+$5,830.12 In 45min On Day 16 Of 2018!

 

What’s up, everyone? All right, here we are. 16th day of 2018, I’m finishing the morning up $5830. That means I’m at $86,000 of profit on the month and I’ve got $14,000 standing between me and 100k.

Now, my goal is to close this month above 100k. However, it will not be the first month I’ve crossed over 100k. In November, I was up over $100,000 on the month, but then I took two really big losing trades, and I finished the month at $82,000.

So, just crossing the line isn’t enough. I need to stay on the other side of it and that’s my goal here for the month of January. I’ve got five trading days left in the month to make $14,000. I think I can do it. Again, $3000/day average, that’ll get me there. It’s within reach and I’m super excited for that.

Now, as I’ve already said, I started this year with a red trade. I was down $4000 on the first trading day of 2018. It’s statistically the worst way you can start a new month or a new year, with a red trade. But you know what? I took that and I turned it into an opportunity to inspire me to be really focused on discipline, and sometimes getting knocked down is what you need to get back up and really get in the game.

That’s kind of what’s happened this month. I got up, I bounced back, got super focused, and right now I’m just trying to build up my account. I’m trying to build my cushion on the year. You know what’s really incredible is in 2016 I made $220,000. I was really happy with that. I thought it was a great year. If I make $100,000 here in January, I will have made almost 50% of what I made in an entire year two years ago.

I think that really shows the potential for growth as a trader. With your regular 9:00 to 5:00 job or whatever, you might look at 5% annual salaries, but you’re not going to look at making 200,000 one year, 380,000 the next, and 400-500,000 the third year. You just don’t see those types of increments in any job.

I mean, unless you’re getting promoted or something like that, but even those types of promotions would be pretty crazy. That’s one of the things I love about trading, but really what attracted me to trading at the very beginning was the potential to live life on my own terms. For me, at the time when I started, I really only needed about $500-$1000 a week was my goal.

I knew if I made $500 a week trading, that’d be enough to pay pretty much all my bills, because I was living, you know, pretty low cost of living up in Vermont, and it was just not that hard to get by. Then, after I’d been at it for a couple years, it was more like, “Okay, $1000 a week is the goal. $2000 a week is the target” and that line just keeps moving up. It’s not really that I do this for the money. That’s not why I started trading.

It wasn’t because I wanted to get rich. That’s not at all what my motivation was. My motivation was to make enough money so I wouldn’t have to work a regular job anymore. Essentially, it was so I could have financial independence, and financial independence to me was not being a millionaire. It was simply making enough to live life on my own terms, to be able to come into my office and work for a couple of hours and then take the afternoon off, to go on vacation when I wanted to, to work around the house, and not to have to go into that 9:00 to 5:00.

That was my inspiration, and I think that for me was just such a strong motivator. It pulled me through those really difficult times that I went through when I was learning how to trade, ’cause I had some really hard times where I got really frustrated and I was losing money and I wasn’t consistent, and I didn’t know if I would get over the hurdle, and just that motivation that, “I want to be able to live life on my own terms.” I think the motivation of, “I want to be rich” or, “I want to make a lot of money trading,” I don’t know if that would have … I mean, that just wasn’t my motivation.

I don’t know if that would be as strong as that desire for financial freedom and independence. That’s really what drove me and I just am so grateful that it helped me get through those low points so I can get to the other side. ‘Cause so many traders, they get into those low points and they give up. They’re out of the market, and they never see what it’s like when you get over the hill, when you get to the top of the hill.

My goal now is now that I’m up on the hill, is to help as many traders who want to get up here, to give them the tools, the skills, the strategy, so that they can get up here and trade step-by-step with me. All right, so anyways, that’s my two cents for today. We’re going to get into the midday market recap, breakdown the trades from this morning, but before we do it, let’s roll that intro.

