ABDC
Alcentra Capital Corp
stock NASDAQ

Hi everyone.
I am a beginner day trader. I've been reading books, articles, and paper trading on a simulator for three months now. More recently I joined on here and have been reading threads as well as watching live trading feeds on YouTube, just trying to learn as much as I can and hear other people's stories and strategies. I welcome any and all constructive feedback or criticism. I know I have a ton more to learn and I want to take my time and get good at this!
Needless to say I am not making money off of trading yet, which I'm told pretty much no beginner does without getting lucky and/or just being very talented at it. And I know it takes a while and lots of experience before it starts to pay off (if you're doing it in a sensible way).
So the thing that frustrates me the most is that I've gotten to a point where I am pretty darn good on the simulator. I limit myself to three trades per day right now to avoid getting in the habit of overtrading or revenge trading after a loss. On the sim, I almost always finish with a solid net profit. However, as I've begun transitioning to live trading, I either suffer a loss, break even, or make a very tiny profit. It can be quite frustrating and honestly makes me feel like the market knows I am trading with real money and is just messing with me (as absurd as I'm sure that sounds.) And I can't imagine this issue being anything other than psychological, as I use the same exact plan with live trades as I do with the simulator.
My plan in summary is as follows. I currently trade U.S. stocks only (I am currently learning more about options). I check the news first thing to get an idea of overall market sentiment and economic factors affecting it. I then find 3-4 medium float stocks in the $10-$50 range with high volume and movement, and then monitor them simultaneously on 5- and 1-minute charts (all on one huge monitor so I don't need to flip around). Admittedly, for a while I had not been in the habit of reading any news on the specific stocks I trade, but I just started incorporating that. I then let the opening chaos do its thing and start looking for setups around 9:40 EST. I use three strategies for picking trades: pullbacks towards/bounces off of VWAP, MA crossovers (e.g. 9 EMA crossing above 500 SMA as a potential long set-up), and pullbacks toward/bounces off of recent highs/lows. I always look for confirmation with increasing volume that the price is doing what I anticipated. I am also using the simulator now to practice looking for common chart patterns like bear/bull flags and ABDC's. I keep my stops tight at 1% as I was told that is smart when you first start out trading with real money. One more thing I just started doing is journaling my trades. I make sure to take notes on market sentiment for that day, time and setup of my entries/exits, price action after I exit my positions, my psychological and physiological state as I enter and manage the trade, and then finally reflect on what I did right and what I need to improve on.
Like I said, on the sim, these trades go my way at least 2/3 times pretty much every session. But with real money, it just rarely seems to go my way at the moment. I am beginning to suspect that a big part of my issue is that I keep my stop-losses a little too tight, and will often notice that the price of a stock I got stopped out of will continue in my intended direction after a pullback past my stop-loss, so I would have potentially profited had I taken slightly more risk. I don't do this as strictly on the sim presumably because it's fake money I'm practicing with. So I would love to hear any thoughts, feedback, suggestions, and constructive criticism. Day trading and the stock market have become truly fascinating to me in the last year or so and I am eager to learn from experienced traders and to do this right and continue getting better.
Thanks for listening.

Hi everyone.
I am a beginner day trader. I've been reading books, articles, and paper trading on a simulator for three months now. More recently I joined on here and have been reading threads as well as watching live trading feeds on YouTube, just trying to learn as much as I can and hear other people's stories and strategies. I welcome any and all constructive feedback or criticism. I know I have a ton more to learn and I want to take my time and get good at this!
Needless to say I am not making money off of trading yet, which I'm told pretty much no beginner does without getting lucky and/or just being very talented at it. And I know it takes a while and lots of experience before it starts to pay off (if you're doing it in a sensible way).
So the thing that frustrates me the most is that I've gotten to a point where I am pretty darn good on the simulator. I limit myself to three trades per day right now to avoid getting in the habit of overtrading or revenge trading after a loss. On the sim, I almost always finish with a solid net profit. However, as I've begun transitioning to live trading, I either suffer a loss, break even, or make a very tiny profit. It can be quite frustrating and honestly makes me feel like the market knows I am trading with real money and is just messing with me (as absurd as I'm sure that sounds.) And I can't imagine this issue being anything other than psychological, as I use the same exact plan with live trades as I do with the simulator.
My plan in summary is as follows. I currently trade U.S. stocks only (I am currently learning more about options). I check the news first thing to get an idea of overall market sentiment and economic factors affecting it. I then find 3-4 medium float stocks in the $10-$50 range with high volume and movement, and then monitor them simultaneously on 5- and 1-minute charts (all on one huge monitor so I don't need to flip around). Admittedly, for a while I had not been in the habit of reading any news on the specific stocks I trade, but I just started incorporating that. I then let the opening chaos do its thing and start looking for setups around 9:40 EST. I use three strategies for picking trades: pullbacks towards/bounces off of VWAP, MA crossovers (e.g. 9 EMA crossing above 500 SMA as a potential long set-up), and pullbacks toward/bounces off of recent highs/lows. I always look for confirmation with increasing volume that the price is doing what I anticipated. I am also using the simulator now to practice looking for common chart patterns like bear/bull flags and ABDC's. I keep my stops tight at 1% as I was told that is smart when you first start out trading with real money. One more thing I just started doing is journaling my trades. I make sure to take notes on market sentiment for that day, time and setup of my entries/exits, price action after I exit my positions, my psychological and physiological state as I enter and manage the trade, and then finally reflect on what I did right and what I need to improve on.
Like I said, on the sim, these trades go my way at least 2/3 times pretty much every session. But with real money, it just rarely seems to go my way at the moment. I am beginning to suspect that a big part of my issue is that I keep my stop-losses a little too tight, and will often notice that the price of a stock I got stopped out of will continue in my intended direction after a pullback past my stop-loss, so I would have potentially profited had I taken slightly more risk. I don't do this as strictly on the sim presumably because it's fake money I'm practicing with. So I would love to hear any thoughts, feedback, suggestions, and constructive criticism. Day trading and the stock market have become truly fascinating to me in the last year or so and I am eager to learn from experienced traders and to do this right and continue getting better.
Thanks for listening.