Day 101 of the $100k Challenge +$558

All right, guys. So we’re going to do our little mid-day market recap here, go over the trades from this morning. Overall, this was a fairly slow day. 101st trading day of the year, and finishing the day with $558 in total gains. So I’ll put up my PNL here for those of you in chat, those of you on Facebook. I’ll show you my PNL here. One name that I traded, CCIH and I made $558.94.

So, you know, I wasn’t overly aggressive today, but I really didn’t see a lot to trade. There weren’t a lot of really good quality setups. There are a couple of setups and higher price names, but not much in the low price kind of range. So, CCIH, first trade of the day. Now, interestingly this was not off my gap scanner. This was not one that I had on watch pre-market. I wasn’t … This one was not at all on my scans. But what happened was it popped up and hit the high-day scanner on this first 5 minute candle, if I scroll back here. You’ll see at 9:30:33, it hit the scanner at $1.50.

So we’ll scroll back here. So it hit the scanners at a $1.50, and at that point, it squeezed up to a $1.67. And I was like, “Okay, this thing is clearly showing some strength.” Which, you know, is awesome because there’s not much that looks good today. Here’s my PNL for those of you on screen share in chat. So as it pops up, it squeezes to a high of $1.72. And I looked at that and I was like, “Okay, you know, this looks pretty decent. So let’s do my first trade on this.”

Let me just scroll back. My first trade was an entry right here. Now, the first 1 minute candle had a high of $1.67. It hit $1.67 and it pulled back for just a moment. And so when I saw that, I was like, “Okay, what I’m going to do is I’m going to buy this for a 1 minute opening range break out. And I’m going to get in for the break of $1.67. This is clearly showing a lot of strength that it just squeezed up 20 cents.” And look at the daily chart. There’s no resistance on this until $2.89, so it has a lot of potential. It’s spiking up with volume, I want to jump in as quick as I can.

So I used my 2,500 share order that was already prepped. I type in 2,500 shares. And as soon as it started to squeeze back up here, it dropped to 55 and then it started to squeeze back up. I added 5,000 shares at one $1.65. I added another 2,500 as we broke over $1.67, which gave me 7,500 shares. So 7,500 shares, and then we popped up to $1.72. So, let’s see, my average was … Let me look at this. I had an average of right around $1.655, $1.66. And I sold at $1.71 for $375. So that was my first trade, basically 5 cents. In and out.

Now, I didn’t know how far it was going to go, but remember one of the things that I said earlier today was that my first 2 to 3 trades are all about building a cushion on the day. Trying to get to that $500 or $1000 daily goal as quickly as possible. And then once I get to there, I can look for trades that can take my position and hold it for the bigger move. But until I get there, I’m not in the driver’s seat, and I need to focus on just getting myself up to the daily goal.

So that’s why I took the 5 cents because on the $1 price range, $1.50 price range, you don’t … Getting 5 or 10 cents is usually pretty good. So anyways, 7,500 shares, 5 cents of profit, $350, $360 dollars. Pops up to a high of 72, it pulls back, and on this consolidation, I said, “Okay, it’s consolidating. The first 1 minute candle to make a new high, I’ll get back in.” So I got back in at $1.67 right here for the first candle to make a new high with 5,000 shares. It pops up to 75. It doesn’t hold that level and it starts to come back down. I sell on the bid, and on that one I made 4 cents on 5,000 shares which was $200. So that got me up to $558 dollars, plus or minus.

And that was it. Those were two trades in the first … 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, minutes of the day. $558 in six minutes. The rest of the day I was sitting here looking for opportunities and I didn’t see anything that looked good. So, you know, this is … I mean, generally, low risk stuff. And I’ll show you, those of you on Facebook … So the first candle spiking up here, I got in as this second green candle broke the first green candle.

So right there was $350, pull back. First candle to make a new high right here, I got back in with 5,000 shares. Sold on this pop up to here. We consolidated, didn’t hold those levels, and we faded. So it wasn’t the big winner that I was looking for, but it gave me $500. And BOT, this one was also on watch today for possible follow through, but it was just extremely weak. It didn’t take a trade, it didn’t set up, didn’t give me any opportunities.