What’s up, everyone? All right, so we’re going to go over trades from this morning. 15th consecutive green day, 16th trading day of 2018. $5830.12. That means I have right now about $14,000 standing between me and 100k on the month. That’s the big goal, that’s the line in the sand that I’m hoping that I cross. We’ve got five trading days left in the month, so the question is, can I do it?

I need to be on my game. I mean, $15,000 in five days, it’s still a lot. So, that’s the goal. I’ve got the intention set and let’s see what we can do. Today I did not take any trades of my IRA, unfortunately. I had one trade that I tried to take and I didn’t get filled and then I didn’t take a second stab because I felt like I would be chasing it to get back in higher, to try to get in higher.

I’ll show you that trade and you can see here on the P&L, ACHV, YECO, OHGI, three stocks, five trades, four winners, one loser. Not bad for accuracy. Tomorrow morning I’ll open with this account up over $120,000. However, my biggest trade today was $37,000. That was the largest trade that I took in terms of dollars size, so I’m not using really any of this buying power.

Like, I’ve got $457,000 in buying power. I could almost buy 100,000 shares of some of these stocks, but I’m obviously not doing that. I’m not using this buying power, so what I’ll probably do is take out like $100,000 from this account once I’m over 125-130,000, and just drop it back down, and take that money out, put it into S&P 500, set it and forget it, and let it do its thing there.

That’s what I was doing all last year, and that worked out really, really nicely. I mean, I put $70,000 into S&P 500 in April, right here, when we were at 240, right around 240, and it’s still in there, and it’s doing great. That’s for me, just kind of like retirement planning. It’s not actively trading. It’s just investing in the market, putting it away, and knowing that over the course of 20 years, timing doesn’t really matter because it’s just going to keep growing.

So, I’m not planning on spending that money or using it for anything. So anyways, that’s that, but yeah, let’s breakdown the trades from this morning. So, scrolling back up here, first trade of the day, OHGI. OHGI was on our gap scanner this morning. We were watching this one for a gap and go trade. We saw nice consolidation pre-market. Pop up, pull back, pop up, pull back, pop up, a little pull back, I jumped in as soon as the bell rang.

My entry was 10,000 shares at 67, 78, 82, and 84. That’s kind of the crazy thing. I pressed that button four times in one second, so [ch, ch, ch, ch 00:08:48]. That’s why I’m wearing my wrist bracelets, ’cause of carpal tunnel, and I got filled with a range of 15 cents. 67, 82, 84. I mean, that’s a crazy range. That’s how fast these stocks can move right out of the gates.

I added 2.95, and then lost my internet connection. I’m totally offline and I’m like, “Oh, my God. The price isn’t moving” so I know when the price isn’t moving, it means I’ve lost my connection, and I’m like, I’m grabbing my phone, I’m like, unlock it, get in, turn on my hotspot, drop my phone, back looking at the screen, boom it pops back up, I’m on the ask to sell at 3.02. I don’t even know what the price is going to be when I come back online.

I just press sell on the ask. It happened to be 3.02. Filled 2000 shares. Then, it dropped down to 98, I tried to sell on the ask at 98, no fill. Sold on the bid at 90, 88, and 78. That was kind of a bummer because that could have been a much better trade and I just, whatever, it’s the luck of the draw.

So, first trade there was 978 bucks, and that was the only trade I took on OHGI. It ended up selling off, not recovering, and so that was that. Disappointing. All the action was pre-market. Next one down, ACHV. This one hit the scanners and initially I was a little hesitant. I wasn’t sure it was going to hold up and so my first trade was right here, getting in at 1.99, or $2. I got in with, you can see I tried to take 12,000 shares, trying to be aggressive.

