Day Trading for Beginners

I wanna walk you through the platform that I'm using to generate these sorts of profits.  'Cause I hear it quite a bit. People say, "Clay, that was really awesome.

"I watch your live trade video. "I can't believe you can make that amounts of money "in that quick amounts of time. "But I really don't understand what I was looking at.

"What is that?

"How about that over there?

"What are those things?"

And that's the idea behind this video. I wanna explain my platform and explain the various tools and areas that I'm using, and that you would see on one of my live trade videos.

Now this part is very important going in. What you see on the screen is not one, single platform. There's actually two pieces of software that are forming up my entire platform.

The first is what I'm using for Level 2s, my order execution, and then news. And that would be Lightspeed Trading. Or in the trading terminology, that would be my online brokerage, my online broker, my quote-unquote, app. All of those are one in the same.

Stock Trading

That is who I'm using to get the majority of the data from the market and then execute my order. So buy stocks, sell stocks, and all of that. The other part you see are technical charts. But that is being generated by a third-party service known as eSignal. A little bit more context on this.

Lightspeed Trading requires over $25,000. And then eSignal, I pay over $1,000 per year for these charts. If you hear those and thinking,

"Ah, that's a bit out of my budget," totally fine, not the end of the world.

In that situation, I would recommend We bull. There's a link down in the description box there. But they, first off, offer $0 commissions. And then second, they have really nice charts that are part of their online platform.

So that is a very viable and a very budget-efficient way to go about it if you hear that $25,000 and over $1,000 per year for the these first two choices,

We bull, definitely a good alternative. So here we are looking at my screen. Again, if you've watched my live trade videos, this should look very, very familiar to you.

But let's hop right in. And I will say that please leave any comments below of things that I missed or things that you're still wondering about. I'm gonna do my best, but I very well could miss a few things.

So I'm asking,

please just let me know if you have questions, down in the comment section and you notice something that I missed that you're still wondering about. So let's just first start off with eSignal.

Remember, eSignal is who I'm using to generate my technical charts. And over here, we have the technical chart.

So this is being generated by a separate service outside of my online broker. So to really reiterate that, all this stuff here is through my online broker, through Lightspeed Trading. 

But within the yellow box there, that's all from eSignal, the chart provider.

So what we're looking at here is called a technical chart. And a technical chart at the core is a tool that's telling you a lot about what the price is doing, what's volume doing.

You know, it's taking certain patterns. These patterns tell you a lot about psychology, help you with risk and reward, and help you form trade plans.

So that's why I like and love to use technical charts as the backbone to all my decisions. In this exact situation here, what you're looking at is what would be called a two-minute chart, meaning each one of their candlesticks, as they're called, is two minutes' worth of time. And if you look really close, let me actually just zoom in here a little bit more, you can see that this candle right now is changing right before our eyes.

And that is called real-time data. And that's an important point 'cause I see it quite a bit. I did it when I was new. You go to some website out there and you see a stock price, and then you kind of get confused 'cause you're looking at another source and it's different.

In most cases, if you're just going to places out on the internet, that's gonna be about 10, 15 minutes delayed. Meaning, what you see happens 15 minutes ago.

Online Brokers

In this situation though, and what eSignal and what all online brokers are gonna do for you, assuming their quality, so of course, that's always one of those things you always wanna check is are they giving real-time data?

And real-time data looks like this.

So as I speak, PayPal is acting in this manner, and that candle, like I said, is taking shape. And after two minutes completes, a whole new candle will start. So in fact, right on the, I'm thinking that if it breaks down through that level, we're gonna get a bigger move to the downside. And I was a little too late in that statement there.

But we'll see what happens with it. But point being that real-time data is very important.

The other thing that I've had before, "Okay, Clay, I noticed on your charts"is kind of like two different types of black over here.

"It's a little bit lighter black,"and then it gets a lot darker. "What's going on with that?"

Well in this part, we'll call it the lighter black, this is called pre-market, meaning markets are open outside of the normal hours.

But the easiest way to kind of see that and why not too much happens in pre-market why it's not necessarily worth trading is you look down there, barely any volume.

