“One day you’ll look back on all this and laugh.” That is what I told myself years ago when I was licking my trading wounds.

And I wasn’t laughing at the time. But I can laugh now – after eight years of trial, error and eventual success as a trader.

However, I want to be real here and tell you that certainly wasn’t always the case.

Before I took $37K and generated $2.7 million in trading profits over a four-year span, something happened that completely changed my perspective on trading.

I blew up a $10,000 account. That’s right. I lost $10,000. Just like that.

Maybe you can imagine what it felt like to go home knowing I had lost the equivalent of two months’ salary for a $65,000-a-year job. I can say it wasn’t pretty. And I was so frustrated I actually punched a hole in my wall.

Although my losses felt unfair at the time, the truth was…

I was making all the mistakes a typical amateur trader would make.

And it wasn’t until I learned from these mistakes that I really started having success. Now when I trade, I make a point to remember these key lessons. I really can’t stress them enough, and I’m going to share three of the biggest ones with you now.

Mistake #1: Trading With My Feelings

I mentioned the punching the hole in the wall after blowing up my first account. That should give you an idea of how well I handled my emotions back then.

Of course, the market didn’t care about my anger, fear or greed. The market’s only job is to react to variations and go one way or the other.

That might sound overly simple, but once you take out all the emotions and see the market for what it is, trading becomes a lot less mystical. And then you can start developing real, grounded strategies based on the reality of the markets.

For example…

There are times when a trade you’re in just isn’t working out. And the mistake amateur traders often make is they stay in. Fear comes into play because they hate the idea of taking a loss. So they’ll stay in, hoping the stock will turn around and their pain will go away.

The same thing can happen when a trade is working out. Beginner traders fall in love with the high, and they feel like the stock is always going to be that way. This causes amateurs to get too aggressive and fail to properly position size. Over time, this is always a losing strategy.

If you take one lesson away from this article, let it be this…

As a trader, you have to become calculating, just like the market itself. It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the process, but you must see the market for what it is and not what your feelings tell you it is.

Mistake #2: Obsessing Over One Company (My Nightmare Story)

Back when I was trading penny stocks, I’d comb through all the articles on Yahoo Finance. I was that guy lurking in the background, buying into news hype.

I’ll never forget the first time I fell in love with a company. The ticker is still etched in my memory. It was G-H-3 International (GHTI). I put almost my entire account into this ticker. I saw all the glowing comments on various articles and thought, “This is a can’t-miss.” I was ready to tell all my friends how rich I was going to get.

You can imagine what happened next. The stock started to go down… and down… and down. The message board chatter dried up. It turned out all the hype was just people pumping up a stock, putting money into it and selling it to idiots like me. And by the time I realized it, the culprits were already on their way to pumping another stock.

The lesson here is trading is not about finding the perfect setup and following the best indicators. It’s about understanding that you are your own worst enemy.

Now when I trade, I never look at a company as a long-term investment. I look for short-term investments that I can get in and out of… so I can make my money and enjoy my life.

Mistake #3: Not Having a Plan for Every Trade

Back in 2014, I was still struggling as a trader, trading “pump and dumps” and penny stocks.

There was one trade that I got in only because everyone else liked it. I bought in a little bit and kept adding and adding until I had a huge position in it.

Then disaster struck. The trade started going against me, and I ended up taking a huge loss. I lost $15,000 on that trade alone. I felt an incredible range of emotions… from anger to fear to anxiety.

Fast-forward to eight years later, and now I clearly know what I did wrong. I didn’t have a plan for the trade.

If you don’t have set targets for each trade you make, you risk giving yourself over to the market’s whim.

You’re no longer in control. You might get lucky and avoid a big loss on one trade, but eventually, you’re going to lose… and potentially lose big. This is where clear discipline comes in, and it’s one of the pillars of my TPS system.

YOUR ACTION PLAN

These lessons were crucial for me and allowed me to develop my own system, which helped me grow $37,000 into $1 million in verified trading profits in three years. And now my new goal is to help others use this simple system and mental approach to learn even faster than I did. That’s why I’m giving away the details of my strategy for free in this video today. You can learn this strategy in just a few hours, and I firmly believe it’ll put you ahead of the game as a trader. I’ve done all the work for you, and all you have to do is watch and take a few notes.

Click here to get the details of my TPS strategy for free.

MONDAY MARKET MINUTE

• Default Clock Ticking. With a potential default now 10 days away, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said yesterday that “hard choices” will need to be made about which bills will go unpaid if the debt ceiling is not raised. In the short term, the market’s direction will depend entirely on the news flow surrounding this situation. Tracking.
• Trading Mentality Reminder. Why have we been taking quick-hit winners in The War Room? Here’s why… Entering last Wednesday, the S&P 500 had moved less than 0.7% in either direction for seven consecutive days. Deutsche Bank strategists noted that an eighth day would have been the longest such streak of sluggish activity since November 2021. So this tells us that we’re seeing tight trading ranges – which means that we need to quickly ring the register on any winners that move our way.
• LAZR on Our Radar. Karim tracked a massive insider buy on Luminar Technologies (LAZR) – and with the stock boasting a short float (as of April 28) around 25%, we have a possible squeeze effect as well. Combine both triggers, and you get a play that worked for us both last week and this morning. Bryan took a double-digit win on the ticker in The War Room, and he and Karim may want to reload again this week.
• DraftKings Gets an Upgrade. UBS upgraded DraftKings (DKNG) to “Buy” from “Neutral” with a price target of $30, up from $19. The analyst cited higher revenue growth and greater flow through to EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) as reasons for the upgrade.
• The AI Winners (in Our View). We’ve been hearing a lot about the promise – and possible negative impacts – of artificial intelligence (AI). Everyone seems to have their opinion, ranging from “it’ll change the world as we know it” to “it’s just another technology fad.” No matter where you fall in that AI spectrum, one thing is for certain: There needs to be a heightened level of security and protection around all things associated with AI. Two possible AI security winners are Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and Zscaler (ZS).