Ask Groot: Live Q&A on Stops, Sizing and the Mental Game

Behind the next logical barrier: a VWAP band, the value area high or low, the point of control. Something price bounces off. I can’t stand getting whipped out at breakeven and then watching my trade go without me. I hate that more than losing the trade.

When the market is swinging hard, I protect my stops more carefully. I remember when a move that size took all day. Now it takes a couple of minutes. You have to adjust to the environment.

I trade only minis and I measure everything in dollars, so ES or NQ doesn’t matter. My comfortable stop is $200 to $400. When I scalp and I’m being disciplined, the automatic stop sits around $250 to $300. Past $400 I start to get nervous.

NQ hits that stop much faster than ES, so your entry has to be more accurate. The better my entry, the less I worry about my stop.

Honestly, no. A lot of the time I stop myself out. I know where I need to get out and when the trade doesn’t work anymore, and most of the time I get out when I’m supposed to.

Sometimes I don’t. That’s when the brain takes over: wait, the buyers are going to show up any minute. The next thing you know, you’re down $1,000. Stops are an emotional thing, which is why Chris stresses the mental conditioning.

On a sniper entry, the point of control is my target. If it doesn’t look like it’s getting there, I’ll take $200, be happy with it and move on. It’s discretionary, based on everything my tools are telling me.

On a momentum scalp, I’m out when TickStrike or the cumulative delta goes quiet. When the chaos stops, I get out.

A resting order sitting at a level, say the value area high. If a wick pops up, grabs it and comes down immediately, that’s a beautiful snipe. A Madonna is the same idea: an order at the Initial Balance high, waiting for price to touch it for the first time. Same thing, just in different places.

Everybody’s is different, and everybody is in a different place in life. Think about what an hour of work pays where you live. If losing $100 makes you sick to your stomach, $100 shouldn’t be your stop. There’s nothing wrong with trading a micro.

If you have very little money to risk, micros and prop firms are the way to go. Don’t even consider hooking a cash account up to a micro: everybody knows you can lose hundreds of dollars in seconds. Know how much you can lose before you do damage. Chris builds this into your trading plan and risk management plan in the Inner Circle.

I traded micros and found myself managing six, seven, eight of them to make a trade worth it. I’d rather manage one or two minis.

My tolerance came from years of trading a cash account, and losing real money in one. After that, micros feel like a sim account to me. That’s my history, not a rule for you.

Graduate. When you’re comfortable with micros, move to one mini. When you’re comfortable with one mini, trade two, levelled in the right way, not both at once. Only when you’re comfortable trading minis should you copy trade across accounts.

Your risk tolerance gets stronger with time. You get more confident. Anybody can learn it.

Rarely. I usually trade one or two per trade. When it’s more, it’s usually me adding at the next level on a trade that went against me. I’m not a perfect trader. It usually comes back, but the question is whether you can take the heat. A good entry is the real key.

I set one on every account in Tradovate‘s settings, usually between $500 and $1,000, depending on how much profit is in the account. It isn’t the same every day. If I take a couple of hits, I bring it down. You have to manage your accounts.

I prefer the 50K account. It’s my sweet spot. 100K is good too. Never anything smaller than a 50.

No. A drawdown is different from a stop loss. The daily limit means you screwed up and should stop trading today. If you lose $1,000 in an account in a day, take a break. Walk away. Revenge trading that $1,000 back usually turns into a $2,000 day.

Copy trading is its own level of risk tolerance, so only start once you’re comfortable trading minis. My wheels have gotten smaller over time. I generally run two or three accounts per wheel and trade one wheel at a time, as if it were one account. Five accounts in one trade is too much for me.

You have to read the market. On a trending day, when it gives me PDC after PDC, I trade the wheels as much as I can. When it’s choppy, or the news has everything jumping, or I’m not in a good mood, I pull one account out and trade just that spoke. It isn’t as easy to crank as a machine, but it’s how I’ll reach my goals. More on the wheel system.

No. Hedging makes sense with options. Day trading futures, I need to be committed to my setup. I enter a trade expecting it to go a certain direction.

Easy, 90% is controlling yourself. I’m a data scientist by trade. The computers and the charts don’t scare me. I can execute all day long. What messes me up is my brain and my emotions, almost always.

Lately, it’s life. The happier I am with my non-trading life, the better trader I am.

And Chris’s mental edge conditioning. If you think it’s silly to meditate, you’re missing something very important. Meditation is what stops FOMO. It stops panic. It stops the insecurity about where to put my stop or where to take my profit. And it isn’t a one-time thing. You practice it every day. More in Success Psychology.

We all have the same problem. I go on tilt a lot less than I used to. Money is the key: we grow up learning so many things about it, and when it’s on the line, your brain is wired differently. A Jekyll and Hyde can come out at any moment. You get better at it with practice, and the conditioning is how you practice.

I know myself. If I’m not in a good mood or my mindset isn’t right, I don’t trade. I’m OK with not trading. I don’t even get up for the New York open, probably the most profitable time of the day. I could force myself, but I’d be tired and cranky, and I wouldn’t trade well anyway.

That takes practice and self-discipline. Self-discipline is doing what you should do when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. Do it enough and it becomes a habit, like brushing your teeth.

It’s a business, and it’s hard work. The charts are only part of it: Chris’s videos, the watch parties, the Inner Circle, the books. If you want income from trading, you need a business plan. I support my spouse through trading.

And I don’t put all my eggs in one basket. I have other businesses and other streams of income, some that make money while I sleep. Depending on the market for my daily bills would be emotionally taxing.

Always look left. My charts come on around 10:30 New York time, when the day session’s Initial Balance is set. About 90% of my trades are in Globex, and by the Globex open the day session has told me the story: did it gap, trend, chop? Globex often mimics the day session’s open, just on a smaller scale.

Two: the day session’s and Globex’s. The Globex IB is 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. New York time. I wait for it to set, then compare it with the day session’s. Is one inside the other? On top of the other? When the Globex IB sits above the day’s, price often comes back down to those levels. Every day is different.

It’s slow until it’s not. When it decides to move, it moves. My TradeZella data says my best hour, for years, has been 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. New York time, the hour before the Asia open.

Volume profile. If you trade without it, you’re just trading bands. I carry the day session’s point of control into the evening, and price is attracted back to it. Volume profile and VWAP together: I could almost trade with just those two.

And I never trade without TickStrike, Bookmap and Financial Juice running.

The first trade or two often goes on an evaluation account. A lot of times we think we’re hot stuff, take a couple of trades and realize we’re not reading the market right today. Better to find that out on an eval.

The same things Chris teaches. It’s hard to journal your losses, but I journal everything. Tradovate feeds my trades into TradeZella, I export them every day to Claude, and it gives me a summary.

It’s seen my trades for a long time. It knows the VWAP Wave System, my setups and my risk management, and it’s brutally honest: you cut this one short, you let that stop run way too far. I study that review last thing. It’s like a coach, or a caddy. It also plots my trades onto my TradingView charts, and I fill in the grade and the setup.