James

+$1.23m for 2025 1H 2025 = $215k 2H 2025 = $1.02m Another huge year for me, and my second consecutive 7 figure year. While I always had confidence I would become a consistently profitable trader, I never really imagined that I would be able to achieve something like this. Below I’ll provide additional context about my trading journey and how I made my money this year. Some of the following content was included in my end-of-year post last year, but since I deleted that post I thought it was worth repeating here. Like many others, five years ago I saw Nick Fabrio‘s post showing that he’d made $1m of profit from intraday trading. After this, I discovered other Australian traders like Austin Mitchum, James Chen and Bryce Edwards. These traders proved, contrary to conventional wisdom, that it is possible to make a good living from short-term trading. This sparked my own trading journey, which I started by risking $1 per trade for many months. Since then, I’ve developed an edge in a few different setups and I’ve sized up significantly. This year, my turnover was over 50x higher than in my first year (and getting close to $1bn, which would have seemed absolutely crazy to me five years ago). I’m definitely not the best trader out there; there are plenty of Australian traders with much more experience than me, some of whom presumably earn significantly more. However, most successful traders aren’t well known or don’t post their P&L, probably because humility is such an important character trait in becoming successful. The main reason I still post my P&L is to show that it is still possible to make money from short-term trading on the ASX. In a journey plagued with difficulty and self-doubt, I think there is value in knowing that the destination is actually achievable. If you’re going to post P&L (particularly big positive numbers), I think transparency is important. It’s much easier to share wins than losses, which is why you see a lot more of the former. This presents a misleading picture of how easy it is to succeed. I once heard someone describe trading as ‘pulling money out of thin air’. This should be difficult, and it is. Successful traders are the tip of the iceberg. Even if you do achieve success, it’s inevitably a long runway, full of setbacks and emotional turmoil. However, if you love trading and you’re prepared to work hard, then it can be done. Throughout my trading journey I’ve shared both the highs and the lows, from my very first trade. I don’t think there is a more complete record of an ASX trader’s journey out there. In the spirit of transparency, I would like to provide some additional context to my performance this year. Similar to last year, I made a significant amount of profit from swing trades, not intraday trades, often using significant amounts of capital (and bolstered by leverage). In theory, it would have been possible to make $1m purely from intraday trading on the ASX this year. However, it would have taken a truly elite performance. If you want to make bigger money on the ASX, a large part of that probably has to come from swing trades, because liquidity in the Australian market puts a cap on how much you can earn intraday. I note that my swing trades were typically measured in days/weeks, rather than months. Second, I was fortunate to already have some savings built up before I started trading (and a spouse who still earns a good income). It’s this financial security that enabled me to survive the $80k drawdown early in my trading career, which would have crippled the vast majority of developing traders. It also enables me to endure significant drawdowns and overnight risk. Third, the fact that I don’t need the money from trading to pay for living expenses gives me a psychological advantage which is difficult to overstate. It’s a huge part of the reason I was able to advance my sizing and profitability as quickly as I have. I think I still would have achieved success if I started with less capital, but it’s hard to say for sure and it definitely would have slowed down my growth rate. Now for some comments on my trading performance this year: - I finished the year strong with a $437k winning trade in WAF (about $350k after hedging). This was a deep value play right up my alley and I sized it very aggressively. - Overall, I’m not actually that happy with how I traded through the year. Compared to last year, I made about $100k additional net profit. However, I made 68% more trades and had 143% more turnover, so I was a lot less efficient. More importantly, my maximum drawdown was ~$250k, compared to ~$40k last year. I also had four drawdowns of $200k or more. Ultimately, this meant a lot more stress and volatility for relatively little gain. - One of my goals for the year was to minimise big losses, and I completely failed at this. In total, I had 39 losses exceeding $10k for a total net loss of over $1m! Some of this was due to bigger sizing, but many losses were still too big, the biggest coming from DRO over the course of two days (almost $200k in total). There was undeniably a lot of avoidable P&L leakage from losses that were bigger than necessary. - Sizing aggressively has always been one of my strengths. Sometimes, this results in outsized losses, but the flipside is that I also made a number of great winning trades. My biggest winning trades were as follows: o $437k in WAF (swing trade held for about 30 days) o $120k in YAL (swing trade held for about 20 days) o $120k in APX (intraday) o $90k in BOT (intraday) o $76k in RUL (swing trade held for about 10 days). - I made almost 70% of my P&L for the year from these top five trades. 100% of my P&L came from just my top 15 winning trades. Obviously, it isn’t realistic to assume I could just make big winners and nothing else, but it does show that a lot of the smaller trades are kind of meaningless for me. - I strayed into index trading, which worked well initially but I abused it and ended up giving back all of the initial profits and more. This is a good tool to have in the toolbox, but there isn’t much edge there for me so it’s something I need to use sparingly. - I failed to really take advantage of any major trades/themes, like rare earths, precious metals, lithium and DRO short. In the latter three trades/themes I had large positions established but didn’t manage to hold on for any meaningful gain (and in the case of DRO, I got smoked completely). In future, something I want to try is reducing my size and increasing my timeframe to reduce the variance of my P&L and my reliance on perfect timing. Going forward, I’ve reached a point where I don’t need to keep pushing so hard and take so much risk, so I’d like to change how I trade to reduce stress and allow more time for other pursuits (eg golf, exercise, time with kids, projects around the home). I imagine this will mean less intraday trading, lower size and longer timeframes. The trade-off will probably be less P&L, but I’m okay with this. Thanks to everyone who has followed me and provided encouragement or support over the past few years. If you have any questions please post them below or reach out to me privately.

