If I Had to Start Day Trading From Scratch in 2026, I’d Do This

0:00 All right, gang. Welcome back to a new video. In this video, I want to talk about a question that I get asked all the time, which is, "Nick, if you can start trading over from scratch in 2026, what would you do differently?" So, I figured, because I get this question all the time, that I'd make a video directly about it. So, first things first is, if I was going to start this all over, knowing what I know now, I would really try to do things the right way from the very beginning. It's kind of like putting something together. If you ever put something together for yourself or for your children, if you skip something early in the process, you always have to go back and redo everything, and it ends up taking twice as long as it should have. And that's really what happened to me as I began my trading journey. This

0:45 thing took me a lot longer than it probably should have. It wasn't for 3 years of trading before I ever even made money, and I think I could have avoided a lot of my mistakes if I had a video like this one early on. So, step one is understanding your why. Why are you going to trade, right? The first thing I would do is really understand why [music] I want to day trade. What do I want out of it? What are the reasons for me doing this? Because if you don't have a strong why and a strong reason for day trading or doing something like this, then at the first sign of any failure, you're going to retreat and probably end up quitting fairly quickly. This is not an easy industry to be a part of. There's a lot of high risk involved here, and there's zero certainty. So,

1:32 you really need to know your why and why it is that you're doing what you're doing if you're going to do this long term. So, paint the vision first, make it crystal clear, and then give thanks and gratitude that you're already living the life you want. All right? First things first, understand your why. Number two, find a trusted community. >> [music] >> The next thing I would do is look for a trusted community to roll with. There is nothing, gang, and I mean nothing, like the power of association. There's nothing like getting around the winners, because if you get around five winners, chances are over time, you're going to become the sixth one, right? And it's very important who you hang out with and who you spend time with on a daily basis to shape the individual that you're going to become. And in this case, if I

2:19 was day trading and starting from scratch, I'd really look to find a rock solid community of like-minded individuals who can support me >> [music] >> in my trading journey. So, we have that here at TTE, A Time to Eat Trading. You can join our community where you'll witness exactly that, a bunch of like-minded individuals supporting each other, encouraging each other, uplifting each other every step of the way. That's very, very important. It's very lonely game. Community is huge. Step three, tap into the community and learn. So, from there, I would start to tap into that community and begin my learning phase. I would go through the courses. I would go through any educational content or material and really start to learn the basics of trading. From there is where I would start to trade, but I would not

3:06 load an account with all the money I have, right? I wouldn't take all my savings and put it into some trading broker. I wouldn't quit my job right away and begin to trade with my life savings. That's not the way you want to do this, gang. That way leads to failure. So, I would start with a very small upfront capital, likely with a prop firm. I'd buy a cheap prop firm account, like an evaluation, and I would not care about the results. I would strictly focus on performing the best I possibly could. If there was a trader in the group that I was looking up to, I would study their system and I would study them. I would do my best at getting to where they are as quick as I possibly could. And I would go through that learning phase, right? I would

3:52 treat it like a university or like college where you're going to get a degree, so you're not ready to get paid yet, right? You first you have to perform and in a way pass the test in order to begin to make money. In trading, you're going to get paid based off your performance, not necessarily for just showing up. So, it's something that you actually have to become skilled in and then you have to use your time efficiently and effectively when you're at the desk in order to produce a profit. Step four is I would start at the lowest cost possible and focus on really the collecting data. So, I would really just get into in at a minimal cost of learning. I'd buy the cheapest funded account that I could possibly find and from there I would begin to trade on that account until I started seeing better results. I wouldn't move

4:39 up because I felt like moving up or I feel like going to the next level. I would move up and I would trade until my data and my results told me that I was ready to move up. Now, during that process, I would focus heavily on collecting data, getting chart time in, and increasing my ability to perform well according to the edge. I would take my eyes completely off of the money and I would focus on doing the right things, making the right adjustments, the right tweaks, cutting out my bad mistakes, learning the lessons, and trying to get closer and closer to what my mentor was doing that I was studying, right? From that point, you'll start to build some momentum. You know, you'll start to see yourself having green days and green weeks and maybe even some green months back to back. And at that point, you

5:27 should be able to pass funded accounts and maybe even get yourself some payouts. Now, you're moving, right? So, step five is start to use your payouts to scale up. From there, I would trade well and focus on the ROI of the prop firms. I wouldn't get so irritated or upset if I blew an account because I would really focus on the ROI aspect of the prop firm game. Meaning, if I spend $400 to get myself fully funded and and paid out, and I made 1,400, that means I made $1,000 on my investment. So, if I blow that account after that, who cares? You know, I've already got myself an ROI. Now, I can use my skill set to really go get another payout, uh whether it's the next

6:12 couple weeks or the next month. And from there, I just start building my own live account, right? Once I found some sort of consistency and a rhythm with the prop firms and I understood the ROI of it all, that's when I would really look towards funding my own live account in a brokerage where I can have full freedom and access to it. So, that means no more prop firm rules, no more payout consistency rules, no more payout rules, no more holding a trade for a certain amount of time, nothing, right? Just my own rules and my own money. And this is where the game really begins to get fun, because I would start to take portions of my profits, right? From my instant funded accounts, and then start putting them into a broker, and really just

6:58 begin trading real money, but at a small level, right? So, I would start to focus on compounding, right? Because with your own money, it's not necessarily any more about ROI as much as it is about the compound effect. So, I would trade that account very smart, I'd follow my edge, I'd follow my own set of rules, and now I'd be able to withdraw whenever I pleased. And I can take all of it, not half of it, and I can take it today and not in 5 days, right? So, if you make 500 that day, you can withdraw 500 that day, and you can start to build towards a massive trading account by simply compounding your profits week after week, month after month, year after year. So, eventually, maybe you're trading a six, seven, eight-figure

7:45 trading account, and imagine what you can do with a seven or an eight-figure trading account. Heck, even with a six-figure trading account, right? I usually trade about 100,000 of my own capital, and on any given trade, if you come to our live streams, I can make, you know, five, six, seven, $8,000 on one trade. So, that's a massive victory. It's a massive W and a huge goal when trading comes together like that. So, to be able to make that type of money off of one trade is incredible, but that doesn't happen unless you rewind this video and start from scratch. So, you have to understand that you're in the learning phase, and you have to get through that phase in order to get to the earning phase. But, once you do get

8:32 to that earning phase, my friend, you will begin to have full control over your trading business, your trading results, and what you do and how you perform in the markets on a day-to-day basis. So, I hope this video helps. I hope you can use it to your advantage when it comes to your trading business. I hope it's a reminder to somebody here to slow down to speed up, man. Figure it out on the front end, so that way you can build a solid foundation, so that way your trading career can take off and have momentum for the years to come. So, I hope this video helped. If you stayed to the end of the video, you are a real one. Type in slow down to speed up for your chance to win a free prop firm account and maybe get your opportunity

9:18 to get started just the way I mentioned in this video. So, I hope you guys have a wonderful day. I hope this video helps, and I'll see you on the next one.