Lulu Lemon, this one … You know, higher priced stock. Not something that I would usually trade. I saw it, but I didn’t feel like there was any clean, super obvious opportunities. So no trades on that. Restoration Hardware, this one … It was actually one of the cleaner setups, I think Mike traded this one. Kind of squeezing up, but resistance here and then as soon as the market opened it started to fade, drop back down.

And you can see here, this just faded all the way down to 42. So weak on that one. And then PF, Pinnacle Foods, all of a sudden dropping from $66 to $61. Mike took a bottom bounce on this, but realistically, considering it dropped 6, 7 points, it’s only really popped up about 2 points. It really hasn’t been the most impressive bounce. It was worth a stab, low risk, but just not a lot there.

So this is kind of your typical Friday afternoon. There’s not a lot of momentum, not a lot of stuff happening. So, you know, it’s a good day to take whatever gains you can get, and then get out of the market. Right? That’s kind of the thing to do is just to grab … If you can make a couple hundred bucks, $500, $1,000, takes the profit and get out. Today’s just not a day where we’re seeing a lot of sustained momentum. We’re not seeing anything else on the high day momentum scanners, so … You know, for me I’m pretty content with just taking these gains and calling it a day. Seems like it’s getting kind of … Starting to get a little cloudy, maybe it’s going to rain. So I might just go outside and get a little bit of fresh air before it starts to rain.

Okay, so, again … This is kind of a slow day, but you know what? What’s interesting is that this is my 5th consecutive green week. So I was green the last 5 weeks. And remember when I said as I was getting ready to go to Italy. The next month, the month of May, is about consistency. It’s not about making a lot of money, it’s about having as many green days as possible. Now, last year, this was 2015 to 2016, I had a 56 day hot streak.

56 days of consecutive green trades where I didn’t have a single red day. Now, during that hot streak, I might have only made … I don’t know, $30,000. I mean, it didn’t make a lot of money, but I was very consistent. And you know what that does? It really boosts up your confidence and it brings down your stress levels. And bringing down stress levels is always a good idea for day traders, ’cause this can be very stressful work.

It’s like, every single day, we’re having to make really important decisions about where to get in, where to get out. And that can be a little bit taxing, especially when the market is choppy. When the market’s going really, really well and everything’s just amazing, it’s easy. And you know what, I’ve actually noticed that I do better on days when the market is slightly red. I think that traders … I don’t know.

Maybe they see their portfolio’s down and they feel like they need to hustle and get a couple more trades on ’cause the market’s red, try to compensate for it or … I don’t know. Maybe … I’m not sure exactly what it is. But … So with the last couple weeks, the market surging up here from 236 on the SPY up to 244, it’s kind of been one of those times where it just seems like we haven’t had as much momentum. And even in the last couple months, it’s just been a little bit … A little slower.

So, I’m really looking forward to seeing things pick up as we make our way into the summer. Last summer was really good. You know, yesterday on MBOT, I was thinking about how I could have been maybe a little more aggressive on this, but yesterday remember, I started the day losing $1,200 on basically a typo. Where I got into a stock with 1,000 shares instead of 100 and instantly lost a $1 per share.

That was on PANW. So that really changed my positioning for the rest of the day. Instead of being in the driver’s seat, I was grasping for straws, trying to get myself back up above water. And I wasn’t in a position of control. And so instead of seeing a trade like MBOT and being like, “Okay, here’s the first 5 minute setup.” Right here at $1.50 … Sorry, $4.50. And getting in that and saying, “You know what? I’m going to take 5,000 shares and hold it.” I took 10,000 shares of this at $4.32. But instead of hold the whole thing for the move up to $5.50 or $6.00, I sold it when I was up like 15 cents ’cause I was trying to get myself back to break even.

Back just to green on the day. Or to as little red as possible. And that’s fine. That was the right thing to do at that time. How annoying would it have been if I went from being up $1,500 on MBOT to break even? Or to red on the name? I would have been so frustrated. When you’re in the red, your focus is just digging yourself out. You know, one little bit at a time. It’s kind of like bailing out a boat. You’ve taken on some water, now you’re bailing it out one bucket at a time. You can’t get it all out at once, so you do it the way you know how, which is one little bucket at at time. Little bit here, little bit there. And eventually, you get yourself back into a better place. And that was the same thing with my trading yesterday.