It’s highly discretionary. In this case I was already holding a big position into the news, so on the gap down I was already pretty far over my intended risk for the trade. I had conviction so I added, but not as much as I probably would have without the existing position. At the end of the day I was still significantly in the red. If I had rigid rules I would have been stopping out on the gap down. Breaking rules works sometimes, just have to be right a lot more often than you’re wrong in those situations if you want to stay in the game longer term!

@_findingmyedge NHC trade 🔥 — you mentioned sizing up into the 2nd s/out + after the 10% gap down on results. When you're adding into what looks like weakness on a conviction name, how do you think about position sizing across the adds? Fixed increment/remaining risk budget/tape read?

+$1.05m for March My biggest wins in March were all long thermal coal stocks. This is a sector I'm very comfortable with and I knew they would be beneficiaries of the conflict in Iran. In general, the coal sector was slower to move than the O&G sector so there were a few attractive spots to size up with very good risk/reward. My biggest win came from NHC. This was very tricky to trade at the start of the month with a couple of big shake-outs. I took a $50k loss in the first one (10th of March), but added into the second one (17th of March). I was holding decent size before their results and thought the 10% gap down was a big overreaction. This ended up being a great spot to add size, and NHC climbed 20% over the next three days from that open. I traded around a core over the next couple of weeks, and fully exited on the 30th/31st of March. Other big wins came from TER and YAL (realised on 9th/10th of March). I also made almost $200k from trading WTI over various trades, predominantly long. My biggest loss came from YAL, which I initially entered short as a hedge for NHC. YAL proceeded to rip my face off and cost me almost $100k when it gapped up 4.5% on the 12th of March. Making $1m in a month is something I never imagined I would achieve. I was fortunate to have the right experience at the right time, and also lucky to get some great entries, particularly in NHC. One of my strengths has always been sizing up in asymmetric setups, and this served me very well during the month.

@trade4a_livin Thanks mate, didn't manage any golf in March unfortunately! Hopefully a lot more going forward.

@_findingmyedge Incredible result mate💪 even more so considering you spend half your time on the golf course each week!😎

@samfl0ws Yeah DMA CFDs through FP Markets, Cygnet and 26 Degrees. FP Markets is the most accessible to get started in Australia. I just use Viewpoint as the platform.

@_findingmyedge Wow incredible, amazing work 🙌🏼 haven't traded Aussie stuff much before, who and what do you guys actually trade? DMA CFDs? Who's the best broker to have a go at it? And platform to trade from? That one that is about 200/m? Can't remember the name. Keep it up mate, followed!

@instantdoodle I'm typically trading around a core position in my swing trades.

@_findingmyedge Great post, question with the swing trades you're doing, are you adding to them over the days, or the profit is from a single entry and just holding?

