Thread by @corymitc

One of the greatest skills you can develop as a trader is the ability to create your own strategies.

Even if it's based on others' ideas.

If you can develop a strategy, you learn how to find your own answers, and you'll never be dependent on anyone for trading info.

Thread👇

When I started out #daytrading in 2005, I knew nothing about trading. I was fresh out of university.

I applied to a proprietary day trading firm (they give me money and take part of my profits)...and they ONLY wanted people who knew nothing/little about trading.

Why?...

No preconceived ideas.

The firm basically told me: "Look at this chart and figure out how to make money."

It was the most powerful trading instruction I ever received.

The subtext was: "Become self-reliant because we can't trade for you".

Beautiful, and True. I said "Ok"...

They then said..."Since you're starting out, you can only lose $10 a day."

If I was profitable most days, I got more capital, could take bigger positions, could make more $, and thus could lose more.

But only if I was profitable. If I started losing, how much I could lose...

in a day dropped.

Basically: super tight risk leash, and find a way to make $.

That was it. It may sound impossible, but just working with a chart (for weeks or months) and trying to figure out how to make money is the greatest skill you can develop....

It means you NEVER need to be dependent on anyone for trading information ever again. You know how to look at a chart and develop a strategy. If you can control your risk, you have a viable way to make money.

If conditions change, you have the skill to adapt...

If the strategy stops working, you create another one.

An added benefit of developing your own strategy is there are fewer psychological issues.

I am trading with only my own voice in my head.

If you just keep consuming new material, instead of creating, you end up with...

lots of voices in your head.

You have their voices plus your own voice, all saying what to do. You feel conflicted about which trades to take, when to get out, whether a trade is valid or not.

When it's just your own voice it is pretty much...

‘yes’ or ‘no’, ‘get in’, ‘get out’. A lot less chatter.

I still trade that way, 18 years later. I come up with an idea for a strategy and I MAKE IT profitable.

I look at winning and losing trades based on the idea and see if I can find conditions where losers tend to occur...

too often. I write it down and avoid those situations.

I look at reward/risk and win rate for whatever pattern or strategy I'm trying to trade. I look at ways to maybe squeeze a little more profit out of trades. ..

It may be incremental. A 2.1:1 reward risk may be feasible instead of 2:1.

I like to be out of day trades pretty quickly. I don’t like holding through pullbacks if I can help it. Pullbacks can easily turn into reversals and that scares ME...

Someone else may want to hold for bigger profits, and that means holding through pullbacks.

Someone may be ok with a big reward/risk but losing more often, whereas others want a high win rate and are ok with a low reward/risk...

I decide how I want to trade the strategy idea and then I find a way to make it profitable.

I align it with my goals and personality. That way I'm more likely to follow it and trust it...

I write down the results on a piece of paper. I look at how prior trades worked out, based on the rules I have currently developed. If it is profitable, great. How can I make it more profitable?

If the result wasn’t profitable…how do I make it better?...

Find an earlier entry (if getting in too late) or a later entry (if getting stopped before the big move), see if the SL can be decreased, or needs to be increased, see if the target is too far or too close based taken trades.

Make changes to make it profitable...

Understand that how I or someone else trades is based on their personality, their preferences, which may be different than yours.

“Cory is a chicken💩and doesn’t like holding through pullbacks…but I (you) prefer trading less and taking only one or two big trades a day”...

Look at your charts and trades and look for conditions where the strategy is present AND the price tends to run a long way after.

What conditions are present on those trades (often false breakouts in my experience)? Those are the trades to focus on…

not all the tiny trades Cory is taking.

If you like my tiny trades, trade them. If you don't, you can use the same strategy idea and just have bigger targets.

Filter out the tiny trades accordingly.

Trade for YOU. Create or modify the strategy for YOU. Make it profitable...

I don’t search for great strategies, I make them.

Pretty much every successful trader you read about did the same thing. They saw something, had an idea, and then they worked at it to make it profitable.

The idea may have been their own, or someone else's. Doesn't matter...

Taking my day trading courses, you're getting the end result of decades of work.

But you miss out on the skill of developing your own method. So, create that skill!

Use the information above to make a strategy YOUR OWN, personalized for your preferences...

You can build a strategy from scratch, or use someone else’s idea and go through the process above...

Tweak the idea to align with how you want to trade.

That's how YOU control your trading destiny, so you're not reliant on someone else....

Want a baseline to start from?

I have 3 courses:

Stock day trading
tradethatswing.com/product/price-…

Forex day trading
tradethatswing.com/product/the-eu…

Stock swing trading
tradethatswing.com/product/the-co…

Make them your own. Use the concepts as is, or make them profitable for your preferences...

If you enjoyed this, follow @corymitc. I regularly share insights from my 18 years of trading experience.

Thanks for reading and sharing.