I got myself into the red, took on a bunch of water. Needed to slowly bail out. And I never got myself into this really strong position. So I didn’t see MBOT as something where, you know what, “I’ll take 10,000 shares. And now that I’m up 20 cents, I’ll just hold it. I’ll just hold the whole thing and just let it ride.” Right? You know, so … All right. “Well, now I’m up 30 cents?

Okay. I’ll take profit if it drops down 20 cents and I’m guaranteed 10 cents of profit. I’s up 40 cents? All right, I’ll take profit if it drops down, and I’m only up 20 cents. It’s up 80 cents? Okay, I’ll take profit if it drops and I’m up only 50 cents.” And you just keep doing that. You keep your backstop. And that’s how you end up having 10,000 shares and you’re up 80 cents per share and you’re up 8 grand.

But you need to first be in the driver’s seat. In order to put a trade on the house, you need to be in the driver’s seat. And I never got myself in the driver’s seat yesterday. So, that was … Some days you don’t. And even today, I’m only up $558. It’s not quite in the driver’s seat. For me, being up over $1,000 is when I’m starting to really be in the driver’s seat.

So I need to kind of wait for those days where I can get myself up $1,000, $1,500 in the first 10 or 15 minutes. And then look for that trade I can hold for a while. And look at PGG yesterday, or PPG. This one, I had a fantastic entry on this. I was short 1,000 shares. It was $110 per share. And even though it dropped all the way down to $107.79, which would have been $2,000 profit, I only made $500. And why was that? I was up $800 on it, and then suddenly I was up only $270. Let’s see, $350 maybe, as it popped up to 66.

And I was like, “You know what? I’m not in the driver’s seat. I can’t afford to let this go red on me. Or to stop out break even when I was just up $900. I needed to just take the profit.” And that was the right thing to do because I was in the red, and I was trying to dig myself out of the hole. But if I had been in the position of strength, I could have just said, “You know what? I’m just going to hold this. My stop is $110, set break even. And then, all right, I’m going to move my stop down $109.70, let’s say. Just throw the stop there and just look away. Just let it work. I’m going to adjust my stop now to $109.35. All right, I’m going to adjust my stop now to $109.” And you just keep adjusting your stop.

And then when it pops back up, maybe you get stopped out, but you end up capturing a much bigger percentage of the move. The problem is, like I said, you can’t get into that habit until you’re in the driver’s seat because how many times have we in a trade where we’re up 15, 20 cents, and it goes right back to break even? Check out SPI yesterday. This one could have driven someone … Who’s been off the wagon, or been on the wagon for 10 years back to drinking. I mean, this thing was ridiculous. Right out of the gates, it drops … You know, let’s see. It pops up right on this candle. It pops up to a high of $2.30, and then drops down to $2. And then it squeezes all the way back up to $2.35, and then it drops down to $1.95. I mean it’s … If you got in at the high, you got stopped out. If you shorted on the low, you got stopped out as it squeezed up. I mean, you couldn’t do anything right on this one.

So, you know, if you happened to have gotten in on this and somehow been up 5 or 10 cents, it certainly would have been a good idea to take some profit. You’re building your cushion. Get yourself into the driver’s seat. And then once you get there, then you can say, “You know what? I’m up $1000. That’s my minimum goal for the day. At this point, I’m going to look for a trade that I can take and basically put it on the house and let it ride as long as I can.” And that’s how when you have a setup like MBOT, you won’t look at it and be like, “Dang it. This stock ran from 4.30 to $6 and I only made $1,400. How is that possible?” You get in it, you set your stop, and you hold it. And that’s kind of the value of a trailing stop. Essentially it’s a trailing stop.

Whether you use an actual trailing stop that’s trailing 30 cents behind the high of day, or 20 cents behind the high a day. Or you’re using a mental trailing stop where you just keep adjusting your max … You just manually cancel the stop and adjust it and move it higher, et cetera, et cetera. Either way is fine. Doesn’t matter. It’s what ever you prefer. But that’s what can potentially keep you into a trade for a lot longer.