Then all of a sudden, the blacker black, the dark black, that is the normal market hours and you can see volume kicks in quite a bit. So that is the difference. Just lighter black is pre-market. And then the darker dark starts right at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time which is when the markets officially open up.

So again, all that just based off of eSignal and the technical chart. The next thing to stay focused on. And you know, on that note, what I was talking about. Check it out. Down it goes. After that break through the green line. So the power of charts unfolding right before our eyes. But I won't distract myself any further here.

Now let's focus on this area which would be known as Level 2s. Level 2s are just telling you what exactly is going on with a price in the current market for the stocks.

So in this situation if you look up close there, you can see PayPal Holdings. So we are looking at the PayPal stock, ticker symbol for jargon, PYPL. And this is telling you how the entire market is acting. All stock prices actually have two prices.

One price is what people are willing to pay, which is right there, 103.30, and then what people are willing to sell for over there, 103.37. So it's just an auction that's going on here. You have bidders and you have people making offers. So again, over here, what people are willing to pay. And over here, what people are willing to sell for.

And over here, you have what is called the tape. And that's is just literally what's going on. So right there, you can see 104.43. Some now 104, now I can't even keep up. So that's just telling you what the most recent price was.

So if you go to, let's just say Yahoo Finance, and you see a price on Yahoo Finance, what you're seeing is the most recent price right here. But in all actuality, a stock price actually has two prices over there. Now Level 2s, there's a lot more that goes into it. In fact, I have an entire class that I wanna say is about six hours long. 

It's showing you how to use Level 2s, what you should be paying attention to and all of that. So I don't want you to think that that was just, "Hey, that's how you use Level 2s, "that's all you need to know." No, there's more to it than that.

But for the sake of this video and just explaining what actually it is and what you're seeing, that is how that all works. The next part, we'll move down here. These are my orders, meaning when you decide that you wanna partake and try and get involved in a stock, Lightspeed over here registers that for you. Let's try to make this a little bit bigger here.

So the part of the order box here, nothing fancy. But over here, you just have the time. Now the time is when the order was placed, not when it gets filled. Filled means you get shares.

So if I want shares and then I get those shares, in trading terminology, that would be you got filled. So over here, the time is just simply when I entered in the order. Let's actually do this, just for example sake. 102 to buy. So right now, that's telling that I entered that order right now at Eastern Time, 11:21 a.m. and seven seconds, Eastern Time. Over here, we have the symbol.

So the ticker symbol, it's telling you on what stock you actually wanna buy, PayPal, and then the shares. Meaning, well what's the amount? So right here, I told it that I want 500 shares. And as of right now, I have gotten zero of the 500.

So that's why you have a zero there that I just covered up. But zero 500 just means, I want 500, but the market has given me zero. The next part, well the price. Well okay, yes, Clay, I know you want 500 shares, but at what price do you want those 500 shares?

And I told the platform,"Well, I want 'em at 102." So the price is just telling you at what price you actually want those shares.

'Cause remember, if you just say, "I want shares," that's only a part of the equation. The other part of the equation is well that's great, but at what price? And that's what's going on there. And then the side means, well I what way? And I wanna buy.

Whereas if I wanna sell or short, then that's a different situation.

Shorting means making money when prices go down. And so let's do that real quick. So let's say that I think that PayPal is actually gonna go down in price. So let me make sure of that. So now I wanna sell, meaning I think that if the price, 'cause right now it's at 103.55, give or take, but let's say, that you know what? I think if the price goes up to 105, then it's gonna start to go down.

So at that point, I could say, "Well I wanna," quote-unquote, "go short at 105." So in this situation, let me just put that in there. And now we can see, again, same thing here. So this is a quick little recap. I entered in that order at 11:22 and 39 seconds. PayPal. How many shares? 500. How many shares has the market given me? Zero At what price? 105. 

But then the side, SSL, meaning I wanna sell short. I believe that the price will go down. So that's what the side there is talking about. And then the contract over here is just what route am I using. And I'm definitely not gonna go down this rabbit hole too deep.

