traders who lose is it is it just the luck of the draw that some succeed and
others lose or is it that the 10% who succeed are doing some specific things differently from the rest I'm in a very unique position here as the head of warrior trading and by putting all this content here on YouTube where I'm able
to see the comments from traders who are both very successful and from those who struggle in fact I've been able to aggregate all of what I think are the aggregate all of what I think are the causes of failure down to two very
specific reasons that people will lose money in today's episode I'm going to share those reasons with you and I'm also going to share the seven steps that I would take if I were starting over today okay so the first step is
understanding The Phases so Step One is phases I want to understand the phases of learning how to trade most beginner Traders go through a learning curve that looks a lot like this there's a period of what I would call a little bit of
beginners luck where they make a little bit of money maybe you put $1,000 in the account and you end up going up to 1,500 or something like that but then inevitably there's reality reality sets in and you end up drawing the account
to 200 bucks who knows maybe you even go negative and you have to add more money into the account to keep it above zero so you keep adding money and adding money whatever the case is this is sort of that early phase one and this is
where the market is extremely humbling you're going to learn all the things that you don't know about trading you don't know how to use level two you charts you don't know how to choose the strong stocks to trade you don't know
the market makers it's this that and the other thing and you feel overwhelmed and for some people this is where they bow out they say you know what this is not for me I'm out of here so if we did a a graph here we'll do it in a different
graph here we'll do it in a different color this is 100% of traders who begin on day one and now we're going to start tracking the drop off so probably right in here you've already lost 20 % of all the possible Traders they've given up
is I'm just speculating but this is where people are just giving up they're for this period of time phase one I'm done I'm out of here so they don't ever done I'm out of here so they don't ever move forward to phase two phase two is a
critical and very interesting period where you are a break even Trader being a break even Trader is highly underrated now I understand you're thinking I didn't spend all this time time studying
the markets and learning to trade just to be Break Even but break even means trying to learn how to swim what's the first step it's keeping your head above water so if you can tread water if you can hold your own that is a really big
foundation because what it shows is that you're able to make money but what's most likely happening is every few weeks maybe even once a week you're giving have experienced that you have three four nice days and you give it all back
in one bad day three four nice days and you give it all back in one day that's in that phase but you're slightly negative you're losing a little bit more still losing you're proving during this period that you actually do know how to
make money because on the days you're green obviously something is working so this is phase two it's where I would say you're a break even Trader phase three is when you begin to pull away you start essentially having having longer
stretches of green days before these red days and your your p&l just starts to slowly move higher it's not anything crazy but it's moving higher then you crazy but it's moving higher then you have what I would call phase four P4 and
that is your first real draw down after having some success you have a little lose a little bit of money so let's say you start with $1,000 you drop down to 200 you made your way back up to, 1500 and then you drop back down to 1,000 and
this is the point again where through this are you'll have more people that drop out maybe now you're down to 50% of Traders maybe even less who knows right way just through this period of time because it's taking time and you're not
seeing immediate results the thing that's frustrating about trading is that that's frustrating about trading is that the results come over time they don't come right away you have to spend time paying your does gaining educated
intuition learning the fundamentals of how the market works the basic knowledge so if you don't understand the phases you're much more likely to give up early because all you see is well I'm just losing and you have nothing to picture
where this could go if it gets better you're probably just visualizing it's just going to keep getting worse but recovering from your first draw down so we have our first draw down here and recovering from that first draw down is
recovering from that first draw down is a massive important moment because once you've recovered from that first draw down you now are beginning to to do what I would call stair stepping up you have some pullbacks and you'll keep moving
higher and you're now on your way to long-term consistency you didn't know at this point right here that that was your Turning Point you'll only know that in hindsight once you've kind of had this push higher you've pulled back and then
you've recovered so this is the area where I'm really interested in helping you guys because a lot of you are still in P1 if you've even started trading you maybe have had a little beginner's luck or that luck is running out and
you're right here I want to help you go to the next phase so if it's from P1 to P2 or P2 to P3 I want to help you make that transition so the first step of learning how to trade is understanding and recognizing these five phases P1
through P5 the five phases because by understanding The Phases you can better identify with where you're at in your current journey and once you understand where you're at you have some kind context of where you're going this is
Traders when they jump into the market and they just start losing money they get frustrated they get deflated and they give up and it's not necessarily lose enough where they're like this isn't worth my time so 6 eight weeks you
know two months three months later they're like I'm done I'm giving up and you know what some of those Traders probably had the potential to become very successful if they had had the vision of understanding what this
learning curve actually looks like there's so many people out there that say you can learn how to trade in 14 days do this follow this boom boom you're done and it's not like that so I really encourage you to think of trading
as a marathon not a Sprint so you're going to have periods in this Marathon going to have periods where you start to feel like you're really gaining momentum tailwind and all you have to do right now is maintain discipline and hold your
course okay so step one is understanding the phases of trading step two is understanding just the general concept of how trading Works uh so this is what
I would call um the education phase so this is where you're gaining education now I actually um just this week I went up to Vermont to visit an old friend I haven't seen him since we couldn't remember if it was 2007 or 2008 so 15
friend he was my best friend friend when we were growing up he lives in Vermont cuz he wanted to see his old neighborhood so I drove up uh to visit with him and as we were sitting talking he was asking me about the trading stuff
and I thought man I wish I was recording this right now cuz the questions that he was asking and the conversation it was perfect for a beginner aspiring Trader and so what I want to do is I want to kind of give you the chance to listen in
on that conversation and so he was asking me questions like um like Ross high level what is it that you do like I don't even really understand it and so I don't even really understand it and so I explain that as an active Trader what I
am essentially doing each day is I'm looking for stocks that have volatility quickly that have the potential to move quickly and I explained to him that typically you know why would a stock go up 30% or 50% in one day it's because it
has breaking news so what active Traders are doing is we're trading volatility in the market and it's typically associated with these breaking news catalysts now during really hot markets we'll find that we'll get heightened volatility
even when the Catalyst isn't clear like what we saw during GameStop and with all the meme stocks some stocks start just going up because Traders are jumping on it and that in a sense becomes its own Catalyst which is fine but for my
strategy I focus on trading stocks that are within a very set price range that have a news Catalyst that have a float and all of this was the result of an extensive amount of well I guess you could say just trial and error in the
going to be pinned at the top of the comments and link to the description and it's a link where you can download my strategy it's my small account strategy PDF and that's going to outline for you my stock selection process where I'm
getting in where I'm getting out and it's it's the highlevel blueprint for my it's it's the highlevel blueprint for my strategy so phase two is developing an understanding of the general concepts of how the market works and you know sort
of here it's terminology terminology and of course I've got a lot of breakaway classes here on YouTube that go into these various details so we we talk about terminology we talk about um
volatility supply and demand supply and demand we got to uh understand basic uh fundamental analysis fundamental analysis is understanding the news headlines and their context we've got technical analysis so I'll
just do Tech a I should just do ta I don't want to do Tech anal so um ta we'll just do Tech analysis right there um this is understanding how to read how to read Candlestick charts I have Breakaway episodes that are full hour
length classes on how to read Candlestick charts how to read Candlestick chart patterns how to read supply and demand how to perform stock selection so stock selection here is another part of um I would say the the
basics of how trading works the right types of stocks to trade so this is all of the kind of peripheral information that you need to understand you know trading platforms how to actually buy and sell and a lot of it is fairly easy
to learn now for me I'm the type of person that I really like to learn by doing so when I was learning how to trade well I I kind of did what I'm account with real money and I start pressing the buy button but by doing
that I invariably had to learn things like the types of orders to use the difference between limit orders and Market orders the difference how to use level two you know like all of these sort of little nuances and I learned
those by looking at YouTube videos or looking at the documentation for the platform that I was using so you know I was able to pick up all of that information but sort of throwing myself into the platform forced me to to learn
now I'm going to tell you you don't need to do that with real money you can gain that same experience and all that knowledge even by setting up a simulated trading account we'll talk about that in just a second all right so so step one
is understanding the phases of trading step two is learning uh the fundamentals the the basics of how trading works and for those of you that are in a place then I encourage you at the end of this episode to go check those Breakaway
classes where you can fill in those details number three is um adopt a strategy now the reason I'm using the word adopt a strategy is
because I don't think in this day and age is honestly realistic for a beginner Trader to try to create their own strategy from nothing in fact I think that that would be a really inefficient way to approach trading if you look at
other businesses in the world it's very uncommon that a business pops up that has never existed before you know like an Uber or something like that usually most businesses are variations on existing businesses that are just done a
better think about coffee shops coffee shops have been around forever Starbucks wasn't new they just took it to the next level Dunkin Donuts I mean you've got all these different coffee shops so it I think of trading in a similar way that
the trading as a strategy like the strategy that I trade this is basically something I've spent a lot of time with trial and error developing but there's no reason that you have to go through that same trial and error when I'm happy
to share my strategy with you it's like trying to reinvent the wheel if you go through all the trial and error now if I put up on screen share here um you can see uh I'm going to pull up my metrics here really quickly because one of the
is that you make sure if you're learning a strategy and you're going to adopt someone else's strategy that the strategy that you're learning is proven profitable because there's a lot of people out there on social media on Tik
Tok and Instagram and whatever else talking about a strategy they have but broker statements can you show me how much you've made what are your average returns and they don't have any of that so I just want you to know for those
that don't already I have my statements audited at the end of each trading year audited at the end of each trading year so this is 2017 18 19 20 21 22 2 23 so you've got seven years six seven years here of trading broker statements
