Just a snapshot of where I'm at as a new trader: 

I joined the challenge almost a year ago to date. After studying about 80% of the entire course material, I've realized that I am becoming way too 'book smart' and have applied exactly 0% of what I should be doing to actual trading... so I'd better start integrating all this stuff before my head explodes and I lose my entire motivation on why I wanted to do this in the first place.

Over the past 1.5 weeks:

-prepped a few scans/watchlists based off of STT scans; Tim's DVDs

-am loosely 'verifying' the stocks to trade with what people are trading in chatrooms... keeping in mind the only real way to be right is to trade them and make a profit; not follow other traders

-started paper trading this week. I plan to start off with a very small trading account of $1500

-In the PST time zone and have been TRYING to get up at 6 am - OH GOD IT'S BEEN SO HARD! Literally my eyes do NOT want to open at this god forsaken hour. 

This week I've got to start getting to bed at 10 PM (this is 1.5 - 2 hours earlier than what I'm used to) but I've got to start streamlining my schedule to align with the trading open hours. 

Yesterday I attended an eye-opening 3 hour seminar hosted by our head of development (in my day job) and it gave me a few insights into how to trade extremely conservatively... the key to being a giant and surviving 60+ years in one of the riskiest industries that exist involves a TON of risk management. 

If you can measure it, you can manage it. Manage your exposure, adapt, protect your resources, cut losses and be fucking brutal about cutting them when it's not going in your favor. 

Taking it to my level as a new trader: 

-managing risk so that risk aversion to loss is very high -I can't cut losses intelligently until I've traded enough to know what I don't know 

-managing profit margins so I know exactly where my profit stands at 1 - 6% gains and where I am cutting

# of trades: First 1-500 trades / 500 - 1000 trades 

Analyzing what sectors work best 

Analyzing what plays work best 

What price points work best 

And conversely - the opposite. Eventually seeing what I'm awful at; pricepoints to avoid; what doesn't work given the bear market.

Curious to see if anyone else has looked into their stats like this? If someone has been in trading for a few months or a year what they've realized from their 1st year of trading?

Trying to build in those good habits - !