Just started trading much more methodically. Yeah it's easy to be a winner in a strong bull trend; I'm not deluding myself in thinking that I'm a genius now. But here's some direction on resources that got me to this point

I have a bad habit of digressing. I think it'll take several posts to put down all the thoughts in my head right now. So I'll try my best to contain myself in this post. Check out my post history to confirm I'm not a guru and not trying to sell something related to trading. And for those seeing this in the future, if you see a link in my profile, you have every right to be skeptical.

Here, I want to talk about what seemed to finally click with me in the past few months after aimlessly trying to figure out trading for a long while. It goes without saying that I wasn't alone. Obviously, what clicked for me won't necessarily click for a lot of other people. But hoping it helps others who are financially & emotionally stable, confident, level-headed, process-oriented, and want to try their hand at swing trading.

In the past few months, my mindset about trading has shifted dramatically. I'm treating it as a business project, setting up a lot of processes and systems, and documenting things, even though I don't have a trading journal yet (I plan on signing up for one once the dust settles with my processes, which I think is soon). And I credit a certain subreddit which I'll mention below despite having mixed feelings looking back.

I'm only about a month into trading much more intentionally this way, and sure it's a bull market so it's easy to shoot fish in a barrel for easy gain. Still I feel inspired to start posting here for posterity & accountability if I continue trading, especially through the inevitable choppy markets and downtrends.

I've seen a lot of responses to questions online about how to start learning trading go something like:

**"Just go watch Youtube."** Just as there's a ton of trading videos that deliver genuine value, there's 10x as many videos from marketing gurus who make more money from clicks than trades. Examples are all those videos talking strictly about ORB. Imagine somebody with no context, no experience pulling up a random ORB video and randomly trying it out

**"Just read books."** Which books? In what order?

(After thought: I now wonder if more experienced traders leave the above vague comments because the OP's could've looked up the Wiki's of various trading subreddits and studied the content there first, which is fair.)

**"Pick a strategy / setup and learn it / practice it."** Without context, this seems a bit misleading and overwhelming (given so many exist, each one accompanied by a myriad of guidelines) to tell those with 0 trading experience.

**"Spend lots of screen time or chart time."** Full stop. This likely works for a lot of people without any context or direction. But for someone like me, I think I would appreciate context and direction first before we're studying & staring at charts, otherwise we're overwhelmed with biases, self confirmation, false beliefs. We WON'T know what we're looking for if we're a completely blank slate.

**"Everybody wine in bull markets. So what's the point in trading?"** It's funny seeing this in trading subreddits. Like, why bother? Anynow, this might have kept me sidelined from giving trading a serious shot for several years. Why? Because I thought, if active trading wins in bull markets just like passive investing would, then why incur the time, effort & stress to trade actively when I can just sit back and relax watching SPY grow my portfolio instead? Jury's out whether I look back and think of the potentially significant opportunity cost here.

OK, finally getting to the point of leaving some pointers after all that "blah blah blah". I credit the following to lead me to finally take the leap into swing trading with confidence:

\- Books & other content from Bill O'Neil, Mark Minervini, Qullamaggie, Martin Luk, Nicholas Darvas, Brian Shannon

Tip: look up book reviews on goodreads.com. Sometimes, a top review will be long, containing the key takeaways from the book.

\- Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre is frequently a top suggestion as a first book to read about trading. I generally didn't care for it. Even as a former avid bookwoom, I found this book a bit difficult to read. But one of the top reviews on [goodreads.com](http://goodreads.com) helps extract its gems in a digestible way.

\- The Wiki's for r/Trading, r/Daytrading, r/swingtrading

[https://www.youtube.com/investorsbusinessdaily](https://www.youtube.com/investorsbusinessdaily)

[https://www.youtube.com/@TraderLion](https://www.youtube.com/@TraderLion)

[www.youtube.com/@RealSimpleAriel](http://www.youtube.com/@RealSimpleAriel)

[https://www.youtube.com/@Qullamaggie](https://www.youtube.com/@Qullamaggie)

[https://www.youtube.com/@peoplewish2025](https://www.youtube.com/@peoplewish2025)

Edit: some of the following links are now dead even though they were valid up until a couple days ago. I'll look into this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9A5mek1eF](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9A5mek1eF)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iybF8i2Fs5s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iybF8i2Fs5s)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS9zbnLi1Gg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS9zbnLi1Gg)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9A5mek1eFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9A5mek1eFw)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTIuZl9nR3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTIuZl9nR3)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zig4Q1U6ko4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zig4Q1U6ko4)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR7jWckuoXw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR7jWckuoXw)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOOvWGGmV9c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOOvWGGmV9c)

\[\[\[

EDIT: The following comment calls out Umar Ashraf for being a bad faith actor:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Trading/comments/1l7pvqo/comment/mxqw4dj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Trading/comments/1l7pvqo/comment/mxqw4dj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

I don't regret watching his Jubilee style takedown of 15 bad traders as his critique is valid there, but I'll exercise caution moving forward.

Filtering out legit sources and determining a path to learn trading feels just as challenging as trading itself.

ANOTHER EDIT: I just found this ImanTrading piece criticizing the Rizdom YT channel that I've linked above a couple of times, for platforming fake & fraudulent guests: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EV78upUQw0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EV78upUQw0)

If so, then obviously I don't want to be in a position supporting the Rizdom channel anymore. However, a couple of their roundtable videos where they analyze struggling traders can still be valuable to understand the psychological afflictions that can hinder them. I understand every view, every click does in fact support Rizdom. As an alternative, there's books on trader psychology, but seeing real people confess about their struggles is much more relatable, IMO. I'll keep my eyes out for substitute content that serves similar purposes.

\]\]\]

\- There's another trading subreddit who strongly insists that one reads their Wiki before participating. Credit where credit is due, I learned a lot from their Wiki, especially their explanation on options. It’s there that I first learned about the concept of treating trading like operating a business. But the Wiki is disorganized, and contains suggestions that aren't best practices, possibly disastrous. So I have mixed feelings about recommending them.

For a less active way to trade, the 9-Sig strategy seems solid. This is a subreddit discussing it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/KellyLetter/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KellyLetter/).

There's similar valuable discussions in r/TQQQ and r/LETFs.

I'm attempting to attach a chart comparing my performance vs. Nasdaq so far since I started my current process of trading at the beginning of May. Definitely much easier to achieve superior alpha in a bull market. I forgot to put in a stop loss order between Jun 1 - 8 which led to that dip. Emotionally, I was horrified to allow a position to go almost -20% unchecked. Let's see how I do moving forward.

[My Schwab trading account \\"Portfolio Performance\\" vs. Nasdaq](https://preview.redd.it/0sfz95rxjq8h1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=18ba794aa5f59f0dbbbf740f77b216295442c0dd)