audited where I started with $583 in my account beginning balance and the account beginning balance and the account has produced a total profit of $1,719 th000 for an average monthly return of
$127,000 and average percentage return of 64% each month I will tell you right now that my results are not typical you achiev the same performance that I achieved however if you want a strategy
that actually works I'm happy to share my strategy with you again the link is download you can print it out and you can just start testing it out now that strategy is a blueprint it it is not enough by itself to make anyone a
enough by itself to make anyone a profitable Trader you need the rules but you need more than that so let's jump back to the Whiteboard here so when we talk about step three adopting a strategy when you adopt a strategy again
whether it be from me or from someone else you're taking a strategy that someone else has proven is profitable and that it works for them how do you know it will work for you that's when we go into step four Sim trade trade in a
simulator the strategy right practice that strategy prove to see whether or not you have the app itude and just the physical skills to trade it because ultimately being a Trader it requires an ability to have
the strategy but there are certain aptitudes that you'll need you'll need quickly you'll need to make sure that the tools you're using the platform you're using work for the strategy you're trying to implement so now I'm
going to share with you the number one cause of failure that I've seen over my years for beginner Traders the number one cause is that they don't have have a strategy that they're trading they don't have a system they don't have a set of
rules all they have really is a little bit of gut intuition they're doing a little trial and error and in in other words in my opinion they're gambling in of money on this stock a little bit on this stock but they don't set stops they
don't really know where where to get out they they are really just following and chasing the market it is not reasonable to expect that you'll be able to make a to expect that you'll be able to make a six figure seven figure annual salary in
the market without first putting in the time to create a business plan because that's what a strategy is it's a business plan it's going to lay out for you the time of day you trade the price stocks you trade how you find those
where you're getting in where you're getting out if you don't have all of that written down how do you expect to the market or the best hedge funds in the market now I don't outperform some
of the best I'm in the top right I I'm certainly in the top 10% I'm a Trader there's obviously traders that are going to be better than me your goal is just you're treading water and then where you're starting to actually pull away
right phase four and phase five you need a strategy to help you get there so what you're doing you're beginning to generate your own track record of
metrics so when you look at my metrics here I use this software called Trader view now this software's uh $49 a month but this is software and by the way I with them so use them if you want don't use them if you don't want you could
also just track your trades in an Excel doc if you want uh but however you track your trades what's important is that you track your trading metrics because those track your trading metrics because those metrics become your sense of confidence
tremendous sense of confidence I've got 12.8 million right here in gross profit I've got 68% accuracy I mean you could see all of these metrics right here and you know what if you're asking me Ross how did you choose the price stocks that
you trade right well in my small account strategy PDF I lay out the price stocks that I focus on and my metrics back up the reason why I trade those stocks now early on my metrics look the same but the numbers were much smaller and I also
had some big losses and some of these other areas what I learned to do was I learned to cut out the elements of my strategy that weren't working at all and double down on the areas where I was Finding success part of sim trading is
collecting data analyzing that data and then making improvements making changes to get your trading better ultimately the goal for a lot of beginner Traders is to look at someone who's trading their strategy consistently and with a
lot of success to look at their metrics and then kind of compare where you're at to where they're at once you have that comparison then you set kind of like this is my A to B how do I get there right what are the steps I need to take
to improve my metrics now to go from making a th000 a day to 5,000 a day logically you have to usually take much larger position sizes and trade more frequently but to go from a losing Trader to a profitable Trader that's
like what what are you doing that's producing the outsize losses so for me when I pull up my metrics I could always look at a period of time where I had a poor month so let's just say uh this year the month of the month of March was
a little bit um tough as I recall so we'll pull up March we'll apply this we'll pull up March we'll apply this we'll click go and oh so here we go right so now this is giving me data that is actionable I can take this
information and going into the next month I might decide I should avoid trading stocks over $10 for the time being because it's not producing profit or if I looked at time a day I could say Mondays and Tuesdays are a little tough
more cautious or I look at time a day and I see uh 6: a.m is tough and afternoon is tough maybe I should focus in on this area here and I can tell you month of April so if you look at my metrics for the month of April I pivoted
I felt like I had to I ended up doubling the profit for April got myself to $45,000 day of the week was better I started later and I stopped sooner I did still have some losses here in this window but it was better my accuracy
the week was better the price range was better I wouldn't have been able to make those changes if I didn't first see my data and so it's a big mistake that a lot of Traders make to trade without
tracking any of this data so I want to ask you if you've been trading for a while and you have not yet imported that data to analyze it do yourself a favor spend the $49 for one month import all of those trades and analyze your metrics
money when do you lose the most money those are the themes that you're looking for when you see that it's plain as day it gives you actionable steps that you can take to improve your trading you then Implement those steps for a period
