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After 6 months of being in the live day trading room everyday, more than 80% of trades happen first thing in the morning.

Gareth Soloway runs the morning day trade chat room, while Nick Santiago runs the afternoon session.

Takeaway: If you live on the West Coast, you have half a day left to do other things.

Since most trades are done by 11:00AM EST and since I’m based on the west coast, I’m done trading by 9AM, usually earlier.

For the first few months, I still stayed on the computer for the afternoon session with Nick Santiago and just listened to him talk people out of risky swing positions, learning his methodologies and hoping he see’s a good level on day trade.

The last few months, I still have Nick Santiago in the background while I work on other projects or just take it off to have a long lunch with the wife.

When first day trading with real money, I put lots of pressure on myself to earn a certain amount of money per week. This is #1 amateur move and will result in getting rekt.

When you exit a trade that profited $1 per share or a 1% profit margin, be grateful and happy. Do not FOMO that you could have made $2 per share or 2% profit margin if you had held on a few more minutes or hours.

Full Position sizes with Gareth Soloway

Many times when I first started day trading, I was keen when prices of a stock we longed kept going down, as that meant we would leg in, 2/6th, then 3/6th, and sometimes we would go a full 6/6th of a position.

The profits from a full 6/6 is quite significant!

However, do be aware that a trade could go against you and there have been times where Gareth has exceeded a full 6 of 6 position size and has done a 9/6th position to lower the average entry price.

Full Position sizes with Nick Santiago

I used to think Nick only does full position sizes.

But recently, I’ve seen him add more.

Takeaway: Be ready to go over a full position size when entering a day trade.

In those rare times when you go full position size or more than a full position size on a day trade, Gareth may keep this day trade over night or even turn it into a swing.

I was quite surprised to learn Gareth had a multiple day trades that turned into a swing from many months before I joined the service.

Nick does not keep his positions over night. He will exit at a loss rather than keep it over night or turn it into a swing.

Takeaway: Make sure when entering a day trade with Gareth, that you are prepared to keep a day trade with a full position or more, overnight or even for a few months. Another reason not to use your entire portfolio when trading.

Do not use real money your first few weeks of joining.

You will learn how the trading room works, the flow and how fast things happen.

You will figure out how to best calculate the number of shares to long or short, based on how much of your portfolio you want to risk and the starting position size.

Watch a bunch of different youtube clips of people showing you their day trade layouts on the trading platform you use (Thinkorswim, Interactive Brokers, etc)

While you paper trade, you will start figuring out which layouts are best for the number of monitors you have, so you can be ready to be in 3 or more active day trades at the same time.

Gareth often will say he’s interested in a stock for a day trade at a “pierce” of $X.XX.

He won’t say the exact number but usually it’s within 5 -10 cents below a long level or within 5 – 10 cents above a short level.

Both Gareth and Nick only do limit orders.

When Gareth says he will enter a long position on a pierce of $30.00 for example, you can then set a limit order of $29.95. Sometimes the stock will get down to $29.96 and then bounce. Sometimes, it will keep going down and you’ll hear Gareth say “Alright, I’m in at $29.76”.

If the stock has a tight spread, I’ll usually market buy when I hear Gareth say he’s in a position.

If the stock as a wider spread, then I’ll just put a limit order and be at peace with not getting in at the same price as Gareth.

Gareth and Nick will guide you with a reasonable take profit target based on their own average entry prices.

Though if you enter a trade that they didn’t filled on, or you were far from their entries, you should know your take profit target. Very often it’s between $0.50 to $1.00 of your average price. This is easy to calculate if you only had one position, but if have multiple positions, your average price will change. Most trading platforms should calculate your average price for you.

I use thinkorswim as my trading platform as I found it the easiest to use, via a custom Active Trader layout.

There are plenty of youtube tutorial videos on how to setup and customize an Active Trader Layout. Be sure to increase the allowed Memory Usage when starting TOS.

This layout is what I found works best for my monitor size and the way InTheMoneyStocks’ day trade flows.

I have 2 monitors and an iPad on my desk.

My main monitor positioned directly in front of me is a curved 32″ Samsung monitor, which I have thinkorswim setup on.

I also have a 24″ Dell monitor that I’ve setup in portrait mode to the right of my main monitor. This monitor is mainly used to display the InTheMoneyStocks GoToMeeting window. Gareth and Nick share their screens via GoToMeeting and it’s great to glance over to see what they are teaching or showing in terms of price levels, patterns, etc.

The iPad on my left is used to display the Trading View app, which usually shows the chart of whatever stock I’m in on a day trade, the DXY 10 min chart or the BTCUSD 10 min chart.

An app I like to use is Trading View, which is also what Gareth uses to draw trend lines, channels, and quickly see indicators like Fibs and Moving Averages.

I like to write notes down, draw trend lines and channels on my own and see if there is confluence with what Gareth and Nick show as well.

I bought additional indicators from Trading Alpha, though I’m not sure I will renew when my year long subscription expires.

This is the most important calculation.

After deciding how much of your portfolio you want to risk, you then need to calculate what 1/6th of that equates to.

When looking and scanning for stocks, there could be multiple stocks that could have levels good for a day trade long or short.

Not only do you need a place to record all those key levels, but to also know how many shares needed for that trade.

Very often, a price level will start to appear and you only have seconds to figure out how many shares you should be using. Based on the volatility, you may need to get into a second, third or more position quickly after.

Often times, you will enter a trade with an initial 1/6th position, then leg in as price moves in the opposite direction.

As your average entry price changes based on the number of positions you enter, so does your take profit target.

Knowing what your average entry price will allow you to know what your target take profit price should be.

Track your trades accurately to get a precise picture on how much of your portfolio is currently in a trade, your percent profit/loss including commission fees and your overall profit / loss across all your trades.

I found many trading platforms do not calculate this for you, or do not make it easy to quickly see the performance of each individual trade. Many trading platforms give you a YTD performance of a stock you traded. Since we trade the same stock multiple times per year, you can only see your overall performance.

Using pivot tables and pulling in a couple years of historical trades posted on the ITMS Day Trade Page, they had an average of 1.8 – 1.9 trades per day.

From my experience, sometimes we’ve gone 2 or 3 days with no trades, and occasionally we did 4 trades in a day.

To be conservative, I used an average of 1.2 trades per day. Then to add ANOTHER layer of being conservative, I took the total number of trades per month and reduced it further by 25%.

Position size is very important. Typically, Gareth Soloway will leg in, usually starting a position with 1/6th of what you want to risk. If we are long and the price goes below the entry price level by $0.50 to $1.00 depending on the stock, he will add another position to make it 2/6th in order to lower your average price. If the stock is very volatile, I’ve seen multiple times where we went full position (6/6). Nick Santiago will usually only do full position sizes and not leg in.

To be conservative, the assumption in this forecast is using 23% of your portfolio

That being said, on occasion Gareth Soloway will go 12/6th or more!

Stay tuned for my takeaways, tips and review of ITMS.

Assumes a starting portfolio size is $200,000.

This portfolio size is meant to be the amount you are willing to risk day trading. That does not mean your entire portfolio you have available. Only what you’re willing to risk, and I recommend starting small when first starting out.

Based on the above assumptions, since they are quite conservative, there is a good chance after 12 months you’ll earn about $88,000 from day trades.

After paying for various expenses such as the ITMS service, commissions, interest payments and other fees, you’ll have enough to pay yourself approximately $40,000 and around $10,000 as contingency or to pay down a portion of the loan assumed.