“Stay in your lane, put in the work, don’t worry, don’t hurry, trust your process, and always bet on yourself.”
Josh V., 40 years old, From Canada has successfully passed our Extra Buying Power program, and he is now TTP’s funded trader managing a $160K account, or as we call it, he is a true “Stock Star”.
Every time he reaches 5 consecutive winning days, we will boost his buying power and max exposure.
We spoke with Josh about his trading plan, insights, and lessons gained while trading in the markets and our platform as a funded trader.
Watch The Interview With Josh
Josh’s evaluation statistics
Q&A’s With Josh
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’ve been working full-time in various roles within the Energy sector since graduating from university. Once Covid hit, and lockdowns became the norm, it became abundantly clear to me that having a skillset that you can earn a sizable income from home would have tremendous value in the future. It was during this period that I began my deep dive into the trading universe.
How long have you been trading?
I’ve been trading for 5 years, and I am a part-time trader
Briefly describe your trading plan and how it contributes to your success.
On a high level, I focus on only four symbols, and I look for the best high probability setup that occurs close to key moving averages (20MA, 200MA, VWAP) within one of those symbols. I execute trades mainly on the 3Min, 5Min, and 15Min charts. I generally target a 2:1 or 3:1 R/R, and try to limit my trades to 2-4/day. If I lose two trades in a row I generally shutdown for the day unless the market is really trending and I see some clear trade setups within my watchlist.
Share with us a challenge you faced in your trading career and how you overcame it.
There were many challenges in my journey; impatience, overtrading, revenge trading, FOMO to name a few. I overcame them by recognizing that I was continuously repeating bad behavior after reviewing my Post Analysis of the trades that I took. Becoming self aware and conscious of the actions I was taking in real time helped immensely.
It’s important to realize that you need to learn all the lessons that the market is trying to teach you. You can learn it on the 2nd reoccurrence or the 60th but in order for you to advance you need to learn those lessons and make adjustments. So your progress depends solely on you.
How did you adjust risk management to your trading personality?
I’ve tried many risk management approaches based on information that I’ve found online, some of which include Dynamic risk, and Risk laddering; increasing your risk after achieving 10R at your current risk amount. I think the amount of risk you want to put on per trade is very subjective, a lot depends on where you are in your journey, and if you’ve identified a profitable edge in your trading. If you have a solid edge and don’t overtrade I would suggest the Dynamic risk approach.
Describe a key moment in your trading career.
A key moment in my trading career was when I realized that less was more, and the importance of preserving my mental capital. When I first started trading I would utilize scanning resources to find large +/- gainers, and search out stocks that had high volatility. My watchlist became huge and it caused me to become anxious without even realizing it because I kept feeling like I was going to miss a major move if I wasn’t constantly watching the charts of stocks within my drawn out watchlist. It was mentally exhausting, and I found difficult to perform at my best on a daily basis. As I gained more experience, I realized that chasing the action didn’t fit my personality, it required a lot of pre-market prep. which I didn’t enjoy, and which I couldn’t see myself continuing to do over the long run. So I sharpened my focus and began to watch only a handful of symbols that I back-tested. I selected symbols that had lots of volume and generally clean price action which I found comfortable trading. The beauty was that the shortlist of symbols presented multiple tradeable setups on a daily basis, I just needed to be patient and wait for my opportunity.
How long did it take for you to become a consistent trader, and what aspects did you change for that?
It took me 5 years to be consistent. One of the biggest issues I dealt with was the fear of taking a loss. As an example, I would repeatedly have a great Entry on a trading setup, with a correct Stop-loss location set, but mid-trade I would adjust my Stop too early to reduce my risk, I would get Stopped out of the trade only to have the trade work out in my favor. This became very demoralizing, causing me to stray from my Trading plan and keeping me stuck in a destructive feedback loop. My ‘Aha’ moment happened when I made a conscious decision to just let go and trust my analysis. I leaned into my experience, which had been built up through years of analyzing my trades, and began to worry less about the short term outcome of trades taken. The net result was that I stopped allowing the fluctuating P&L to affect my decision making during the trade, and I learned to trust my process. I knew I had a profitable edge, the only thing I needed to do was to allow that edge to play out over a larger sample size.
What is your mental/psychological strength, and how did you develop it
I would say my strength is in having a growth mindset, and a long term view on almost everything. This has allowed me to keep pushing and not feel too defeated during tough times. I’ve always been motivated by personal development and self improvement in other areas of my life. I believe that drive and discipline has naturally spilled over into trading.
What was your strategy for successfully passing the evaluation phase?
Trusting my analysis and letting my trade ideas play out without micromanaging it. Also, I focused on closing my trades at clean profit target locations within the chart and stopped trying to hit homeruns. Not being greedy, and taking what the market offers you does wonders to your confidence and mental capital.
How is trading for Trade The Pool different from trading by yourself?
As long as you can prove that you’re a consistent and profitable trader you have all the upside in gains without having to put any of your personal capital at risk with TTP, it’s a great asymmetric opportunity. The more consistent you become, the more buying power you receive. Additionally, there aren’t too many Prop firms that allow you to trade a wide variety of stocks. In that respect, trying to get funded through TTP is a no brainer in my opinion.
What would you recommend to someone who is just starting with us?
Really be objective about your current skill level. Once you have nailed down a sound process and have a clear edge you can very easily scale up. The different tiers that TTP offers caters to all skill levels. If you are just starting on your journey then the Mini Buying Power challenge gives you enough buying power to learn the ins and outs of trading. If you’re more seasoned then the Ultimate Buying Power challenge gives you all the buying power you would need to seriously make a dent without risking your own capital. It’s important to note that passing a challenge on the first try is very difficult so don’t be discouraged if you fail. If you are really serious about this, be prepared to take more than one funded challenge in order to get qualified.
Share online resources that were/are significant in your trading development. Names and links are appreciated.
YouTube content from Raja Banks, Navin Prithyani, Stacey Burke, Oliver Velez, Jerremy Newsome, Scarface Trades have helped me along the way. Studying their trading styles allowed me to personalize my own.
Would you like to share anything else with us?
I think the common qualities in people that become truly successful in any field is passion and a desire to keep working towards mastery. If you have those qualities, then you won’t worry about how long it will take you to become a consistently profitable trader, your focus will be on how you can keep gaining quality experience, and finding ways to improve. This is very important because people can get sidetracked thinking that they need to make a lot of money as fast as possible. If you focus on fast money, you will lose it plus more just as fast. My simple advice is to stay in your own lane, put in the work, don’t worry, don’t hurry, trust your process, and always bet on yourself.
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