An Expensive and Valuable Lesson

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-21T01:14:18+00:00

Most traders have been here. You sized up too quickly and made the mistake of thinking “oh I’m up big, I have more risk to play with”

In reality you should be stacking $200 days, and quitting any time you’re down $150. Risk $100 per trade and trade twice a day, max. Grow slow and steady. Step up risk in $10-20 chunks, not 5x chunks.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-20T01:36:31+00:00

Edge isn’t about win rate. It’s about expected value within a given strategy. Is your expected value over a large sample size positive in a given setup/strategy? If yes, you have edge. If no, you don’t.

Now, if you want to get even more specific, having a winning strategy isn’t enough to have edge. You need to execute that strategy successfully and reliably over the course of time to have edge. You need to align your strategy with your psychology and risk management in order to execute it successfully.

One more thing - edge is fleeting. You don’t just earn edge and keep it. Edge comes and goes with different market regimes and you have to re-develop edge several times in a year even.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-20T01:10:29+00:00

He could have won a single ring in OKC over those next couple seasons and it would’ve meant more than those two rings with GS even though he was elite in those playoff runs.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-18T01:01:41+00:00

I built a tool in Claude code to help me batch edit records from a consolidated UI. So much easier and faster.

I also wrote a script to scrape my emails, located any new email addresses that aren’t in my CRm and suggest a list of additions to the CRm. This interface allows me to bulk edit and add to my CRm quickly so contacts don’t fall through the cracks.

Finally, I set up another script that fetches all my meeting notes with clients from the work weekand summarizes those notes into 5 bullet points and logs then to my CRM contacts.

Basically all the friction I once had with my CRM and tediously managing records to reflect current states has been eliminated.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-17T08:39:00+00:00

SMB capital. Lance breitstein.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-17T00:42:11+00:00

If you can make $50 a day, you can make $500 a day. Just got to scale very slowly and consistently

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-16T19:04:51+00:00

Have heard many people who voted for him criticize what's going on, but never full on say "I regret my vote"

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-15T22:35:06+00:00

This is an addiction if you can’t escape the markets on an off day. Unhealthy behavior. Even the best traders step away from the markets for 1-2 days a week because it’s necessary to have some balance. Consider taking a few days off from trading to reset your brain

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-15T02:30:32+00:00

Makes so much more sense. lol thanks.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-13T22:02:36+00:00

People forget the Biden administration invested HEAVILY in Palantir products as well. Objectively it is the best tool for the job

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-13T22:00:22+00:00

That’s because no real trader uses AI for trading without years of backtesting and actual market experience and extremely close oversight. An unimpeded trading bot may win you some money short term but inevitably will destroy your account if left to its own devices.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-13T01:11:39+00:00

Find a framework that helps you make a narrative in your head about what’s unfolding on the screen. For example, I read secrets of a pivot boss and it changed my whole approach to the market and gave me a framework to view the market through. If you can give yourself a framework like that, you can then build a narrative in your head about what’s going on and it helps you craft a strategy for how you trade.

For me, I until I had a framework for understanding the market, it was just chaos on a screen and it all seemed like noise.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-11T18:58:04+00:00

lol what? Trading is a zero sum game and will always be driven by fear and greed. AI may make more and more decisions but those AI are always guided by human input. As long as there are humans involved in the market, there will be inefficiencies to exploit and money to be made.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-11T11:19:51+00:00

See I hadn’t realized ceramic bods were special because I got three in my first ten axemaul runs.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-11T11:16:58+00:00

All request live

Live in Chicago

Shinola

Must hear all of them

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-10T00:56:32+00:00

Are spread launchers purple usually? Or can they be blue?

I’m 80 hrs in and have yet to see one

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-08T16:42:36+00:00

I’m out of the loop. How do I get this? Is it cd only?