of time a week a month you analyze your data after each session and you see am I seeing progress and then new things are going to pop out and of course it's important to understand the market is dynamic and always changing to a certain
degree now I've been trading a momentum strategy for my entire career so momentum means I'm buying stocks with the belief that they're going to continue their Trend that means I'm a trend Trader so Trend Traders are
typically trading stocks that have breaking news or trading sectors or stocks within sectors that are very strong because of sector-wide news and we benefit from that kind of rising tide when the overall Market is strong it
often just keeps kind kind of moving a little higher and a little higher so that's a strategy that's been around for ultimately forever trading momentum I mean you could go back 400 years and there are markets where people were
chasing momentum so there's nothing new about that it's just the way we apply it on a day-to-day basis and make subtle adjustments to accommodate for slight variations in today's market okay so let's jump back to the Whiteboard so
step one is understanding the phases step two is learning the basics of how trading Works step three is adopting a strategy preferably one that's proven strategy preferably one that's proven profitable by someone else and step four
profitable by someone else and step four is Sim trading and I'll also note um uh and analyzing metrics this is very important okay so now step five um and and perhaps step five um and
step four could be interchanged um but I'm going to just leave it as five understanding um the right tools to use so there are a lot of tools that are accessible for beginner Traders and some
beginner Traders fall into the Trap of subscribing to dozens of different tools which end up costing them a lot of money each month and it's well it's not really necessary so I want to walk you through what I would consider to be the Bare
Bones tools required to trade the the strategy that I'm trading every single strategy that I'm trading every single day so of course we have our simulator so a Sim is a critical tool and most Sims will include level two data which
is the depth of Market your time in sales and charts now the charts included with a lot of simulators are going to be fairly basic they might not be the most sophisticated charts but they can do for the time being now you can spend more
money on more sophisticated charts those could be available well for instance I used to subscribe to e signal those charts are about $185 a month that's very expensive I don't subscribe to them anymore because
it just doesn't really make sense even I mean I can afford it but just it's not a lot of Traders want to use the same tool that I'm using because they see oh Ross is using this tool I should use it too I decided to start using a tool
that's a lot cheaper so we integrated our charts into the platform that we offer at Warrior trading so it's all part of your monthly subscription so you could use that but you could also use charts for free with E Trade Fidelity or
thicker swim and most likely they would be just fine so you do need some type of charts you need level two and you need a simulator that's critical now another
simulator that's critical now another tool that you need are um scanners you need a news feed and you need some research tools so let me walk you through um how these work so with the scanners the scanners
that I have developed I built out for my own use but I also made them available to all of our members previously I was subscribing to a tool that was about I $225 a month it was just scanners it
don't think it had news it was it was just the scans and although it was good it was a platform that most Traders weren't maximizing all the things that you could do with it so they were kind of using just the minimum features
including myself and it felt like I was paying a premium for that so I made the decision to develop my own custom set of scanners that would be suitable for me and that our members at Warrior trading could use as well so those scanners are
uh called the day trade Dash platform and that's um what you see right here my trading it's web-based software so it works on Mac and windows so we've got these scanners are doing is they're searching so SCV right now is our second
leading percentage gainer in the market it's up 187% now this is a stock that I traded I had some great trades on it made some money on it this is the chart right here so this platform you could click on the
stock and it's going to update the chart so you could switch back and forth so so you could switch back and forth so we'll switch back to serve SCV so um so this makes a really really nice big squeeze and um what's interesting about
this one you've got a couple different headlines on it so the headline was um sares 140% after an Nvidia Nvidia reveals a major stake all right that's a big headline for a small cap company like this so This stock was literally
trading under $2 and then the next day it goes up to $9 a share well it's got a big headline with Nvidia it's not a surprise so my process each day of trading well first of all and you know kind of to go back to that conversation
Vermont what am I doing each day I'm trading volatility I'm looking for stuff that's moving well how do you find it Well we have these things that are called scanners and these scanners are searching the market in real time for
stocks that are moving and they've got to be moving quickly once a stock hits that scanner what do I do next well I pull up the chart and I try to figure out what the news is when I pull up the chart and I look at the news this gives
me context now know that the headline on this is um you know with Nvidia that's a great headline now I see the chart and I see that it's clearly trending up so I'm using the chart patterns that uh I trade every single day so this is sort of what
starting point and this is also has the research tools built in because you can go look at more data about the stock you can see what the flow is the volume the relative volume you can look at the high price the low price now if you want to
take it a step step further you can go into uh the SEC filings that a company into uh the SEC filings that a company will make so SCV for instance I go into the SEC filings and now I can do some research here and better understand some
could read about the company I could check their balance sheet their financials by checking their financials I can get a sense of what's their cash position how much cash do they currently have on hand is that position increasing