+$1.23m for 2025 1H 2025 = $215k 2H 2025 = $1.02m Another huge year for me, and my second consecutive 7 figure year. While I always had confidence I would become a consistently profitable trader, I never really imagined that I would be able to achieve something like this. Below I’ll provide additional context about my trading journey and how I made my money this year. Some of the following content was included in my end-of-year post last year, but since I deleted that post I thought it was worth repeating here. Like many others, five years ago I saw Nick Fabrio‘s post showing that he’d made $1m of profit from intraday trading. After this, I discovered other Australian traders like Austin Mitchum, James Chen and Bryce Edwards. These traders proved, contrary to conventional wisdom, that it is possible to make a good living from short-term trading. This sparked my own trading journey, which I started by risking $1 per trade for many months. Since then, I’ve developed an edge in a few different setups and I’ve sized up significantly. This year, my turnover was over 50x higher than in my first year (and getting close to $1bn, which would have seemed absolutely crazy to me five years ago). I’m definitely not the best trader out there; there are plenty of Australian traders with much more experience than me, some of whom presumably earn significantly more. However, most successful traders aren’t well known or don’t post their P&L, probably because humility is such an important character trait in becoming successful. The main reason I still post my P&L is to show that it is still possible to make money from short-term trading on the ASX. In a journey plagued with difficulty and self-doubt, I think there is value in knowing that the destination is actually achievable. If you’re going to post P&L (particularly big positive numbers), I think transparency is important. It’s much easier to share wins than losses, which is why you see a lot more of the former. This presents a misleading picture of how easy it is to succeed. I once heard someone describe trading as ‘pulling money out of thin air’. This should be difficult, and it is. Successful traders are the tip of the iceberg. Even if you do achieve success, it’s inevitably a long runway, full of setbacks and emotional turmoil. However, if you love trading and you’re prepared to work hard, then it can be done. Throughout my trading journey I’ve shared both the highs and the lows, from my very first trade. I don’t think there is a more complete record of an ASX trader’s journey out there. In the spirit of transparency, I would like to provide some additional context to my performance this year. Similar to last year, I made a significant amount of profit from swing trades, not intraday trades, often using significant amounts of capital (and bolstered by leverage). In theory, it would have been possible to make $1m purely from intraday trading on the ASX this year. However, it would have taken a truly elite performance. If you want to make bigger money on the ASX, a large part of that probably has to come from swing trades, because liquidity in the Australian market puts a cap on how much you can earn intraday. I note that my swing trades were typically measured in days/weeks, rather than months. Second, I was fortunate to already have some savings built up before I started trading (and a spouse who still earns a good income). It’s this financial security that enabled me to survive the $80k drawdown early in my trading career, which would have crippled the vast majority of developing traders. It also enables me to endure significant drawdowns and overnight risk. Third, the fact that I don’t need the money from trading to pay for living expenses gives me a psychological advantage which is difficult to overstate. It’s a huge part of the reason I was able to advance my sizing and profitability as quickly as I have. I think I still would have achieved success if I started with less capital, but it’s hard to say for sure and it definitely would have slowed down my growth rate. Now for some comments on my trading performance this year: - I finished the year strong with a $437k winning trade in WAF (about $350k after hedging). This was a deep value play right up my alley and I sized it very aggressively. - Overall, I’m not actually that happy with how I traded through the year. Compared to last year, I made about $100k additional net profit. However, I made 68% more trades and had 143% more turnover, so I was a lot less efficient. More importantly, my maximum drawdown was ~$250k, compared to ~$40k last year. I also had four drawdowns of $200k or more. Ultimately, this meant a lot more stress and volatility for relatively little gain. - One of my goals for the year was to minimise big losses, and I completely failed at this. In total, I had 39 losses exceeding $10k for a total net loss of over $1m! Some of this was due to bigger sizing, but many losses were still too big, the biggest coming from DRO over the course of two days (almost $200k in total). There was undeniably a lot of avoidable P&L leakage from losses that were bigger than necessary. - Sizing aggressively has always been one of my strengths. Sometimes, this results in outsized losses, but the flipside is that I also made a number of great winning trades. My biggest winning trades were as follows: o $437k in WAF (swing trade held for about 30 days) o $120k in YAL (swing trade held for about 20 days) o $120k in APX (intraday) o $90k in BOT (intraday) o $76k in RUL (swing trade held for about 10 days). - I made almost 70% of my P&L for the year from these top five trades. 100% of my P&L came from just my top 15 winning trades. Obviously, it isn’t realistic to assume I could just make big winners and nothing else, but it does show that a lot of the smaller trades are kind of meaningless for me. - I strayed into index trading, which worked well initially but I abused it and ended up giving back all of the initial profits and more. This is a good tool to have in the toolbox, but there isn’t much edge there for me so it’s something I need to use sparingly. - I failed to really take advantage of any major trades/themes, like rare earths, precious metals, lithium and DRO short. In the latter three trades/themes I had large positions established but didn’t manage to hold on for any meaningful gain (and in the case of DRO, I got smoked completely). In future, something I want to try is reducing my size and increasing my timeframe to reduce the variance of my P&L and my reliance on perfect timing. Going forward, I’ve reached a point where I don’t need to keep pushing so hard and take so much risk, so I’d like to change how I trade to reduce stress and allow more time for other pursuits (eg golf, exercise, time with kids, projects around the home). I imagine this will mean less intraday trading, lower size and longer timeframes. The trade-off will probably be less P&L, but I’m okay with this. Thanks to everyone who has followed me and provided encouragement or support over the past few years. If you have any questions please post them below or reach out to me privately.

