Newbie here. I have my own business so full time trading is out of the question. I have had a demo account on Nadex for a few months and now using the scanners from Apex (Holy Cow what a great thing here). I have done what everyone probably has, hit a few big ones, lost a lot, and then I realized I was just gambling. Not for me. I’m not sure an Elite membership is right since I can trade early morning before work, Thursdays and evenings only (also have 3 kids) so don’t know if it will pay for itself. Anyways I’ve been diligently watching videos and making demo spread trades, marking and tracking EACH trade as a WIN or LOSS and seeing if there’s a pattern that develops- such as which timeline chart, MACD, Stochastics, support/resistance…etc help me predict. Well looking at my stack of trades I’m a very boring 50% give or take. IThat’s not going to fly since I’m slowly bleeding money. My demo acct is down to $19,000. Supposed to go the other way! The question is, am I dumb or is the learning curve really that steep? I use Ninja Trader to look at charts and buy when I think it’s right. Of course Youtube videos make it look easy so I’ve stopped watching those, they don’t even look at charts (I AM supposed to be looking at charts, right?) I am wondering if launching into the Elite training videos without the time to trade will be a monumental waste of time or not. I am persistent but man, this is not as easy as I thought. You should know I don’t need to make this money to live, not looking to close my business (I’m a health care provider) so I’m setting a goal of making a little extra money per month for fun. Travelling once in a while with the family, give it to the kids or charitable contributions. Now I’m intrigued by the challenge but slightly discouraged. Thinking about running a marathon to see if that’s easier.
Is running a marathon easier than this!?
Waste of time - NOT AT ALL. It is a marathon not a sprint and I would suggest the indicators you are using are not going to yield the patterns you seek. I can tell you form experience that you have to fully invest in your education if you want to do this profitably. I am also a business owner (Law) and trade at different times of the day depending on my schedule. I would suggest you take advantage of every training video you can watch for free (or use open house) and go from there. If you have the toolkit; learn the APEX systems, and be patient you will learn to read the market. It has taken me over a year to feel any level of comfort and I have watched every video (multiple times) during that year. I finally succumbed to learning Ultimate Power Plays and it has changed everything (used IZSS and SEES before). The APEX tools are the best I have seen and the education is extraordinary for the price but this is a self-starter type side hustle - you must make your way through it if it is something you want to do. Do not listen to the noise all over the internet - everything you need to be successful is available here if you want to take advantage of it. APEX is a game changer for the retail trader as far as I am concerned! Best of Luck and Happy Trading!!
Thank you very much for your response. It is helpful. I’m not sure what the toolkit or open house is and whether that’s free or paid. In any event I went through the Nadex videos, then the scanner videos and this morning started the Elite videos. I keep seeing the terms IZSS and SEES and things about condors and butterflies and maybe lions and tigers and bears oh my, and assume as I work my way through these videos I’ll learn all that. Thank you for being candid with me, I’d rather know it’s a marathon than set myself to do this for a few months and lose money.
Have you registered for a free trial membership? You can test everything for free. Just go to https://apexinvesting.net/ and follow the signup instructions there.
What’s your timezone/how early are you talking about? Most of the action in the Elite Room is during the NY morning session (9:30am-12pm ET), and many traders have made their money by 11am ET.
If it doesn’t fit your schedule, there are plenty of trades to be had throughout the day with various Apex strategies. There is also plenty of help to be had through mentor groups and here in the forum.
The main Apex systems require the Apex toolkit that puts indicators on your NinjaTrader charts. However, if you would be trading during the Pacific session (6pm-3am ET), you can check out the Iron Condor strategy for overnight trades. (More info here and here.) That actually doesn’t require any indicators.
There are also news opportunities listed here.
Outside of that, the forex market can have some good movement during the London open at 3am ET. I personally haven’t looked into those charts for SEES Power setups:
“Power Trading with “Walls”” (the system most folks in the Elite Room trade), but I imagine there’s some good opportunity there.
To answer your question though, no you’re not dumb. If consistently-profitable trading was easy, everyone would be doing it. It’s deceiving because it seems easy, because it doesn’t look like there’s much to it. And there isn’t, when you really get down to it. But just because it can be simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. It really comes down to experience. I’m reminded of the comment Chris Haueter (5th degree black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu) makes here:
It's not who's good, it's who's left. And it's hours on the mat. And if you put in that time, natural athlete or not, you practice the art—you'll be a black belt.