or is it decreasing so it takes some training to learn how to read these think all the members at Warrior trading benefit from is that when I'm trading I'm broadcasting so everyone can tune in to my broadcast and by listening to my
broadcast they're able to piggyback on my educated intuition and on my ability to read these filings to understand the news to interpret what I'm seeing both in the price action and and certainly um you know just in in the fundamentals of
that uh particular stock so number five is understanding the right tools to use understand the news Catalyst you've got to find stocks that are moving you need some research tools and for the most part the research tools in the news feed
part the research tools in the news feed you can get generally for free uh bam SEC there's a free subscription news feed you can find usually on Google or Yahoo finance scanners you cannot get for free because they include Market
data and what's really interesting on Market data is that uh the exchanges is have a really stronghold on that market data they make millions and millions of dollars selling that market data to
different uh individual Traders and different big hedge funds so they do not allow that data to be given away for free they'll find people a lot of money for free so you do have to pay for the scanners and the charts that have
real-time Market data but other tools uh can be free so then number six is setting up setting up the up setting up the perfect station and this is uh a trading
station so when I'm talking about setting up the Perfect Trading station it doesn't have to be as complex as everything you see here this is 1 2 3 4 five six monitors three computers are powering it and I've got three monitors
right here so nine so I have 10 monitors right here but this is what I use not just for tra I use this for YouTube for editing the videos for you guys you know for hitting the comments and everything else so this computer here is a computer
that I use for YouTube and social media and this is the setup that I use for and this is the setup that I use for trading so five monitors for trading is a little bit more than what most beginner Traders need so let me walk you
through what I would say is a great starting setup for a beginner I'm going to give you um this setup right right here this is a laptop and right here you're going to have monitor 1 and monitor 2 on a rack
so you're going to have external monitor One external monitor 2 and then you're going to have your laptop screen now some of you're going to say Ross what in the world are you kidding me you're trading on a laptop with a little teeny
keyboard and a little trackpad you're right I am and I know that that sounds got right here and the reason that I like that is because for my workflow for the way that I'm trading and I'll just move this computer so you could see it
um under where the Whiteboard is I like this because I trade so quickly here that when I'm moving around I I want to be able to very quickly move move the mouse here like this so quickly move the mouse click and start typing the symbol
so I type the stock in and then I'm pressing you know shift one and uh shift two and I'm I'm adding shares I'm getting in getting out I I need all of this to be in a really tight space I don't want to be reaching over here for
an external monitor you know I I just this works for me and it's also kind of leaning in to one of the things that's really nice about trading which is the anywhere in the world so for those of you who have been tuning in for a long
time you've seen me trade from all these different places and I did that because I was able to bring my laptop with me so there's no reason to be kind of locked there's no reason to be kind of locked down to one spot now when I'm traveling
I use um these external monitors right here these are um you can see right here these are really super skinny monitors if you can see closely um these are USB monitors and I put two of them in my carry-on bag I put those right next to
the laptop and that's all I need that's my full trading station so that's when I'm traveling however these monitors are kind of I mean they're 15 inch they're a little small so when I'm at home I like having these 24-in monitors there are
24-in monitors I bought an Amazon some of these are from 2013 2014 I've had them for more than 10 years they work just great they're totally fine so they're not crazy fancy it's not like a big curved screen or anything like that
big curved screen or anything like that it's just a standard 24-in Monitor and I love it so now what do I have on these monitors so this laptop monitor right here is where I would have if I were you a beginner Trader I would have my sim
account here and this is going to have all of your level two window windows and window and it's going to show you your p&l you know how much you're up and how actually going to have your eye looking most of the time right at this then you
have on monitor number one right here what the way I do it and this is just preference but you could do however you want so I have um watch list stock want so I have um watch list stock number two and watch list stock number
three right here and on this side I have watch list stock number one and then here I have my scanners so this for me is the perfect going back and forth between this
monitor right here and the stock that I'm watching which is my primary stock that I'm trading and then these are my scanners which show my news feed so if you actually looked at my monitors the way they're set up this one is um
monitor number two right here this over here is Monitor number one one the external monitor number one I've got the S&P 500 on one chart uh and this is a 10sec a 1 minute a 5 minute and a daily chart for these time frames if you're
not familiar with these types of Candlestick charts you could check out Candlestick charts from zero I think you'll appreciate that a lot and then this is a second stock where I have four different time frames as well the 10c
the 1 minute the 5 minute and the daily so those are over there on the side so I glance over it though those I keep an eye on them and that for me is enough now as you can see with this trading station I also have this monitor up here
in the corner and this is an exact copy of monitor number one so it's except with two other stocks so that's the way I've got mine set up right now is I've got this additional monitor up here which has um watch list stock four watch
list four and watch list five so having more monitors means you can watch a couple more stocks and then on this side here this is where I actually have my um my metrics so I have my metrics up on this um screen here which it's kind of I
