Troy De Vries ☄️

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[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

In 2025 I'll be going into my 5th year as a trader, and here are some main differences between how I traded then vs. now (a thread):

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

$NQ 1 Minute

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

#9 I don't follow anybody

I like to keep bias out of my trading. I used to scour the internet for information on stocks, and I loved spending time on fintwit.

Now, I read books on psychology and study my own trading. I don't actively seek any information about the market online, and when I do see anyone's opinions or research on the market, I will take it with a grain of salt and don't let it affect how I trade.

I hate having a bias affected by anything outside of me and the price action in front of me. I'm not in discord chat rooms and I'm certainly not absorbing whatever the YouTube gurus are shilling these days.

As far as online information, I focus on the psychological aspect. I have 2 traders that I like, but I rarely look at their content. One is Adam Mancini here on X, and another is someone (who's name I can't remember) on YouTube who has an extremely similar trading strategy as me. If I'm ever feeling overwhelmed or uncertain I'll watch a video of his to remind myself to keep it simple, and to keep to my process. I don't mind having traders you like, but what they do should be helping your own trading and your process...confirmation of what you are already learning.

I've seen too many people follow those with very strong opinions on a certain market or stock...but I find it's much better to focus on your own process. I'll occasionally have a friend show me this new guy they found and like, and within 10 seconds I hear something along the lines of "and here the stock should move off of this"....no stock SHOULD ever do anything. My favorite quote of all time is "Any stock can do anything" by Nicholas Darvas. I love that quote, it's so simple and yet it can filter out so many internet market gurus who don't really understand the nature of the beast.

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

In 2025 I'll be going into my 5th year as a trader, and here are some main differences between how I traded then vs. now (a thread):

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

#8 I only trade Nasdaq futures

I have a number of stocks, mutual funds, and crypto in other accounts...But trading intraday I only look at Nasdaq (If there's no setup potential or nothing I feel confident about I will look at oil or gold futures, but this is probably once every couple weeks).

This brings it back to my previous mentions of simplifying my trading so I can focus on the price action in front of me. I used to have a watchlist of roughly 100 stocks (that that would constantly be rotating in and out) and I would scan through these throughout the day to find trades. Now I pull up my $NQ setup and focus on just the price action in front of me.
This works best for me because I can keep a patient pace and really just focus and plan on what my trades are going to look like. Flipping through 100 different charts is great technical analysis practice, but for me it was not great trading practice.

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

Over the past weekI've looked through a lot of my old charts posted. I picked out a lot of the ones that looked so good at the time and pulled up the chart to see how they turned out. Most of them were massive failures.

It doesn't matter how appealing a setup looks. Your trading means nothing without risk management.

At the time I loved being a contrarian, using divergences to confirm my misguided biases. It took a while but I'm mostly a momentum trader now. I also got rid of many indicators I used to use as I found myself looking at them for justification of a losing trade or to confirm some sort of bias. I wonder how many traders do this, and how many ultimately fail and give up because of it.

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

$NQ 30 Minute

Potential support turned resistance test, could be a nice short. Otherwise if it's a failed breakdown I'll look to get in on a dip above support.

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

$NQ 2 Hour Wedge Breakout

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

Brett Steenbarger has a good book split up into these blog posts:

https://t.co/lUUf1oolre

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

I couldn't find the quote or remember who said it...but someone smart out there once said something along these lines:

Most traders agree that psychology is by far the most important aspect of trading, but they spend a very little portion of their time working on it.

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

$GC Futures 1 Hour

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

$CL Daily

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

...Accepting failure and losses with a cool head and a rational reaction is what made me consistently profitable.
When I started trading, these losses would throw me into overtrading and poor reactions, inevitable ending up in losing money.

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

$NQ

Hey everyone, it's been a while.

Some updates -

I've been focusing heavily on journaling and trade reviews, as well as reviewing charts every evening to see where the best trades were and why I didn't (or did) maximize on them.

I've been trading futures only (cont...)

[Troy De Vries ☄️ @TradesNQ]

Tom Hougaard's book Best Loser Wins has been my favorite out of the many books I've read over the past 5 or so years...I've read it 3 times.
Learning how to deal with inevitable failure is key in this game.
Without hindsight, perfect setups don't come by very often...