Notes
Notes
Practical, honest writing on trading around a full-time job. No signals, no hype, no income claims. Just the routines, rules, and mistakes behind the method.
-
How I trade with a full-time job: my real weekly routine
The exact weekly routine I use to trade around a full-time job, without watching charts all day. About ninety minutes a week, all outside market hours.
Read -
Position sizing for small accounts, explained without the jargon
How much to risk per trade when your account is small, with the plain arithmetic done for you. The one-percent rule and why it exists.
Read -
Why your trading journal beats your next strategy
A trading journal is the cheapest edge most part-time traders ignore. What to log, what to leave out, and the columns I actually use.
Read -
The mistake that cost me most as a part-time trader
An honest account of the trading mistake that cost me most, and the single rule I wrote afterwards so it could not happen again.
Read -
FOMO, revenge trading, and the psychology of trading around a job
The behavioural traps that wreck most traders, and why having a full-time job can quietly protect you from the worst of them.
Read -
What I actually use: a plain setup for the 9-to-5 trader
An honest, hype-free list of the tools I actually use to trade around a job. A spreadsheet, a chart, and not much else.
Read -
Where to place a stop loss, and why most people place it wrong
A stop belongs at the price that proves your idea wrong, not at the amount of money you feel like losing. How to find that level, then size around it.
Read -
Risk to reward ratio: how often you can afford to be wrong
What a risk to reward ratio actually is, the win rate each ratio needs to break even, and why chasing big ratios can quietly make you worse.
Read -
Drawdown: what a normal losing streak actually looks like
Long losing streaks are not evidence that your system is broken. The maths of how often they happen, and how to tell a normal run from a real problem.
Read -
Expectancy: how to tell whether a strategy is actually working
One number tells you what an average trade is worth. How to calculate expectancy from your own results, and why win rate on its own tells you nothing.
Read -
How many trades should you have open at once?
Per-trade risk is not the same as total risk. Why five correlated positions are really one trade, and how to cap what you can lose on a bad day.
Read -
Swing trading vs day trading: which one fits a life with a job
An honest comparison of swing trading and day trading on time, costs, stress, and skill. Why one of them is effectively closed to most employed people.
Read -
How long should you hold a swing trade?
Exits belong to conditions, not to the calendar. Why time-based exits usually cost money, and the four things that should actually end a trade.
Read -
Which time frame should you trade? A straight answer
Why the daily chart suits people with jobs, how to use a second time frame without confusing yourself, and the trap of dropping down to find a better entry.
Read -
Breakout or pullback? The two entries worth learning
Breakouts pay you to be early and punish you with false starts. Pullbacks give better prices and miss the strongest moves. How to pick one and stop switching.
Read -
How to build a watchlist you will actually use
Most watchlists are hoarding. How to keep a short, deliberate list, what earns a place on it, and why twenty names beats two hundred.
Read -
How to backtest a strategy with a spreadsheet and some patience
You do not need expensive software to test an idea. The manual method, the biases that will flatter your results, and what a test can and cannot tell you.
Read -
How long should you paper trade before using real money?
Long enough to prove you can follow your rules, not long enough to hide behind. What paper trading teaches, what it cannot, and how to move across.
Read -
How to write a trading plan that survives a bad week
A trading plan is a set of decisions made in advance so you do not have to make them under pressure. What belongs in it, on one page.
Read -
When should you change your trading strategy?
Almost everyone changes strategy at the worst possible moment. The four conditions that justify a change, and the one that never does.
Read -
Support and resistance: what the levels really are
Levels are areas where enough people have decided to act, not magic lines. How to draw them, why they should be zones, and how to trade them honestly.
Read -
Moving averages: what they can and cannot tell you
A moving average is a smoothed picture of the recent past. Useful for seeing trend and context, useless as a signal on its own. How to use one properly.
Read -
Candlestick patterns: the few that matter and the many that do not
Most candlestick patterns are noise with names. What a candle actually records, the handful worth knowing, and why location beats pattern every time.
Read -
How many indicators do you actually need?
Most indicators are the same price data rearranged. Why adding more reduces clarity instead of adding it, and what a clean chart is really for.
Read -
Why most traders lose money
Not because they cannot read a chart. The structural and behavioural reasons most people lose, and which of them are actually fixable.
Read -
How much money do you need to start trading?
Less than people say, and more than the marketing implies. How the maths of position sizing and costs sets a practical floor, and what to check first.
Read