How you can get started trading (even if you dislike staring at charts)
You only need 20 minutes per day
I have never been a fan of staring at stock charts.
I don’t enjoy the mentally draining task of having to use multiple indicators just to time an entry.
Trading was an art I wanted to, but could never master.
After trying out many trading strategies over the past few years, I struggled to find a consistently profitable strategy, one that has an edge in the markets.
What is an edge?
Now, you may wonder “What does it mean to have an edge in the markets?”
Take the scenario of a casino.
The player may win once in awhile, but in the long run, the casino always wins.
This is because the casino has the edge over the player.
In trading, this means finding a proven trading system that has an edge in the markets.
Be the casino, not the player.
The problem is, if we were to start from scratch, it may take years, even decades, to find a trading system that has an edge in the markets.
That’s why I am willing to pay for courses.
Things to look out for when buying courses
When buying courses, we have to be discerning.
There are many self proclaimed gurus selling courses out there, each proclaiming to be the best.
Don’t just buy any course just cause it promises the best returns.
Look at whether the course can benefit you, like the one below:
What I love about this trading system - it is objective.
Most of the trading we know are subjective.
Drawing trendlines, support and resistance…these are all subjective.
No two people will have exactly the same answers.
That is the main problem I find with discretionary trading systems.
Maybe it just doesn’t suit me.
If you don’t already know, this is a course by Rayner Teo.
How I reduced the risk of my purchase
You may think it’s a huge risk to buy a course without knowing how the trading system will turn out.
In general, this is true (if you haven’t done due diligence on the person selling you the course).
For me, prior to buying this course, I bought another course where I earned back 4 times of my course fees.
This substantially reduces the risk of investing into this course.
In fact, it was so good that I also bought into the Ultimate Systems Trader (UST) program, a program designed to help traders trade mechanically.
No guesswork, no subjectivity.
Just executing based on the rules of the system.
How do we know if a trading system has an edge?
That’s where backtesting comes in.
Purchasing data required to perform backtesting is costly.
It pays (literally and figuratively) if we could leverage on others to do the heavy lifting for us.
This is why I paid for the course, saving me both money and time, while cutting short my learning curve.
When we see the portfolio equity curve trending up to the right, we know this is a consistently profitable strategy that has been tested in all market conditions.
Here’re the portfolio equity curves of some of the strategies:
My results so far
The first trading system I tried is called the BTSM system.
The BTSM system has a 70% win rate,
When trading a new system, always start small.
I started with an initial capital of $5,000.
On 3-Oct-2024, I placed my first trade using this system.
In the month of October 2024, only 3 trades were closed, netting me a total profit of $122.
On a $5,000 account, that’s a 2.4% return.
Not too shabby for a monthly return.
In total, the system has generated over $250 so far, in just a little over a month.
You must be thinking that the returns are good now during such a strong bull.
I tend to agree, and it remains to be seen how the system will perform when the bear comes.
But for now, it’s looking good.
If you’re curious and would like to trade objectively in a systematic manner, do check out the course here.