Only got filled 3008 shares, so only filled a small size. Ended up selling it at 2.13 for 360 bucks. 360 bucks, whatever. That’s the trade that I tried to buy here in my IRA account. I can’t remember what I tried to get in. Let’s see. I’m not sure. It’s kind of strange that … Oh, hold on. Close that. I wonder if config, show closed orders. Yeah, so there’s … You know what’s crazy again is … Come on. 1000 shares? I was trying to buy 4000, ’cause it’s priced at $2. Man, I’m just not on my game with this platform. Obviously I only typed in 1000.

So, if I had gotten filled, I would have been super disappointed because I’m not going for 1000 shares. I’m going for 4000. But anyway, that order didn’t get filled at 96 and so I was like, “All right, whatever. Just put that to side, focus on my main account.” I get out at 2.13, 360 bucks. I then get back as I see it surging up. I was like, “I’m going to watch this and if it can get back up over the highs, I’m interested.” It starts to curl back up on this candle, and I saw volume come in on the time and sales, boom, I’m pressing the order, 20, 24, 26, buying through high of day. Target, selling through the half dollar.

Put out orders to sell at 68. I didn’t fill any of my shares there. Ended up selling half on the bid at 60 for 30 cents in profit, sold another quarter at 56, sold more at 72, 86, 3.09, and that put me up about $4300. That was selling through the spike here. I then got back in down here, let’s see. I got back in on this candle right here. No, sorry, it was right here on this candle.

On the one minute, we broke over the VWAP and that was right here on the five minute, and so I got in at 55. Oh actually, I’ve got a couple of other trades on this. Let’s see. I took another trade, let’s go back on the one minute before that one. I took a trade right here. For the first one minute candle to make a new high, I was in at 72, 73, 74, 75, selling at 80, 73, and then 66. I only made like 200 bucks on that. It didn’t really work,

My target was first candle to make a new high, and that it would go back to high of day. That didn’t happen, so stopped out coming down, and then my last trade was back here for the break of VWAP. This one was a loser. I got in at … Let’s see. Let’s go back to ACHV. I got in at 54-55, and stopped out at 40, about a $700 loss.

At that point I was like, “Okay, I’m done for the day. I’m not going to over trade. I’m just going to throw in the towel and whatever.” In between that trade and the other trades on ACHV was a trade on YECO. This one hit our scanners and got halted. I didn’t get in here before the halt. I got in after the halt at 4.74-4.75, adding at $5, selling at 5.12, and a little at 5.08, and the rest as it came back down at 5 and 4.77. So $1100 profit on that.

So, in total, great day. $5000 is fantastic. Anytime I can be above 5000 is obviously a fantastic day. So, let’s see. I’m just going to look and see what my daily average is, so we’ve got 16 days into the year, my daily average is $5400, right around there, which is fantastic. I mean, I really don’t know how long I’ll be able to maintain a $5000 daily average. Whatever, I don’t know. As long as the market’s hot, I guess, and it will slow down at some point, and I’ll just have to taper back on my share size and be willing to be happy and content with $500 a day, $700 a day, knowing that I will come back to big days but I’ve got to let the market reset.

So one of the things that happened to me last year was I had a great hot … I mean, 2016 for me was a great year. $222,000, I was green every single month of the year, then starting in January of 2017, I had my $583 account. I turned it into 100k in 44 days, so the first quarter of 2017 was really, really strong. Not as strong as this first quarter of ’18, but it was very strong, relatively speaking.

And then, things slowed down. In April I had my first red month in over a year and a half, and it was shocking, disappointing. I was like, “What’s going on? This is crazy.” May I bounced back, made like I don’t know, $18-$20,000. Then, June, July, and August were really slow months. I didn’t even break $10,000 or profit for three months in a row, and then come September, I lost $4000. I had another red month. Two red months.

So from April to September, my net gain was only like $30,000, and I was feeling, I was just like, “Whoa, what happened?” One of the things I was talking about in one of our videos last week is that kind of superstition that I can get sometimes because this is like an athlete, this is a performance sport.