don't really use it that much for trading it but anyways I just have it balanced to have that monitor there anyways so that's the way I have it set up and I think for me this is a really great setup and like just as an example
great setup and like just as an example when we had uh the pandemic in 2020 I was working in a nice office where I had you know similar setup like this 10 12 monitors the whole thing set up and then um you know we had the lockdown so I was
home and so that's when I moved back here and set up back in my house and I I brought home one laptop and two monitors and that was it and that was all I used
for a long time and then I added a third one and then I added a fourth one and whole station home and you know I've been working here at home now for four plus years and actually it's great I enjoy it but all that was to say that
when I came back I was like you know I'm actually almost in some ways doing better with less maybe all those monitors were sort of a distraction and sort of condensing down just to the most important tools for me was really
helpful so it's the most important things that I need on each one of these monitors the most important indicators the most important research tools I mean all of it is like I just want what I absolutely need each day for trading and
traveling trading station I'm not going to bring you know I'm not going to put something like this in my carry-on bag it's crazy it's not necessary but at the same time I'm going to be honest one laptop screen is not enough it's not
enough with one laptop screen unless you had a 52 or 55 in screen it's just not enough there's too much stuff that you need to be able to monitor while you're trading so use the space it's going to cost 100 bucks or whatever
it is to buy one of these monitors 125 but it's money well spent so even if you against something whatever you do is fine but get yourself a couple external monitors and my opinion is the nice
something you can bring with you wherever you go so you get the laptop you got a couple external monitors now you're on the go all right so I think I've given you a pretty good um explanation of setting up what I would
call the perfect station so I would say again a minimum of three monitors but you know you do as you'd like number seven okay number seven is discipline um
I'm so bad at spelling um when I'm uh when I'm talking so with discipline this is one of the biggest challenges for beginner Trader so challenging for me even I sometimes struggle as we see to spell it so here's the thing with
discipline remember how I said that there's I can consolidate all the reasons for failure down really to two big reasons there there are a couple also want to share with you by the way some recommended reading that I think
will be really helpful for you as an aspiring Trader as you're getting recommended reading with you in a moment as well but number seven is discipline so the number one cause of failure for beginner Traders is that they are
trading without a strategy they have no strategy they're shooting from the hip so it's no surprise that they're inconsistent they don't have a set of rules they're following etc etc the number two reason the Traders will fail
they have strategy they've gone through this to for the most part they've set up a trading station they're using the right tools maybe they Sim traded maybe understand how trading Works they're going through the phases but right here
they don't have the discipline to follow the rules and if I give you the rules but you choose not to follow them you cannot expect to do well because you're deviating from the plan and this is for
me it's really frustrating when I see it because I'll give you the rules download it right go into the description the pin comment download my small count strategy PDF I'm giving you the blueprint I'm putting it right there for you I'm
leading you to water but I can't trade for you I can't trade for you and by the way just as a PSA so you know there's a lot of people out there that will make claims that hey all you have to do is blindly follow my alerts this and that
that's not a recipe for long-term success I want to teach you how to be to find the right stocks to trade each day and so for what it's worth for the members at Warrior trading who have done really well and as always results are
not typical but for those who have done well um I've got our success stories page here uh we don't not a broker dealer as you probably know so we don't have access to um the records of all of our uh members at Warrior trading but we
voluntarily submit broker statements and badge and so some of these badge holders like Max and andoli Hong you know who have 100K 500k $2.5 million badges these
are not traders who are blindly following me nor anyone else these are traders who have developed the strategy who who have learned my strategy and if proven they can trade it profitably on their own and they may have made you
know some minor adjustments to it based on their um you know what their risk profile and this and that but I I want you just to kind of have that big picture understanding that success in trading will not come just from blindly
following someone else it doesn't work that way and no one like me is going to trade on your behalf the only way someone else can trade your money is if they're a licensed financial adviser and you have to be an accredit investor to
invest in a hedge fund which means you need to have at least 2 million bucks so trade for you on your behalf we can teach you how to trade we can teach you what works for us but you've got to be the one who actually is taking the
trades and so as I teach you the strategy and I give you the rules what that's what I'm putting out and what I need from you is to show that you can have the dedication the discipline and the drive to follow those rules and so
it's super disappointing when I see a Trader who's a chronic rule breaker they keep deviating from the rules so let me give you an example of one of the rules that we follow in trading when we're trading we have to have what's called a
trading we have to have what's called a Max loss so I set a Max loss on my account of uh daily goal uh times one that's my Max loss my daily goal is um I'll just make that $5,000 so $5,000 is my daily goal so my
Max loss is five grand so my weekly goal for what it's worth um weekly goal is for what it's worth um weekly goal is daily oops Daily Times three so the way I figure it is Monday let's say I'm up five grand Tuesday I'm up another five
grand Wednesday I lose five grand I have a Max loss day but then Thursday I'm back up five grand and Friday I'm back up five grand so these two days cancel each other out which leaves me with 15 grand on the week 15 grand on the week