But in the market, there are lots of routes you can take. Routes is just, you kind of send people out there to get your shares for you. And you can hire different people to do that. So depending on who you hire, that's what would show up over here.

For me, the default route is just NSDX, or NSDQ, excuse me. So that again, that's not important. That's just the idea of, okay, who is actually gonna go out there and try to do that for you? And that's what that represents over there. Again, you don't have to call up anybody. This is all online, you know, okay how do you make money online? Right here because this is all being done online, part of the software.

And then of course over here I can click right there to exit that order, meaning now I've changed my mind. I don't wanna get in at 105.

So the order has disappeared. As far as past orders, we'll you can see that the history of it all. So I say I made the $600 in less than 10 minutes.

And you can see all that 'cause you can see my first order was put in right there at 9:28. And then my trading was done for the day at so I guess I'm lying right now. It was 10 minutes and 57 seconds it looks like. So sorry, not under 10 minutes. Under 11 minutes, I made the $600.

But right there, so that way you have a track record and you can go back and see exactly what happened and how you traded and how everything played out on the day. So it keeps track of all that. Now there are settings where if I wanted that stuff to all disappear.

Preferences in Trading

You could have that disappear. There's no right or wrong way to do it. That would be a perfect example of personal preference in trading, whether you even want these past orders to stay up there, or if you just want 'em to disappear. And that is how that all works.

I think I got everything in the orders box, 'cause there's a lot right there. As far as positions. So positions is exactly, you know, first off, what is a position in trading terminology? That just means that after I get the shares.

So we'll go back to, remember, I said I wanted to buy 500 shares. So let's say that I actually got the 500 shares. That means that I now have a position in PayPal. So because I have a position in PayPal, that would show up. In fact, let's just do this right now. In fact, let's just... Let's do AT&T just for, so AT&T, and let me just... 

I don't know, I might lose some money here, but I'll survive. So let's go out here and let's say that, you know what?

Actually, we'll do that. Let me end on the position box. Now that I think out loud, and now that I'm gonna actually buy some shares, we'll end there so you can see exactly how all that works. So let's just say though that you know what? I think AT&T, ticker symbol T, is gonna go up. So you know what?

Because I think it's gonna go up, I wanna just get in. And I see right here that people are willing to sell shares of AT&T at 36, well it was 88, now it's 36.89. So because I made that decision, okay, well how can I get those shares? Well first off, we gotta narrow things down because think about it.

Right now I'm saying, "Yeah, I want shares." Okay, but how many shares? And as far as the order entry box which what this is called down here, that's gonna walk you through the process. So the first step of the process, what do we need to do?

Well we just simply need to figure out, well what stock do you actually wanna buy? So the symbol right there, T. The next question, okay, yeah, you wanna buy it, but now how many shares?

So there you would enter how many shares you wanna get. So let's just say for this I want 10 shares.

And then the next question is, okay, that's great. You want AT&T, you want 10 shares, but for what price? And in this situation, let's just say, you know what? I want 'em for 36.90.

So for that, I'll just click the arrows there or I could always just type. So 36.90, or like I said, click those arrows and have it move. So I want 'em 36.90. So what market?

Again, and this is where I could figure out, well who do I wanna hire to go get the shares?

And you have all these different, quote-unquote, people that you could use to go out there and get the shares. like I said, I always just use Nasdaq, so we'll just leave it at that. What type of order?

You have a whole bunch right there. In fact, I will link down below a video that I go over what are all these types, what do they mean.

So I won't go down that rabbit hole because there's an entire video down below. So I'll link to that and it explains all the different order types. And then you can also get fancy over here.

You can hide orders and all that, but like I said, that's getting off into the weeds and stuff that I don't do. And then down here, it's just a matter of, well the final portion is, well are you looking to buy or are you looking to sell?

And in this situation, if you're looking to sell or in other words, go short, meaning make money when prices go down, you would wanna hit the sell button.

In this situation, I wanna buy. So pretty self-explanatory there. Therefore, I would wanna hit the buy button. Oh, great. Now the price has went up to 32.92. So all right, well now that I see this, let's just say, well but I want in.

So what do I need to do? 