I feel like a Tom Brady, and every time I come up into the game, I’ve got to perform. If I stop performing, I’m out, I’m done. What if something happens? What if I get hit in the head and I don’t remember how to throw a football anymore? What if I do break my wrist or something happens here, I can’t trade anymore? What if something changes? All of a sudden I’ve lost it, and that’s that fear.

It’s why traders can get a little superstitious, because every morning you come in to trade, you feel like you need to perform. I need to constantly keep delivering these three point shots and these home run trades, and the moment I stop delivering it’s like, “Whoa, what’s happening?”

So last year I was feeling a little bit stressed during the summer because things were so slow, and then in the fall, when I had that second red month, I was like, “What is going on? This is crazy.” I hadn’t gone through that long of a cold streak since I had really got my feet underneath me as a trader. It threw me off a little bit and I was wondering, “Geeze, were those 12 months or 18 months that were so, so strong, was that just a fluke? Was it just the market? Did something change with me? Did something change with the market? What happened?”

Then, things started to pick up in October, and then in November. I made $82,000. December, 84,000, and now here I am in January, up $86,000, a quarter million dollars in three months. So, I think now I’m feeling a little bit more confident because I’ve gone through a fairly long cold stretch, and came out on the other side to do even better than I’d ever done in the past.

Part of that is probably some of the discipline that I had to pick up during that cold streak. Despite it being a cold streak, I wasn’t losing money. I wasn’t at a net loss. I just wasn’t making as much as I wanted to. $30,000 in six months is still 60,000 a year. It’s not bad, it’s just not where I expect myself to be at.

So, right now I am being more aggressive. My average share size today was, well, 8600 shares, partially ’cause I only got a partial fill on ACHV. Average share size yesterday was 11,500. I am being more aggressive because I’m trying to really capitalize on what seems to be a great opportunity and I know that I have to keep in mind that a cold streak will come.

There will be a time where I have to slow back down and I’ll have to just be okay with making $500 or $1000 a day. I might have another red month at some point in the future and I’ll have to remind yourself, “Hey, you’re still the trader who made $86,000 in one month. You will bounce back. Don’t get bent out of shape. Just take it slow, take it one trade at a time. Use this as an opportunity to exercise your discipline, to be patient. Things will pick up again.”

I think the more times that I go through that hot and cold cycle, the better I’ll get at handling them in stride, and not getting myself stressed out unnecessarily. Traders who have been doing this for 10-15 years have probably gone through cycles like this, and some of them are long. 18 month hot cycle … Let’s see. Yeah, I mean, I had a really long hot cycle from 2015 going into 2016, carrying me into 2017. It was more like a two and a half year hot cycle, then a six month slow period.

You just can’t time these things. You don’t know when they’re going to come, you don’t know when things are going to slow down in the market, but there is an ebb and flow. What I’ve noticed is that when markets are hot, more traders start participating. TD Ameritrade said they had the highest levels of active traders in the last 30 days than I think they’ve ever had.

It’s not just me, it’s not just the chatroom, it’s collectively. There’s a huge surge in active trading right now, maybe in part because cryptocurrencies are down. People are going back into this small cap market for whatever reason, but when you start to see exuberance, you start to see more FOMO, more traders jumping in, more trying to get a piece of the action, and things start to go parabolic. That’s what happened with cryptocurrency through the summer and into the fall and December, just huge momentum and then you have that setback. You have that kind of ebb period, of whatever you call it.

During that period, traders collectively become more careful, a, little bit more nervous, less buying pressure, less enthusiasm, less FOMO, and it becomes a more difficult market to trade in. Until things start to come back around. So, I know it’s easy for us to get into that bubble of tunnel vision and say, “Whoa, there’s my P&L and that’s not $5000 today. What the heck? I’m not doing my job. It’s only $500 a day,” but you have to remember that we are just individual traders trading in a large, overall market.

