Daily Recap Day 51 of the $100k Challenge +$1,542.58 | Ep. #55

All right guys, so we’re going to do a little mid-day market recap here. We just recorded our fifth episode of Behind The Trades, so that’s going to be on YouTube, Facebook Live, and on the podcast. Obviously in that episode, we did talk about at least a couple of the trades from today and we did a recap of the entire week. I promised that I would do a recap of today’s trades specifically because I didn’t cover all of them in the Behind The Trades episode, so I will jump in here and look at today’s trades.

So, I’m finishing the day, this is day 51 of the $100,000 challenge, up $1,542. So overall, not a bad day. Not a bad way to finish the week especially coming off the, probably, longest consecutive red day slump that I’ve had in over a year. Four red days in a row. So, to bounce back on Thursday with $2,000 and bounce back again today with another $1,500 is good. That’s $3,500 up off the lows of that pullback.

My game plan today, as I was thinking about it last night and then this morning, was all about the shippers, the shipping stocks. But guess what? I didn’t end up trading the shipping stocks. I thought that the shipping stocks would continue today, that we would get that continuation. TOPS, this one was really strong.

Yesterday, it had some good trades on it. And after hours, when I was kind of doing some of the course work, going over materials last night, I was like, “Oh, you know what? It’s gaping up.” This thing’s gonna be in play tomorrow. It’s definitely gonna gap up. It looks good. And we did, up to 287 and then by the time the bell was about to ring, look we dropped all the way back down to $2.

So unfortunately, this kind of really set the tone for all the shipping stocks. Yesterday, TOPS led the way up and today, it led the way back down. So when the market opened, I knew TOPS was out of play, GLBS was sympathy to TOPS yesterday, the move started after TOPS. I didn’t get myself positioned well on it yesterday.

Again though, after hours yesterday, I was thinking if TOPS is strong, I’m gonna be aggressive on this one because it has more potential. It has a bigger range. And the daily chart, above $8 is syncing it back up towards 10 or 12. But, you know, jut like TOPS, it ended up fading. So no trades on the shipping stocks today.

Instead, I basically just sat tight and you know what? I was thinking, “Maybe I’m not gonna trade today,” and I was kind of like, “This is not really the way I wanted to get myself out of the rut.” To have a green day and then have a day where I don’t trade at all. 9:30, bell rings, there’s nothing look good. My gap scanner had CLBS, one letter off from GLBS. And look at this gap.

This was bad. This just opened and completely dropped. I haven’t seen a gap this bad in a long time. And it looked good for a gap-and-go. That’s the scary thing, is that it actually looked pretty good. The bell rang, and I was like, “Okay, well let’s watch it and see what happens.” And within the first one minute, that volume was just down. And I was like, “Okay, well. This thing just dropped to 712, I guess we could watch it for a red to green move.”

And right here, are $7, I was like, “Okay, we could maybe do a red to green move over seven but I don’t know.” And then next thing you know, it dropped down to 650.

So, I’m glad that I sat out on this one. But you know what? It didn’t really give me an indicator to buy it. It really didn’t. It didn’t break over seven, which was the place I was thinking about getting in. Right out of the gates it was weak. So, there really wasn’t an entry, based on the gap-and-go strategy. It didn’t break pre-market highs, it didn’t break the high, this pivot right here, which was 81. The bell rang and it just sold off. So, no trades.

And from 9:30 to 9:40, I was just sitting here look and I was like, “Well, I don’t see anything. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do today. This is kind of disappointing. I was hoping to get a trade on GLBS and make a quick thousand dollars right out of the gates.” And that didn’t happen.

So, 9:35, 9:40. And then 9:42, I AGRX hitting the high day momentum scanner. And, I’ll scroll … Oh, actually this is … I restarted this at noon time so, anyways. AGRX, it hits the high day momentum scanner. And you can see here it starts spiking up. Now, I saw this and I was like, “Okay, interesting. Looks good. Strong daily. It was strong yesterday. I’m gonna jump in.

I like the way it looks.” But what did I do? I jumped in at 310 and immediately I said, “Why did I do that?” I told myself to wait for pullbacks and I got right back out. I got in at 10 I got back out at 19. So, I was like, “That was stupid.” The good news is that I had small size. So, that was fine. I waited for the pullback, we had the pullback and then I got back in at 19 for the first one minute candle to make a new high and we popped up to a high of 24, 25.

And I stopped out as it came back down. So I only made $274 on it. I trade with small size, which is good, but I was definitely in my old habit. It’s hitting the high day scanner, it’s strong stock, strong daily, jump in and I should’ve just waited for the pullback. But, anyways, two trades on this one. $274, so small wins right out of the gates. Or, well, 9:40.

So, we’ve got the trades on AGRX at 9:40. And then I saw PULM spiking up. This is at 9:50. Now the problem with PULM is that by the time I saw it, it was already pretty extended and I first saw it right around 966 and I like, “Okay this looks interesting,” but I said, “Look, you’ve got to wait for a good set up. You’ve got to wait for a pullback.” And it surges up to 304 and then it pulls back. So I was like, “Okay. I’m gonna wait for the first one minute candle to make a new high.” So we had this candle that had a high of 98 and I was like, “Okay, this is the one that I’m gonna watch.” So lets go to some live action video.

So right here, we’re watching PULM, we’re forming the first pullback, the high of this candle on the one minute was 298. All right? So I was gonna get in as soon as this candle broke 298 or as soon as it looked like it. I’ve got my hand right here, ready to press the buy button for 2,500 shares with a limit order of 303. All right, limit order’s ready to go, 303. And it’s gonna happen quick.

I’m gonna see the volume and I’m gonna start pressing that button. So right there, I hit it twice. Once and twice. Two clicks. I’m got 5,000 shares. And now I’m gonna hit it a third time to give myself 7,500 shares just under $3. My average will be 98. And I’m expecting, this first candle is gonna break, of course, the high of the previous one, 98, which it is. And it’s gonna go break high-a-day and my target is 310, 320, maybe 325.

All right, so here we go. And look at that. Right to 310. And I said, “Hey, I’m gonna take it.” I’m in a place where I need to take profits when I have them and there we go. 310, 312, this is such a quick trade. Now, I could have held it a little bit longer but I got exactly what I was looking for to move up. So now I’m still holding 938 shares, we drop down to 307, kind of re-test. But this one, as we know, ends up being pretty strong.

Now, one of the challenges is trying to figure out whether or not you want to just pull the entire position. If I’d held 7,500 shares from 298, I certainly would have made more money today. But how many times have you guys seen me get into a trade like this and have it go right back down to 298 and then watch me get stopped out at like 290 with slippage? You know what I mean? It’s happened so many times. And that’s why the smart thing to do is to take profit off the table. And especially for me right now when I’m in this position of needing to kind of get myself back into the driver’s seat after a little bit of a pullback.

All right, so right here, you can see I’m watching this over 15, 315, for the next leg up. I’m kind of thinking, “Okay, maybe this is the next little pullback.” Ten, nine, eight, seven, and there you go. I add right there, pop up to 320, 324, 325. I’m on the ask at 22, on the ask at 21, putting my orders out to sell on the ask, on the ask at 19, getting a partial fill, only 400 shares, on the ask at 17, you can see my right there, getting filled. See, I keep putting my shares on the ask because I know that’s gonna get me the best price.

All right, still holing 2,100 shares. And then finally, I’m just gonna hit the bid at 16. $974. That’s a thousand dollars right there on those two trades. It’s really not that hard. That’s a very simple set up. If you take one of those trades once a day, you can do pretty well. The challenge, obviously, if finding them in real-time.

But we can find them on the high bid momentum scanners. So, then the next challenge there is having the right tools. Being able to to get in and get out quickly. And that all come down to having then right software, which you can see right here. This is the SpeedTrader and they use DAS Trader as their platform.

All right, so in any case, that was my live trade there on PULM. I ended up trading it a couple more times, finished the day up $1,454 on the name. So, I’m gonna back out of this here. So that was my one really solid trade of the day. Almost $1,500 on PULM.

And then the third trade of the day, and the last trade actually, was DFFN. Now this one was actually kind of disappointing because I thought that it really had more potential. I thought that it was gonna get over $4 and really open up 425, 450. So it pops up here to a high of 380. And I said, again, “I’m gonna buy the first candle to make a new high.”

And that’s what I did. I got in right here at 54. The problem though is that on this one I added at 80. So I added a little on the high side which gave me an average of 66 and we popped up to a high of only 90 which granted, is 22 cents. But the spreads on this thing were pretty big and I ended up stopping out when it came back down. I stopped out at 60, I guess I had like 3 cents of profit. So, $273 plus or minus.

I would have done better if I hadn’t added. And I would have done better on the PULM if I had added. So it’s one of those things where I was trying to be a little more aggressive. I had a bigger cushion on the day ’cause I was already up over a thousand bucks and I thought, “You know, let’s see if this thing can go to $4, 425, 450 and maybe this will end up being a $1,500, $2,000 winner and I’m gonna have a $3,000 day.”

So, one of the things that I, of course, talk about in the Behind the Trades episode is the fact that almost all of my days for the last month and a half have been four figure days. I’m either up two, three, four, five, six thousand, even eight thousand or ten thousand dollars on the day. Or I’m down, two, three, four, five thousand dollars on the day.

And there’s not a lot of days that I’m only down three or four hundred or I’m only up three or four hundred. So for the most part, when I look for a trade, I look at it and I ask myself, “Does this have the potential to give me $1,000 or $2,000?” You know, if it works out. If it works the way I think it’s gonna work, is this gonna be a $2,000 winner? And for the most part, the answer’s yes.

PULM worked well. HGRX, I just never felt that confident on it. And DFFN could have been a big winner and unfortunately it just didn’t hold that level. So these trades all had the potential to be four figure trades.

And one of them today was, and that gives me the 15 hundred bucks. So I’m actually up 2,000 before commissions. Commissions today were about $450 which is crazy but that’s the price you pay for direct access routing. And that’s what it is. I wouldn’t have these high commissions if I was trading with E-TRADE or Ameritrade because you don’t get charged ECN fees. It’s the ECN fees that really got me. You can see right here, $331 in ECN fees.

But that’s the price to direct route these orders. So that’s me choosing that I want to route through EDGX, or I want to route through INET. To make that choice here, that wouldn’t be an option with another broker. And you see how … It’s remarkable how fast these orders go. Look at how quickly I just got 7,500 shares. You just don’t get that kind of speed when you don’t have direct access routing.

So that’s where I’m kind of like, “This is just the cost of doing business.” It’s just today’s a day where I didn’t have as much success on the trades I took, and so even though I took positions on all these trades, I only made a good profit on one of them. And so, that’s fine, that is just the way it is sometimes. The day’s that I make eight thousand or ten thousand dollars, my commissions might be the same as they are today. Because I just happen to, on that day, take three trades and all three of them worked out really well.

So for me the advantage of direct access routing is that it’s very quick. Number one, it’s very quick and number two, the platforms that allow direct access routing are platforms like SpeedTrader, Lightspeed, Interactive Brokers, they cater it with their platform to day traders. They allow you to be very, very quick. DAS Trader is all about speed. It’s low latency, super fast, really for the most part very, very reliable.

And that’s why I’m using it. So this is maybe a slightly more expensive tool but it’s a tool that I need to get the job done. That’s just what it is. So, yeah, it’s a little more expensive but I really don’t mind. There’s no way I would use something like Robinhood or a mobile phone app to try to do these trades. You just couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t work.

So, anyways that’s just a recap on today’s trades. I know a couple asked me about why my commissions were so high, so it’s those ECN fees. And generally, any route that you use is gonna be equally fast when you direct route. Whether you happen to use EDGX, ’cause that’s what I use on some of my hotkeys, or you use INET which is what I use on some of my other hotkeys, both of them are going to be really fast. You’re not gonna notice much speed difference between the two. They’re all quick. They’re just very quick when you compare it to typical smart routing that a lot of brokers use which never seem to be quite as fast to get your fill.

That’s it for today. I hope you guys all have a great weekend. You can make sure you check out the Behind the Trades episode which is gonna go on YouTube if you haven’t already. And I’ll see you all first thing tomorrow morning.

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