grand on the week 15 grand on the week approximately 60 Grand on the month 720k more or less on the year that for me is a pretty nice year now I'll have some some years where I'm below it but that's the way I think of it now if I keep if I
have 5K as my Max loss and I go down 5,000 I have to stop trading I can't let myself have days where I'm up 5K you know know 5K and then I'm down 50k and then I'm up
5K 5 K these are the days where you're going to learn the hard way if if you're not willing to listen to the rules that days like this will end your career you have to be able to cap your losses now we don't want to cap our upside when the
we don't want to cap our upside when the Market's hot and I'm up 5K I won't stop trading I will keep trading until I have given back I'll show you this is how I do it so my first goal on the day is $1,000 of
profit so when I start each day at zero that's when I carry the most risk to go I don't want to go red if I can so until I'm up over $1,000 I trade with
about a quarter of my full position size so that means these first few trades are with small size so if I go red I'm usually only going red 1,500 or 2 or 3,000 at the most I'm not going down 10 15,000 once I'm up more than a th once
I've unlocked by breaking over this level Big Share size now I start to step up and take bigger risks this is where I make my my way up to you know 5K oops sorry so 5K right here and I'll keep trading but something that's very
important is that if I give back half of my profit on the day after crossing my my profit on the day after crossing my goal this is a cue to walk away so if I give back half my profit I have to walk away absolutely have to and typically I
say if I give back 20% it's a good indic that I should walk so that means I'll keep trading until you know I've kind of had these two losses like this and then that's the spot to walk I've seen traders who have
then they go all the way back down to red and you've got to learn when to walk away it's part of a system so being disciplined as a Trader means you become
systematic in the way you trade it's not that you're trading with an absence of emotion but you're so focused on following the rules it takes emotion out following the rules and if I follow the rules I know that there'll be some days
where I I end in the red but the losses are manageable most days I'll finish in are manageable most days I'll finish in the green some days I'll go up 10 15,000 I've got to walk away here I guess I push my Lu but at least it's a green day
and I've watched different Traders follow different paths some Traders take the approach of I'm going to trade without any rules at all if the Market's matter how red I go I'm just going to keep trading keep trading and what I've
keep trading keep trading and what I've seen is that traders that that don't sort of restrain themselves will end up having some really big outsize days some of them will be green but a lot of them will be R and those big swings can be
really emotional and once you get emotionally triggered it's really hard to maintain discipline so discipline is about state of mind keeping yourself in a calm cool collected state of mind we're not sprinting for a finish this is
a marathon you got to settle in you got to pace yourself so here's an example I know a Trader who had a goal of having a $500,000 year having a really big green year which is is great it's always nice to have a really big green year but you
know it may or may not happen so the way you get to $500,000 of profit on the year we have about 250 trading days each year so if you are averaging 2,000 day
that'll be 500 Grand now the thing that's really interesting is that this that's really interesting is that this Trader is regularly having 4 and $5,000 green days routinely so they're doing really well they're far exceeding but
they chronically are having days where they're going down8 and they're going down8 and $10,000 and these 8 and $10,000 red days it's it's pulling down the average so instead of averaging $22,000 a day after
you take away all these big red days they're only averaging like 1,200 a day is not great that's going to have them on track for you know $300,000 a year but if you want to get to that 500k Mark it's not about making more money on the
green days it honestly isn't it's about losing Less on the days that are bad and this is a really interesting uh topic that I had with uh some of my successful students I've got um this one student uh Jess he said um we asked him uh what was
together I said what was your turning point and he said you know I I don't point and he said you know I I don't really recall a turning point right I think he had the experience of going through you know phase one um kind of
break even and then this sort of slow Ascension back up here so his Ascension back up here so his progression through to you know P5 phase five so we had phase one sort of learning curve phase two going sideways
you know phase three starting to make a little progress phase four having that recovering from it let's just say right around there but he said you know I I don't really recall like oh it was this day that I implemented these you know
one two three changes that changed it all for me once I did that it was like Smooth Sailing for him he said it just felt like I started sucking a little bit less I thought that was really interesting so he was like I still had
red days they were just a little farther they were just a little more spaced apart when I would have those big red days and and that was kind of the difference and you know I I think that
there's a lot to be said for that it it can be very subtle that shift now for me my turning point was a lot more uh a lot more concrete to an event because what
more concrete to an event because what happened for me was I had a day where uh I was so mine looks more like this where I was going sideways like this and after a sort of bigger drop like that that became where I was basically at all-time
lows that became for me the Catalyst to look at my metrics really closely and ask myself some hard questions um and that's when I said you know what are you doing right now that's working because this is in total not working and that's
when I said all right wait a second this is the price stock that's working really that's working really well for me it was like 9:30 to 10:30 and I thought even if I only trade for an hour a day but you
know I could just take two good trades three good trades that could be my turning point and then I had a six-month period where I was stair stepping up and then I remember in one day I had a big drop back down and I looked back at my