Here's a quiz question. What do I need to do to see how well you're answering or understanding?

Well now maybe just notice, "Well now, Clay,"if you want in, sellers are willing to sell "it for 36.93." So I was like, okay, if I want in, I guess I gotta change this now to 36.93.

And again, I wanna buy, so I wanna get 10 shares. So let me click buy and then keep an eye down here. And then also keep an eye on the positions box. So there we are. I just bought 10 shares. And it gives you the exact price. I actually got 'em at $36.9298.

So I mean, it literally a whole lot of decimal places of what I actually got those shares for. So now we can talk more about the position box. So again, as I established, a position just means, hey, I want stock.

But until you actually get the stock from the market, you have no position in it. But because I got those shares of 10.

And now all of a sudden jumped down automatically, as you saw, into the position box. And let's go through it.

So what is my position actually? Well, it's 10 shares. What price did I buy those 10 shares at?

Well, we already discussed that. $36, and we'll just call it 93 cents. And then right here, it's telling me, well what is my open P&L?

P&L means profit and loss. Right now, I am right at break-even. I have not made any money. I have not lost any money because it hasn't moved enough. So that is my current, open means things can still change.

Right?

Open, still the opportunity for things to change. Just like a store is open, just like anything is open. When you're position is open, that means there's fluctuation.

So hopefully we can get some sort of, there we go. So now I'm technically losing 10 cents. Now I'm back to zero.

There we go, right on cue. So that's what that, open. Now closed means nothing has happened. Meaning I have not sold anything.

So show what I mean by close, let's just say, you know what, I think the price might go down, so I just wanna get out some shares. But not every share, so let me just do to five shares. And let me just sell at 36.94, let's just say.

So now watch what happens to this 10 right there. Notice how it went down. So why did it go down?

Well I just, in trading jargon, decreased my position. I sold some of my shares, therefore now instead of 10, that's five.

So what's going on here with my open P&L? Well because the AT&T is going up more, now my open P&L is at 15 cents. However, because I did actually sell some shares, I realized those gains.

Maybe you've heard that before, unrealized gains versus realized gains. Over here, another way you can call that column, unrealized gains, open.

Over here, realized gains, meaning you've closed out some of the positions. And therefore, I technically made five cents on the stock.

Now if I were to sell right now, I could add even more to it 'cause I'm still open that other amount. So in this situation, I'm saying, "Clay, why did I sell?"

Why did I sell at 94? I shoulda held and I can be up at 97 now. So that's what's going on here. That's how that box is working.

And I mean, you need to understand the math in general of how profits and losses are determined. But in all actuality, I mean, the software is going to do it all for you, as you see here.

And as you're seeing. It's literally fluctuating real-time. So let's just say, you know what? I think that this thing is done going up. I wanna get rid of those final five shares.

So what I'm gonna do here is okay, I wanna sell five shares, and I wanna do that at. Actually, I wanna hold on.

So I wanna sell three now. And I wanna sell three at 36.98.

So I'm gonna come down here and watch that number. I'm gonna sell three.

So now what happened? Well, it is at two, right? Nothing fancy with the math. I started with 10, then I wanted to sell five. That brought the position down to five shares. Then I just wanted to sell three. So five minus three.

Now I have two shares left in my AT&T position. So as far as close, what I've realized in profits right there at 20 cents.

Now on the table, I still have this fluctuating back and forth which is showing that there is still an opportunity to potentially make some more money on it if it continues to go in my favor.

But let's just say that things go on and I'm like, "You know, I think I'm just done."

So I wanna get rid of the last two. 

So let me just go to two and say, you know what? I'm going to sell 'em at 36, if I could type right, 36.99. Well let me just go ahead at 98 so I can get out.

There we go, I'm not sure why it was going. So I'm just gonna click sell, and that'll go to zero.

So there we are, all out of the position, meaning I no longer have a position. And you can see right there, going through everything.

So open, I have no more opportunity to make or lose money on this one because I don't have any more shares.

So that is why the open P&L, the unrealized gains or losses, is back to zero. And then closed, meaning realized, meaning it is what it is so far, I ended up making 30 cents on that trade.

