🚫 Pitfalls of No Trading Plan:

• Can lead to frequent strategy shifts and rash decisions.
• Trading without a plan lacks direction and assurance, ultimately leading to confusion, frustration, and more $ being lost.

✅ Benefits of a Solid Plan:

• Infuses calmness, uniformity, and clarity into trading.
• Enhances confidence and introduces a methodical approach, ultimately leading to more opportunity to make $ in the market.

📊 Strategy Name: "Alpine Blueprint for Trend Traders"

Description:

My trend trading strategy is one that's been curated over the years and broken down into a very simplistic model and strategy. At the heart of this strategy are 3 pillars that will make you successful: 1) Find the trend/momentum, 2) Buy the pullback, 3) Ride the wave. If you can excel at these three steps, you will be left with a system that allows you to be consistently profitable in a trading space where other “gurus” make it seem like you need to study complex strategies to have success. I'm here to prove to you, that it's a lie and definitely not needed! So let's get into it.

🔑 Key Concepts:

• Trend/Momentum: As a trend trader, we are able to capitalize when a stock has trend and momentum (think about Apple going from $100 to $110). Plenty of range = more opportunity as a trader to profit on. On the other hand it is hard for us to make money when a stock moves without trend and momentum (think about Apple only moving from $100 to $102 in 3 days time = very little opportunity).
• Higher Time Frames: A lot of newer traders get stuck in the lower time frame echo chamber. There is a lot of noise in lower time frames and it can be hard to see the overall market structure and picture by looking solely at 2 or 5 min charts. Before entering any trades, assessing the larger time frames like the daily chart or the hourly chart can help give you an idea of where price can go to. In fact, before I trade every day, I ALWAYS zoom out on the names that I am watching to see where we are on the charts at a high level.
• Key Levels/Pivots: Once we zoom out and look at larger time frames, we can see that there are also key levels on the chart. This will help us keep our risk minimal and also give us targets to hold to when we are entering into a trade. Think of key levels like very strong magnets of support and resistance on a chart. The term “level” is interchangeable with “pivot” on the chart.

Risk Management:

✳️ Risk Management:

• Position Sizing: Keeping your sizing consistent as your account grows (or shrinks) is key here. For me personally, I will never enter a trade with more than 20% of my portfolio when it is a high confidence set up that matches my system, and usually keep my sizing around 10-15% of my account per trade.
• Stop Loss: I always look to keep my maximum loss on one trade no more than 15-20% (but I am human and sometimes I get loose with this and IT WILL hurt you).
• Take Profit: Once we are in a trade, it's imperative to know when to take profits, or when to sell the position that you took. Without having targets to play to (whether it is levels or % gain targets, we are just flying blind with no real SOLID PLAN)!
• Risk to Reward: Now that you understand how I think of stop losses and take profits, it's time to talk about Risk to Reward. Some people use the term “R-Multiple”, but really they are just talking about how much you are risk compared to what you aim to make. Put simply, if you are risking 20% loss to make a 40% gain, your risk to reward ratio is 1:2. If you risk 15% and make 45%, your R:R ratio on that trade was 1:3. The higher this ratio the becomes, the more profitable you will become if your win rate % remains the same (you're make more per trade, but still taking the same amount of green trades). For example, if we both have a 50% win rate over 20 trades, but my R:R is 1:4 and yours is 1:2, I will make more money over those trades.

🔍 How To Find Trend Set Ups: