Base Hit Monday! Small gains to start October

All right, so time per hour, mid-day market recap. Gonna do it a little bit early today, but that’s fine with me, I’m gonna throw in the towel here on the early side, so finishing the morning up, only $184.32, so it’s actually my smallest green day in … I don’t even think I had a day that small anytime last month, but you know, the goal is to be green, and to be consistent. It’s not about making $1,800 every single day, it’s about preventing the draw down.

And today, I really didn’t see a lot of good quality setups to be aggressive on. And so I taper back my risk, I think that was the right move, and I’m finishing the day with just under 200 bucks. So today is a base hit. And that’s one of the things that I talked about at the end of last month is the importance of base hits.

And the fact that swinging for home runs got me into a lot of trouble last month. And it has in the past, it’s not just last month, it’s really … I mean just in general, swinging for the fences has not been a very productive or profitable strategy since the incredible strength we had in the spring, or in-between January, February, March. Since then, swinging for home runs has been more costly than profitable.

So it’s been hard for me to get really, fully into the habit of taking base hits, because who doesn’t like to have an 8 or $10,000 winner, right? I think we’d all love to, but at the same time, when you finish a month red, which the last month I finished down about $4,000, you have to make a little bit of a switch in what you’re doing.

And so, that switch for me is to focus the month of October on base hits, and on consistency, because the reality is, even if I only make $200 a day, every day this month, I’ll make more than I made in September. Swing for the fences didn’t work very well in September, yes, I had a great $8,000 winning day, but that was one home run, and then I had like five strikeouts where I lost 4 or $5,000 on each one of them.

So the net was not positive. This year has bee a little tricky for me even though I’ve been really profitable and had an amazing start to the year, starting the $583 and turning it into 100k by March 8th.

Since April, things have been a little bit choppy. April was difficult for me, I finished the month down four grand, bounced back in May. June, July, August were decent. September back into the red. So it’s been a little on the tricky side, and I’d love to get into just more of a kind of grind of nice, steady momentum, but I can’t force the market to be strong, so I just have to adapt my strategy so that if the market is a little choppy, I don’t give up too much of my profits. So today, three stocks that I traded, CAPR, ECYT, and S-racks. Now, I’ll show you guys the PNL here for, let’s see, huh. I don’t know what’s up with Facebook, but it doesn’t seem like it wants to really switch the screen. Interesting. I’ve never had Facebook do this.

Well, hmm, I’m not sure which way it’s pointing. So maybe I’ll shut off the Facebook feed and I’ll just upload the mid-day recap since Facebook isn’t working. But the three stocks I traded, CAPR, ECYT, and S-Racks. So S-racks was my biggest winner, $437, biggest loser was CAPR, but these are all, you know, these are just kind of small gains, small losses, nothing really too exciting here. S-racks, I jumped into this right out of the gates looking for a gap and go trade, pre-market high was 3:15, I jumped in at 3:09. Let’s see, 3:09 right here. As soon as the bell rang, I tried to take 7,500 shares, I only filled 4,100. So entry at 310, stop at $3, 10 cent stop, got the profit target sold. Some at 321, 322, 318, 327, I put out an order.

So took profit on that first candle, ended up dropping down, popping back up, dropping down again, popping back up, then dropping down again. So I circled, or highlighted these three candles because this is the kind of market we were in today where ewe were seeing these big kind of drops, quick drops, and that’s something you have to be careful of, especially if you’re in these trades to the long side, when they drop like that, you can really get chopped up. So $400 on that one, that was fine, next trade was CAPR, I jumped into that on, what I thought was a really decent set up, but what you’ll notice is sort of the same thing where this was the way it was looking this morning. These big red candles kind of gradual up, and then giving it all back in one candle, giving it all back in one candle.

I got in on this candle, which was the first five minute candle to make a new high, this red one right here. And you can see it made the new high, and then turned around. I don’t know why, but it just didn’t want to hold that level. It pulled back, consolidating sideways, and then it broke out here at, let’s see, 373, which was kind of an unusual place, it popped up to 389, dropped down to 366, and then kind of popped back up. But I probably would’ve gotten stopped down on that candle right there, ’cause it ended up going red, so just very frustrating, and then the last one was ECYT, and on this one again, very frustrating because it just wasn’t very easy. I got in expecting the first candle to make a new high on the five minute.

Right here would give us a breakout, and what happened, I got in at 26, and then it drops down to 19, 17, and I’m down like 700 bucks. All I was looking for was a high day break over 233, we didn’t get it, dropped back down, dropped down, popped up to 233, and then that candle, finally said, “All right, I’m gonna sell, this is ridiculous. It goes 233, makes double tops, and then it drops down to 219, and then it breaks out here to 40, up to 45, and then it goes all the way up to 70.” So it ended up making a move, but not when I expected it to, and sort of kept making these false breakouts, candle made a new high, dropped back down, made a new high, dropped back down.

So after three trades, and feeling like, okay, this is just a little bit of a tricky market today, we’re seeing a lot of fake outs, we’re not seeing the follow-through I usually look for, that’s my cue to step back. Because my last trade was at 10:15, 10:16, and usually by 10:15, 10:16, I’ve already hit my goal. On a good day, I’ve hit my daily goal, 1,000 bucks. And on a day like today, I’m only up 184, so that’s just, the market’s telling me right there in my PNL that things are not really working out the way I would expect, I’m just not having the best day.

And so that’s when I said, “You know what, I need to take the $184, and it’s a green day, I’m gonna lock it up.” I’ll put that in the PNL, and come back tomorrow. And hopefully we’ll see better follow-through, but I’d rather finish the day green than finish the day red.” My goal, ultimately, this month, would be to not have a single red day. I did that in, was it January, I think January was red, or January was Green, it was 100% green until the last day of the month. But it was a really good month except for that one day. So one red day of the month. And October, I’d love to have that same level of consistency where I’m steady, green, and I don’t have any big draw down.

So $184 first day of the month, I’m fine with that, I’ll take it, and hopefully we’ll see some better follow-through next week. Now, reminder, I’m gonna be out tomorrow, I won’t be trading tomorrow morning, but then I’ll be back for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, okay? So I will see all of you first thing on Wednesday morning, I hope you guys have some solid trades tomorrow, I know in the chat room, John and Arsh and Sam will be here, I’m sure they’ll be sharing with you some ideas of what they’re looking at, so keep a close eye on the things that they’re putting out in the room, but for me, I’m gonna take the day off, and then I’ll be back on Wednesday morning.

Okay, so yeah, and Arsh has scanners, so scanners will still be up while I’m away, I just won’t be trading tomorrow. All right, so I hope you guys have a good afternoon, a good day tomorrow, and I’ll see you on Wednesday morning. All right, thanks guys.

Oh, hey, I didn’t see you there. Well I was just working on the dream board for my next home run trade, hopefully it comes soon. Until then, make sure you subscribe to get email alerts anytime I go live or upload new videos, until then, happy surfing.