Suddenly, you're 5 years in to trading and have nothing to show for it. You've tried it ALL. Daytrading. Options. Crypto. Prop firms. Perps. Futures. + whatever else people are doing. Some of it worked for awhile. You got excited. But then the same old habits bit you in the butt. Causing you to blow up. You don't want to stop trading (or maybe you can't). You love markets and want to figure this thing out. But don't know where to start...or what to stick with. On top of that, you're no longer the kid is his mid 20s with no mortgage, no kids, no big bills, and no responsibilities. It's a new chapter. Maybe you're married now. Have a big boy job. Nice apartment. Or house even. Kids soon. Whatever it may be. So the "pressure" to make money is higher. As a man, you carry this huge weight to provide for your fam so you can't afford (financially & mentally) to keep doing stupid stuff in the markets. That persona is probably all too familiar for many of you guys (me included at one point). So what's the next step? What do you do? Well I can only tell you what I did, step by step. 1) take the "money pressure" off. - have a stable income, some savings, business, or 9-5 job...whatever, just something to relieve to pressure to make money immediately Ok great, so now you have a couple grand coming in every month. This is essential. You don't HAVE to make $$$ right away. 2) once the money pressure is off, choose your strategy, vehicle, & risk framework. - which i confidently believe is swing trading common stock, using a trailing stoploss, riding strong stocks/themes/environments. I will die on this hill. Swing "trading" should effectively mirror buy & hold investing if done right via good stock picking, a good entry, & trailing stop. Your goal isn't to be a trader, it's to have a exponential return on invested capital. That's it. 3) Doing less button-clicking - part of why I started writing here on X or posting videos was to take me away from getting roped into trading more. find something (either related to trading or not) that takes your eyes off the charts...or prevents you from watching every candle the market IS the lever...not your skills, ai tradingbot, button clicking, indicators, or research even. time in the market AND timing the market 4) finding a partner, mentor, friend - might be a controversial one, but somebody needs to hold you accountable. As an active trader, there is just too much noise our ears daily to go at it solo. we need another human-being to act as a hybrid of our risk manager, coach, hype man, bully, friend, and more...all in one i've had the pleasure of meeting some great ones here on x and also working with a few folks myself now. 5) let trading decisions be made FOR you - remove yourself from the octagon of decision-making Limit orders at support levels, trailing stop losses, predetermined position sizes, rules. you might be good at finding great stocks, but you're probably bad at leaving great stocks alone. I was. Anyways. this post got a little bit long but THIS is what active investing should look like. I look at every single block of shares that I buy as its own entity. So if I buy 1000 shares of NVDA, that ledger line is its own entity & I treat it as a fully independent trade. It has its own trailing stop loss attached to it. I will do a longer post on this psychology. My entire philosophy can be boiled down to: Do the work to get in before the move. Enter the trade. Place your trailing stop. Leave it alone, your job is done. That's how your equity curve gets magnetized to the stratosphere.