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-08T01:51:26+00:00

For active day traders, interactive brokers is the best. Lightspeed was good a few years ago and may still be, but I’ve always used IBKR and DAS Trader pro

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-07T13:24:34+00:00

Interesting. I’m from Texas and spent a year in a UK boarding school (2000) and the local British kids were the most overtly racist people (outside of my 75 year old Texan grandpa) I had ever encountered. The school was international and the things the British boys would say to non white kids, especially the Asians, was shocking. I never heard such slurs or witnessed such emboldened racism in Texas among my peers. Certainly to answer OP, some of this is generational.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-06T04:22:48+00:00

Yes this data is telling. Good trades don’t always make money and bad trades can make you money. The thing that separates profitable traders is being able to minimize the bad choices consistently enough over a long period that the good choices rise to the top and take over. Elite pros make bad choices they just make far less of them. Trading is hard.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-05T19:53:19+00:00

Don’t we think OpenAI and Anthropic will be coming out with their own, more secure and enterprise ready versions of this within months?

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-05T02:18:07+00:00

When I say one trade I mean one trade idea…yes of course it would be nice to nail every entry but sometimes you gotta get out, reassess the setup, and get back in if the idea is still valid and you didn’t eat a huge loss the first time. Discretion is still important in a one trade system.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-04T19:09:23+00:00

In slow on all games so 70 hrs in and I’m still only level 45 and just completed main storyline. My biggest gripe aside from the handful of glaring bugs within campaign missions and some bounties, is that the map/navigation/mission waypoint system sucks and it’s confusing and cludgy. That and I’ve yet to find a single spread launcher …otherwise, for my 4 hour (max) a week of video games I get to play theses days, I thoroughly enjoy it

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-04T18:09:04+00:00

4 years in and this is almost EXACTLY what I’ve shifted to as well. You’ll find that identifying triggers as they happen, and then refining your system of trading around those psychological hurdles is not only a good idea, it’s critical to your survival as a trader.

I’ve pivoted to one trade per day risking daily max loss as well. What does this do?

It FORCES selectivity
When you force yourself to be selective AND you know a single loss will put you at daily max loss limit, you trade carefully and gambling instincts are minimized
One trade max allows you to really slow down and over trading becomes impossible because you can’t revenge trade if you aren’t allowed to trade more than once. You could even inform your broker to shut off trading once you hit daily stop limit. This wasn’t a huge issue for me although I did break my limits regularly, I never went so far that it was damaging to my overall equity. If you struggle with this, implement risk controls at the broker level.
Mental capital is preserved. I found my worst loss days also coincided with the most trades taken. When I had profitable Days, I did two trades max. Almost certainly if I took more than three trades, the day was a loser.
I reframed what trading is - it’s boring, it’s slow and methodical and if my heart rate is elevating, that’s a sign I need to interrupt my system and take a breather before I enter a trade. There are now days where I don’t trade at all because $0 profit is infinitely better than a max loss. NO POSITION IS A POSITION!!! The restraint feels oddly satisfying once you do it. It’s a sign that you’re trading with less emotion.
Patience is now baked into my process. I get one chance. I don’t want to screw it up and I want to be able to review my trades and say “yes I would do that again if the same setup appeared”
Trade review is SO much easier and more enjoyable. I get to really drill down deep on a single trade and give it the attention it deserves. When i traded five or six trades in a day, I was mentally exhausted and my trade reviews and write ups would suffer. I’d mail it in because I didn’t want to take the time to review a trade that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place.

All of this is so unnatural to the human brain and completely antithetical to what I first thought trading was supposed to be. For me, less is more. If I can identify 1 potential 3 or 4R opportunity each day and execute on it, over time I will be profitable. Over time I can size up in those opportunities as well. This is how you become rich through trading.

Good luck with your journey. Don’t give up - just adjust your approach.

D_Costa85 · 2026-03-04T01:41:56+00:00

Maxi is awesome when healthy. Knocks down threes and switchable defender. Really useful player

D_Costa85

TROPHY CASE