And I shoulda bought like 10,000 shares, that woulda been a great trade. But welcome to the world of hindsight in trading.

So that's how everything functions together from the order and then the positions box. And then finally, as far as news, I just use this down here. Nothing fancy.

I mean, sometimes people go way, I use news, but not a whole lot.

So if I were to, you know, kind of just curious, "Well what's going on with AT&T," what I like about Lightspeed is they give you the time and the dates of when the news are out. So let's see, today is the 24th.

So zero news on AT&T today because again, the date of this recording is 10/24. And you can see right there, that date is actually 10/23. So yesterday there was something.

But if thinking, "You know, what actually was yesterday," you can click on that. And you can just see, let's see. "CNN to launch digital news service to compete "with Facebook and Apple."

So and because AT&T owns CNN, that would make sense why AT&T would be part of that. But you can just close that out. So that's something that I have down in the corner.

Nothing big because sure, I'll use news every now and then, just for kind of out curiosity sake. But I mean, if something big is happening, it's gonna be reflected in the volume on the chart down here.

You know, when big things happen, you're gonna have bigger volume spikes come in. So that's kind of my main news source, it's just watching the volume on the chart.

Thinking and Scanning

I did pause the video there 'cause I was thinking and scanning the screen, and I think I talked about the vast majority of what you're seeing. So again, as a recap here and in conclusion, over here we have the technical chart and that is coming from eSignal. Over here, we have Level 2s.

That is coming from Lightspeed, my broker. Down here, we have the orders, meaning, you know trying to get involved. That is coming from Lightspeed. Down here, we have the positions, meaning after you actually get stock. That is coming from Lightspeed.

And then the order execution, the order entry, you know, all that, the order management, all those different terminologies, those are all functioning down here in this box. Once again, coming from my broker.

And then over here, the news coming from my broker, Lightspeed. So that is my screen.

That is what everything is representing. That is how it all functions.

And as I started, before I got into the details here, if I missed something or if you're still wondering about something, again, please let me know.

As far as the order type is concerned and how all those different things function, again, have a video linked down below to that. But that's what I have.

Just say, "Hey, I like this, can you do more, "show of in-depth," because I mean we are up over 20 minutes.

And I don't have a whole lot of 20-minute videos on the channel.

But if you enjoy those sorts of videos, and everybody's saying, "Yeah, Clay, "I don't mind a longer video "when it pertains to this sort of stuff." Then like I said, communicate that to me.

And the easiest way to do that is to hit the Like button and leave a comment, and also just check out the rest of the channel. And a lot of other different types of videos that you'll find, the live trade videos. So maybe you've never even seen one of these live trade videos.

So if you wanna see all this in action, then again, just go through the YouTube channel here and you'll see plenty of live trade videos there. And now when you look at it, you'll have a much better idea, hopefully, of what's going on.

And I'll keep an eye for any questions, but I appreciate you hanging out for this long and hopefully you now understand a whole lot better about my online platform and what you actually see on the screen.

First off, thanks so much for watching the entire video.

Real quick, before you go, I wanna invite you to a live webinar, web class, training, workshop, online event, whatever you wanna call it, but it will be me, live, revealing to you what I've discovered that has allowed me to transform myself from being an employee to being my own boss. Including how I had only one losing day out of 73 days in total.

I'm going to cover three keys that have helped me unlock profitable consistency within the markets. The first key is super weird, but in a productive type of way. The second key is super awesome, because it, quite literally, is wired into our DNA as humans, making it very easy to use.

But in a cruel way, this becomes a pitfall for many traders. I'll explain it all though, including how to avoid the pitfall that it creates for some.

And yeah, the third key when you hear it sounds way too good to be true, but it's not, and I'll show you how it all works.

Then at the end, I open it up for a question and answer session that is, again, totally live.

Even if you can't make the live session, please still sign up as it will be recorded, and you can go back and watch the replay that I will send you.

Click the image on the screen or click the link down in the description box so you can get the date and time and claim your spot which I should note, is limited due to the fact this truly is a live event.

If you have any questions, let me know. If not, I'll be seeing you soon.