you're the same person who just did this you had a lapse you had a momentary lapse of judgment that results in that loss you could do that again and I did it again except that the next time I didn't stop till my account was at 100K
and that was like my that was like a really big moment for me and this really big moment for me and this happened within about 12 months um I this was like two years into trading so I was at about the 24mth point right
here when this moment happened little bit of beginner's luck in the first year ran out in the second year then had this big drop then had a nice recovery 6 months drop down and then the next 6 months got myself back up to here so
from implementing the these changes here to this was about a year and look some of you guys are going to say wow Ross sounds like learning how to trade starting from zero is going to take six months a year maybe longer I hate to
break it to you but it's going to take some time it doesn't happen overnight and it requires a high degree of dedication discipline and drive but if you have that if you're really driven and you're willing to just make
incremental progress like learning a little bit each day watching my recaps watching YouTube videos just like this reading some books right that incremental progress it's all going to filter down and add to your educated
intuition one of the things I'm a big advocate of is trying to trade a little little bit every day you know in a cash account with just a small 10 shares just to gain that experience of course in the simulator is better but just keep
gaining experience because here's the cool thing the Market's going to be here saying uh I'll wait till I have more time or you could spend the next 5 Years Learning a little bit each day while you continue doing other things think about
difference so now let's talk about some of this um some of the books that are on my reading list so one that I'll start with here uh that I think is great for beginners um is the Happiness Advantage this is by Shan aor and this talks about
attitude it's about H you've got to have the attitude to get through the learning curve because it's so emotionally difficult attitude really does make the difference another book Annie Duke thinking in bets this is a great book
she's a a semi-professional professional poker player and um although poker is certainly different from Trading there are areas of thinking and best that I think this really does align with the type of stuff that we're talking about
pretty much every single day another book here by Annie Duke quit the power of knowing when to walk away this is a really good one um I do have my own book if you haven't read it it's on Amazon on how to day trade the plain truth this is
a book that um is much more conversational it's I have the audio book so you could listen to it if you'd like um this talks about the guard rails uh that help keep me in line learning how to trade uh kind of is like learning
on you got to keep yourself safe so I talk about some of those steps um that I've taken in my trading so and then one last book that I think is really helpful on the emotional side is this book called trade mindfully by Gary Dayton
because there's no question that emotion is is a huge factor in fact um you know when we're looking at our list here of the seven steps to becoming a
Trader you can't I mean they're not weighted equally it's just it's just not the way it works I mean obviously understanding phase is important but discipline understanding how trading Works yes that's foundational Concepts
you've got to have that but like discipline is a huge one this is really huge and of course adopting a strategy is really important so I I really would discipline side of trading because I
later that you'll be faced with the big emotion that comes with having a big trade it could be a big winner but more likely a big loser and now you're faced with okay I've dug myself a hole right I was having a nice run whatever it was
like I was you know in this in this period here where I had this nice leg up and then boom I give it all back in one day it's like how could I lose 30 Grand in one day how could I be so stupid all the self-doubt comes in oh my gosh maybe
this is the place I'm going to give up and then how do you get yourself back on the horse so a certain degree of it is the ability uh to give yourself that pep talk that selft talk um to be your biggest ad your own biggest Advocate um
looking at data the data is going to tell you you know what you're doing when break the rules that's when we have problems stop breaking the rules and the pain becomes so great from breaking the rules at a certain point that most
rules at a certain point that most people will stop uh but we know that that's not true for everyone there are some people that even in the face of this pain will continue to make really bad decisions and they'll continue to
lose money and that's one of the biggest risks with trading I often say there's a blessing in a curse with trading the curse is that you could spend two years struggling to make just $10 a day and you're not trying to be greedy you're
not trying to fly in a private jet or drive a fancy car $10 a day just enough for you know whatever something small and you can spend two years not able to do it consistently and then the blessing is it once you're consistently making
$10 a day you're consistently making $10 a day all right let's say you're doing $10 a day trading with 10 shares all right now well let's just say you're doing it with 100 shares doesn't matter so that's 10 cents that's 10 cents per
share so now what if you increase your share size to a th000 holy smokes would we actually go to $100 a day well maybe we don't go from 100 to a th000 in one jump but what if you did what if you went to
10,000 because if your strategy is consistent and it's working 10 cents 10 cents 10 cents it's the same trade the only difference is your position size
and that's when trading gets really exciting and that's where I've seen some traders who have really excelled who have done really well because they first set the foundation they learn the seven steps for Success they follow the steps
they've got the discipline to follow the rules and then they scale their strategy so I guess you could say step eight is scaling but but really this is the these are the seven steps for getting started I hope that this has been really
educational for you if it has please hit that thumbs up subscribe the channel for more episodes on trading strategy just like this and I'll remind you as always that trading is risky my results aren't typical so manage your risk by
practicing in a simulator especially when you're learning a new strategy if account strategy PDF link is in the description pin at the to top of the episode real soon thanks as always for tuning in