Spicy

I made 124% in 2023 For context: I trade breakouts on the 1min timeframe on high volatility altcoins. Here are the biggest mistakes I made that year: 🧵

How to Destroy 99% of other Traders: 1) Ask for help even if you feel ashamed of looking dumb. 2) Do the boring basic work every single day. 3) Continue to grind when it's so much easier to give up and quit. Extra emphasis on Point #1 🌶️

Margin Requirement ≠ Position Size Most traders get confused with this. A +10% gain on a $1000 position will be +$100 P&L. Even if you use 10x Leverage, the P&L will still be +$100. This is because 10x Leverage reduces the Margin Requirement by 10 times, it does NOT touch the Position Size at all. The profit of a position is calculated by the position size, NOT the margin requirement.

If an indicator isn't solving a specific problem for you then it doesn't need to be on your chart

You don't need high skill to hit a big winning trade in Crypto. You do need high skill to keep the money instead of blowing it over the next 6-12 months. An outrageous number of people make huge unrealized gains and round-trip it because "what if it goes up more"

How I Trade Crypto: Price hits a key level Then I have 3 possible decisions to make: → I bet on price breaking through the level → I bet on price bouncing off the level → I just don't bet at all. Keep it simple. 🌶️

Stoploss Placement: I'm not a fan of fixed % or even trailing % SL's I much prefer an "invalidation" based stoploss Example: "If price goes to X , then my idea is no longer valid so I will close."

Trading Framework I follow: 1) come up with an idea 2) collect data on it 3) review the data 4) there's some X% chance the review finds something useful since X is small, the only levers I really have are: • more ideas • better ideas • faster from idea to data so most of my work is just speeding up that loop.

Benefits from Trading that aren't financial: • learning how to think clearly while in a state of uncertainty • creativity and idea generation • learning how to collect and review data • a thicker skin for unlucky situations • reaching out to others in the same field to learn faster

Trading edges decay over time. Which is why it makes sense to increase your "rate of learning" to compensate for this. I wrote an article on it It covers: • what "rate of learning" is • why it is so important • 5 tips you can use to learn faster ↓

how to study your A+ trades ↓

Round-trip fewer trades by manually trailing a stoploss ↓

You can outperform 99% of traders by: - reviewing your previous day's trades - entering trades only when they meet your criteria - making friends with other traders - improving ONE variable of your strategy at a time Mastering the basics is what will set you apart.

Fair Value Gap is just a spot where there weren't many limit orders, so price moved through it quickly and left a "gap" in the orderbook. an Order Block is just a bunch of limit orders clustered in a small area. don't overcomplicate basic orderbook ideas with "smart money" language, they're much easier to trade when you call them what they are.

Most traders don't realize how normal it is to go on a 7x lose streak. Even if you have a 75%+ winrate it is statistically inevitable. (i.e. it is bound to eventually happen) The last thing you should do when getting streaked is abandon your strategy and hop to a new one just let the positive expectancy play out

The Hardest part of using a Trading Journal Actually logging blatantly stupid mistakes and then facing the embarrassment of re-living the error when doing a review.

Imagine sitting down for lunch with a Crypto Bro. You try to hold a conversation with them but they keep interrupting it by checking their phone every 2 seconds. They justify obsessively staring at the same candlestick chart by having some idea that this is what "commitment" looks like. In reality this is a waste of time to do. It's unlikely that any meaningful, high quality decisions are going to be made while out at lunch with someone with attention distracted by so many external factors. You really don't need to be monitoring price action constantly. You don't need to be in every trade. You don't need to know about every single price movement. When it's work time, go all-in on work and don't let anything else distract you. But when you're not working, then focus on whatever the thing in front of you is

Dummy Trades are underrated a dummy trade is a real trade taken with the minimum position size the exchange allows (e.g. $0.01). it speeds up collecting data and learning, without the fake psychology of paper trading.

the 3 main variables I look at when measuring the market conditions ↓

Improving a trading system: 1) accept imperfection • early versions of anything will suck • improvement comes from iterations, not ideal planning 2) review regularly • performance has to be tracked to be reviewed • regular reviews are where the +1% improvements show up 3) collect useful data • more variables make flaws easier to spot, too much becomes noise • find the balance between collecting, reviewing and executing by overdoing each one, then dialing it back 4) good vs bad inputs • some logical changes will fail • you need a process to tell if a change actually worked • changing things without feedback is just gambling