So what’s happening in the large, overall market? Is it strong? Is it an ebb with the flow? Because maybe we should just be content with 500 a day, and maybe today, a day where I’m up 5000, I should push it a little harder and take bigger size, because this might be the type of day I can make 8000 or 10,000.

So, anyways, that’s my two cents on where we’re at here. 16th day into the year, obviously a fantastic start, best start I’ve ever had to a year, and I just don’t want to set the expectation for you guys or for myself that I’m going to average $5300 a day for the rest of the year. If I did that, I would be making over a million dollars a year, and I’d more than doubling my last year’s profits.

Last year I started with $583, turned it into 335,000. I made another 35,000 in my other day trading account, which brought me up to 380, and I made like 170 or 180,000 in my long term investments. All of that combined was a great year, but it’s not realistic for me to expect that I’m going to be able to double that this year.

You don’t go from making 500 a day to 1000. You go from 500 to 650, to 750, to 850, to 1000. It’s incremental. The reason we do it in those incremental steps is because when you’re aiming for 1000, it means you’re taking bigger size, and that means the losses will be bigger. You have to get comfortable taking losses, because if you take a big loss, if I take a $15,000 loss and it shakes me up, and it starts to get me aggressive, gets me into FOMO, I’m going to have a snowball, and 15,000 turns into 20,000, turns into 25,000, turns into 30.

I mean, it can happen really, really fast, so I say all that from experience. Right now, I’m in a hot streak, but I expect, I have a goal that my daily average will be closer to $3000, maybe $2500 a day this year. Realistically, it’ll probably be around 2000-2200, if I’m going to be realistic, and that’s fine. Let’s see. 2000, I think my goal yeah, would be to try to break over half a million.

But 2200 times 240 trading days, that’d be $528,000. That’s kind of where I’m looking. I mean, I do have this back of the mind target that maybe I could break over a million dollars before the end of the year. My account is at 421,000 right now. So, that means I need to make another 580,000 from today forward, plus the 80 would be $660,000 of total profit.

That’s setting the bar awfully high. I don’t want to be disappointed when I’m only making 400,000. Like, “Oh man, only made 400, I’m pathetic, this is unacceptable.” I want to be very happy if I make 400,000, and if I blow it out of the water and we continue to see great momentum this spring, and a really great summer, then maybe that’ll happen. I would summer will be the time that will really tell us whether or not it’s going to happen, because last summer was super slow, but summer of 2016 I made 30,000 a month. I made $100,000. I mean, it was a great three months.

So, it’s just hard to say what it’ll be, but just got to take it in stride. We’re in this for a long haul. This is a marathon. I want to be doing this for the next 20 years of my life, if not longer, so I will cross over that million dollar mark in the small account that started with $583. If it happens in 2018, that’s awesome, if it happens in 2019, that’s okay, too. If I have to wait until 2020, that’s okay. It will happen, it’s just a matter of time.

Again, it’s not that I am doing this to make a million dollars or I’m doing this to get rich. This is all back to doing this for the ability to live life on our own terms, to be able to come here and trade every morning from the comfort of our own homes, and be part of a community, and not have to clock into a 9:00 to 5:00 anymore. Just to totally live life on our own terms. That’s the goal. That’s the total motivation for me, and for me with this $583 account, I am trying to inspire you guys of the potential.

But I don’t want you guys thinking that, “Oh, I’m just doing this to make a million bucks.” I don’t think you guys are. I think the motivation for most of you is the same. It’s financial freedom, it’s living life on your own terms, and financial independence. That’s the goal, that’s the motivation, and that’s what’s going to get me up bright and early tomorrow morning for pre-market analysis at 9:15, right around there.

All right, so that’s it for me. I hope you guys have an awesome afternoon. The IRA class from yesterday and the Warrior Pro session will be uploaded. That will be part of the Warrior Pro classes. I’ll let you guys know when it’s available and yeah, I’ll see all you guys first thing tomorrow morning. All right, see you in the morning.

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