Choosing your Trading Room can be as exacting as Choosing your life partner

Are you part of a Trading Room? Or looking at which one to go with but not too confident where to put your money? Well having run a Trading Room and being part of a few well known ones, I’ve come to understand that there are a few things you need to consider before you have your pick.. As they say Birds of a feather flock together, so here’s how to find your nest..going with the bird metaphor!

Your Trading Worldview - What beliefs do you hold dear to you and what are you willing to let go? Gann numbers or Elliot Wave; Market profile/Orderflow or Market Internals? Quant based or Qual based trading...you see where i’m going with this. Seldom have i come across Trading rooms serving all and being good at it. See what aligns with your worldview before joining a Room

Learning Environment - Telling vs. Learning. Some Trading rooms ‘Tell’ you what trades to take and when, so you are more an implementer of their trading decisions and there are other Trading Rooms which may focus on working through a process that is consistently called out, so you are not just executing trades but also understand the logic behind taking a particular trade. One way to know if it is the later, is to look for consistency in the trading process/rules being followed. Do you understand why a trade was taken or cancelled. How do they rationalize losses? Do they provide reasons?

Metrics & Tracking - What gets measured gets done. Any room that is brave enough to put out their performance chart, every day, consistently , ‘Respect’. Day trading is like any other business, you need to run an end of the day tally, else how would you know which days you do better? whether there is a correlation between your green days and other factors like range etc? Any room which shies away from it , is not being true to the game.

Integrity - Claims vs. Reality. Timing is key here. Tall claims based on Hindsight Analysis are for newbies and seasoned Trading Rooms would stay clear of it and instead would be able to show real time decisions taken in the Room. Bet on that!

Look before you leap - Ask for a trial - any Room that is confident of giving you one, darn sure they know their business. It’s that clear.

Trading Instruments - Jack of all; Master of None. How does that sound? I will be a little hesitant to put my money there. Prefer to work with specialists and experts, in one or two areas . Know your instruments and chose your Trading Room partner. Side note: Did you know : In an Indian context trading Futures makes less sense compared to Options esp. intraday. Just saying, time you get that nuanced in understanding this game.

Trade Setups - What's your Risk appetite?What RIsk Reward ratio are you comfortable with?40 point SL ?30 point SL?10 point SL? And add to that the holding period, and the scene changes completely: Intraday vs Positional or Swing, both approaches have very different risk levels and risk management approaches. Choose a Room that aligns with your Risk appetite ratio

Charting & Live Screencast - This is a kicker. All trading rooms boast of proprietary indicators. Guilty as charged. But hey, there is a method to the madness. Does the Room take the effort to explain these indicator and point out why a certain decision was taken , have user manuals explaining these indicators and finally do they have enough back tested data in support of these indicators..then you have a winner.

Trust this helps you sieve through the noise and pick your Trading Partner. it’s not that you are going to be wedded for life so go ahead and walk down the aisle. Happy Trading.

Kavitha K7 & Sandeep Rao