You don't have to be a computer expert or a financial wizard. You just have to put in the time to develop the proper mode of operation. Part of that is technical, but a bigger part is mental. In _Trading in the Zone_, Mark Douglas talks about "getting your mind right." So much of trading is really just about dealing with your own psychology and learning to operate from a proper mindset. And honestly the biggest part of getting there is just trading. It's hours with the charts. Yes, you need a good system, but you still have to put in the time. It's becoming familiar with how markets behave, and learning to operate in a specific way that allows you to take advantage of opportunity, and not shoot yourself in the foot.
That being said, I understand you're not looking to become a guru, but at the same time, it'll still take some time. The good news is, if you take that time it'll be the [best paying "hobby" in the world](https://forum.apexinvesting.com/t/the-goal-of-trading-for-any-trader-is/4425).
First of all, thanks for that link with the posted withdrawals…if that doesn’t wet your whistle nothing will. Kind of speechless over that. And back in the day I was a black belt in Washin-Ryu karate so appreciate the martial arts reference! Special stuff. Are you talking about the free 30 day trial? I believe you have to work your way through one of those training video sessions to qualify for that? If that’s true I’m going through that right now. There is a wealth of information but even as someone who is pretty tech savvy, I find the site sometimes hard to navigate and find where I am. In any event everyone has been very helpful. I was afraid to post here thinking I was out of my league, which I am, but thank everyone for helping me along.
Sorry forgot to mention that I usually have Thursdays off and sometimes Tuesday mornings so the peak hours of trading are tough for me to make consistently. I may have to take a slower pace. Would entertain the overnight avenue as I’m a night owl so will look into that.
I know what you mean about the site navigation. It could definitely use some TLC from an organizing standpoint. There’s just so much information and training that has been developed over the years that it can be tough to keep it all streamlined. Plus there’s always a lot of stuff in the works, and new things coming out all the time.
For example, you heard about “IZSS and SEES” systems a lot. Those were basically the go-to flagship trading strategies of Apex, until recently when the Ultimate Power Plays came along. Those became the main focus, and were the central component to a big open house a few months ago. More recently, just in the last few weeks, even those have been narrowed into the “Power trading with walls” strategy that most folks are focused on now. The Ultimate Power Plays are still good, but they’re a bit more advanced in comparison. So don’t be too concerned with the details of those trades, so much as just getting an introduction to Apex tools and charts.
Actually I would recommend immediately checking out this recent video from John Skelton. He goes over all of this and it will get you up to speed:
So I think the way to maximize your time would be to just go through the Order Prints for any system course to get your 30 day access, and go through some of the Open House webinars. I’d at least start with these:
Apex Webinar 08/17/2017 Making The Most Of The Apex FREE Open House
Webinar 08/29/17 5 Additional Trades To Your Power Play Chart “https://apexinvesting.net/module-7/webinar-082917-5-additional-trades-to-your-power-play-chart/”
08/30/17 4 New Powerful Entries All on one chart!
Webinar 08/24/17 Mastering Yourself with Apex CEO Darrell Martin
Those webinars call them “additional” trades, but actually those are what you’ll be focused on, as you shouldn’t worry about the Power Plays for now. The 4 Powerful Entries are discussed “Additional Powerful Setups”. That will get you set up to add in the “wall” component, discussed in detail “Power Trading with “Walls””.
What is linked here is all you really need at this point. Everything else on the site is extra for once you get this down.
Tip: Note how you can increase the playback speed of youtube videos by clicking on the gear icon in the video controls. You can’t even really tell the difference at 1.25x, and sometimes even 1.5x…and that’ll get you through the videos 25-50% faster.
Scanner or NinjaTrader?
So, the question I don’t think I had answered is in the beginning, with part time trading, is it reasonable to expect to make back the $300 a month for the Apex membership? I’m working my way through more videos now. Thanks again mtroga.
In depth answer requires questions: Are you using Nadex or Futures? If Nadex are you going after binaries or spreads How many days a month do you trade? Is your starting capital 20 to 100 times the size of your trades?
Easy answer: if using Nadex spreads it may take 1 to 6 wins to gather 300 (or if you are grabbing 15 to 30 tic scalps and walking away 10 to 20) … of course with 10 lots that may be just 1 trade for 30 pips
So… it depends on you.
I am planning on Nadex spreads and could trade probably 1-2 full days a week. I likely won’t even touch binaries for a while, all the wise people who have been through this have given that advice, at least in the beginning. Would have to look at off hours if I wanted more trading time but not sure how much harder it is win “off peak.” Starting capital is not really a big issue, I don’t want to lose any capital completely which is why I’m trying to make sure I know what the heck I’m doing before putting hard earned money out there. I’d prefer to put a bigger chunk of my money towards some investment real estate I’m considering, so would like start between $1,000 to $3,000 unless there’s a magic number some folks recommend.
The short answer is “yes,” as you have seen, a trader can reasonably expect to earn more than $300/month part time. The variable of course is how well you can follow the rules. (Of course other things like market conditions play a role, but even with 2 days/week, that equates to an average of less than $38 net per trading session.) That is perfectly attainable, especially if you have a decent account size.
(See here for CEO Darrell Martin’s recommendations on account management.)
Of course, to earn any money, you have to win trades, and to be profitable you have to earn more money than you lose. As mentioned earlier, that’s easier said than done (or again, everyone would be doing it.)
But that shouldn’t really be an issue at this point because you have a full 30 days to practice with Apex tools for free anyway. I would take as much of that time as you can, and see if averaging a net of $38 per trading session is reasonable for yourself. Of course that would require learning and becoming relatively proficient in a trading strategy (the Power Trading with Walls is the recommended), and that would also mean being familiar with charts and indicators, and utilizing the NT and Nadex platforms (or really, for Nadex, the Apex Scanner). The good news is, most of that can be done any time during the week. Obviously the training videos are available to watch any time, and practicing with charts is also possible any time, through Market Replay.
The only thing that isn’t yet possible is “market replay” using Nadex. That is to say, you can’t trade a historical trading session through Nadex. While that has been on the Apex wish list for a long time, it is still not operational. This means that while you can run charts of days in the past, and watch a market play out exactly as it did live, it is not possible to place a trade in a demo Nadex environment based on that chart. So the only time to really practice trading with Nadex is during a live market session. You can of course be doing this in a demo account with artificial funds, but you can only trade price action that is actually happening at that moment. (So you can’t trade on Nadex, even in demo, when markets are closed on Saturdays, for example.)
So the way I would do it is take all the outside time you can (evenings, and of course weekends), and use that for going through training and getting familiar with the NinjaTrader and Nadex/Scanner platforms. There’s always a market open somewhere in the world during the week, so even if you’re not practicing a system, you can at least be playing with the scanner and practicing the mechanics of entering and exiting trades 23 hours a day, 6 days a week. And then when you have time during a live NY market session (weekdays, 9:30am-4pm ET), watch live charts for the US indices (most in the Elite Room like NQ, RTY, and YM) and practice taking Power Trades with Walls in demo on Nadex.
You may not be up by $300 in your demo account by the end of that first 30 days, but it’s definitely possible to have an idea for yourself if that is a reasonable thing to expect in perhaps another month or two. (Also worth noting, as John mentioned in the Open House video I linked above, once the open house access ends on January 15, they will be announcing a sales promotion which I’m sure will allow you to get a membership for less than that price.)
Scanner or NinjaTrader?
So I’m working my way through videos with the time I have. Confused how someone puts this all together. I have the open house access, watching as many vids as possible. I have demo’d on Nadex and on the Apex Scanner. But what do MOST people do? Trade with a Ninja Trader account? I have the free NT software, downloaded the toolkit, and entered the Elite room. Most of it is just way beyond my level now. So when it’s time to start demo trading using Walls or whatever concept, what is the EASIEST or most common method? Do folks use NT looking at charts/prints then switch to the scanner to enter trades, or just trade off NT after opening an account. Sounds like a dumb question, but seems like I need about 9 monitors!
Not a dumb question at all.
Sorry for the late reply but best place to answer all kinds of questions is elite room. First thing I would suggest to get the entries down. In my opinion its best to do it in demo on NT using the chart trader. It saves you a lot of time and headache specially as a beginner because you have so many things in your head. I would move over to Apex scanner using Nadex whenever you feel more comfortable with entries and know what to look for. Most important thing is… ask questions, post your charts and if you are already a paying member take advantage of the mentor groups. Fastest way to learn. Hope that helps. Let us know if you have any further questions.