@ruethewhirl551 NHC wasn't very clean but I guess that's what presents the opportunity if you have conviction (and get lucky)!

@_findingmyedge This is great… asymmetric is right… this sort of catalyst is a trader’s dream… glad you capitalised 👍 … coal stocks traded even cleaner than oil stocks… which are bloody dreadful lol.

@huzlft Yeah with leverage, typically around 10:1.

@_findingmyedge Brilliant brother. Are these trades with leverage if so what ratio?

@_findingmyedge Hey James, do you mind sharing your entries and exits for the NHC trade as that was the bulk of your profits for this month? It made a relatively small move on the 31st. Just trying to see what you were seeing there as that looks like a pretty random trade on the daily chart.

@giantpaperclip5 I didn't really have a plan on the 17th. I saw it gapping down early but didn't expect it to gap down that much. I ended up buying 100k shares in the first minute and another 100k shares during the rest of the day. Average for the day was $4.86.

i had a feeling u would crush it this month again given the market dynamics and the opportunities in the energy sector man, crazy. how did u plan the NHC trade on the 17th? u would've seen the pre market gapping down, did u plan to wait the break of the the ORHs before adding or just decided to buy straight out the gate?

@ImStereotypic Position size varies quite a bit; the average was about $650k for March. Largest position was about $3m in NHC.

@_findingmyedge What was your average position size to net 1.05mil? Or how did you manage different position sizes?

@Dwyzee Thank you mate 🙏

@_findingmyedge Incredibly humble no luck here you are simply a ⭐️ Wd

@Joe_Zzzzz Highly discretionary for the large trades. I don’t really think in terms of %, but more in terms of how much $$ I’m willing to risk. With the larger trades that’s around $50k.

@_findingmyedge Thanks for the reply. I should’ve asked what your risk was for these trades. Like somewhere between 5-10%? Or just based on chart pattern?

@sarahcvxp It’s hard to say as I don’t measure this, and the amount of money in my trading accounts fluctuates significantly with deposits/withdrawals. Safe to say it would be a high percentage of my average trading account equity over the month (ie 100%+).

@_findingmyedge k, but what is that in terms of %?

@Joe_Zzzzz With the larger size multi-day trades a hard stop isn’t really feasible because there usually isn’t close to enough liquidity in the book to sell into. Generally have to sell manually over a period of time to minimise slippage as much as possible.

@_findingmyedge Well done man! One can only imagine what you go through holding these positions overnight. Just wondering if you usually have any hard stop in place for these multiday trades?

@WinningYears I trade CFDs with 26 Degrees, Cygnet and FP Markets.

@_findingmyedge What do you trade on?

+$274k for Jan Selectivity was A++ this month, with only 33 trades (70% less than my recent average). I basically waited for trades that really spoke to me and hit them hard. Undoubtedly plenty of luck in a result like this, but this is definitely how I should be trading. (1/3)

@ZeOnlyGui I made a few trades in it so it's a bit hard to generalise, but over the month if you had a long bias and waited for dips it was a pretty good strategy. I would generally average into positions over the course of 1-2 days so I couldn't get shaken out too easily.

@_findingmyedge very impressive how did you trade the WTI? just so crazy that I would not risk a dime on it...

@James2464 I don't think so, valuations are too high for me to consider them good risk/reward at the moment.

@_findingmyedge Nice work, do you see a good long position with lithium stocks at the moment?

@SpecWrangler Someka journal

@_findingmyedge Been looking for this spreadsheet! What's it called again please?

+$247k for February Great start to the month with an overnight short in NST/BGL. A couple of days later I took my first big hit for the year in some US coal names. Happy with the trade, just no follow through there after our names did well on some supply news out of Indonesia. Selectivity was very good again. I found it difficult to find day 1 news trades with good r/r so didn't do too much there.

@ruethewhirl551 Yeah nice, I've been a bit too sceptical to take advantage of PMs on the long side. A couple of decent shorts though.

@_findingmyedge Yeah earnings season overshadowed somewhat by the commodity stuff this Feb… nice you capitalised 👍 … silver’s been unreal for Rue… a year maker 😎