Again, though, like I said. Many, many times where we’ve seen stocks that we’re up … And even yesterday on PANW, I had … The second trade I took on it where I got back in, I was up $1 per share. I mean I got in at $1.39, and it popped up to a high of $1.40. I was up 97 cents per share. And I ended up making $0 on it. I didn’t make any money on it because on that one, I was being kind of stupid.

I was like, “Oh, well. I’m so red on the name. The only way I can make money on this is if it really opens up.” And I was looking at the daily and I was like, “It doesn’t have any resistance until $1.51.” But it went all the way back to break even. You know, and you don’t want to do that. So you have to have those trailing stops in there, but you also have to know whether you’re in the point of the day where you’re in the driver’s seat, or you’re still trying to build up your daily totals up to the daily goal.

So anyways, today only $558, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s not bad at all. So I’m sitting at right around $153,000 on the year, which is … Averages about $1,500 a day. Obviously, today’s a day where I’m below my daily average. But if I have one day where I make $10,000 this month. That’s going to boost up all of these slow days. So one of the things that … I can actually show you guys.

Let me log in here, real quick. I can show you my trader view stats for the last month. It’s kind of interesting because in the beginning of the year, I came out of January … Or came out of the new year swinging. I was being so … I’m almost amazed at how aggressive I was willing to be in January and February. I think that I was just so focused on taking the $583 and turning it into 100K that it was like … I was blinded to anything else around me.

I could have been up on 500 feet of scaffolding and I’m like, “I’ve got a job to do. I’m not thinking about the risk, I’m not thinking about anything except getting this job done.” And you know what, sometimes that’s what you need. And obviously, I was able to harness that high level of focus to generate the best two months of trading I’ve ever had. $100,000 in 44 days. I mean, it was obviously pretty incredible.

But since then, I’ve scaled back a little bit. And … Let me show you my … Let’s see. Trying to pull up my trader view stats here. I’m going to do to this for the entire year. Since then, I’ve scaled things back. And I’ve tried to reduce my risk because obviously I had some days where I was in that super aggressive mindset, and it got me into some trouble.

So, let’s see. This is my … And I’ll show you guys who are on Facebook Live. All right, so this is what my trader view stats look like. So at the beginning of the year, you can see I started the year pretty slow because I obviously had a very small account.

I only had $500 on my account. So the biggest days were like a $2,000 day. That was incredible. And then I started to really put the pedal to the metal and you can see I had a day where I made $7,000. Then a red day, and I bounced back with a $15,000 day. This is actually the day where I made $22,000 in total, but this is just the report from my account that started with $583.

But what you can see here is that my willingness to hold trade longer started decrease. And so my biggest green days have been going down. And my biggest red days have been kind of flat, except I had a couple in April that were a little on the bigger side. And then this has been the month of may right here, up until the very end of May, May 31st. So you can see, I’ve gotten into this kind of grind where I’m focusing on smaller green days.

A $1,000, $2,000 is a decent day. $4,000 is a good day. But consistency. So it’s been … The red days I’ve had have been tiny. Small little pull backs. And that’s definitely much less stressful than having big red days like these one’s back here. So my equity curve in total, I came up and topped out in this account right around $122,000. I pulled back a little bit, and now I’m consolidating and my goal is obviously to start grinding higher, like this.

But I don’t need to go straight up. I just want to grind slowly and steadily higher. This has been the most sustain draw down that I’ve ever really had as a trader since I’ve been consistent, since I’ve been successful. I mean, I’ve had short drawn downs like this, but not a longer sustain period like this. So I had to switch gears a little bit and shift things around, but what’s interesting here is just that focus on consistency and that move away from trying to swing for the fences.

When you swing for the fences, you either hit home runs or you strike out. And in the month of April, I just happened to strike out more. I just wasn’t seeing those big average gains. And what I can do here is I can compare … Let’s compare two months here. We’ll compare the month of February with the month of April. All right. So February 28th. Filter here.

So this is just that one account that I was trading through February. So in this account, I made $60,000 and I made another $10,000 in my other trading account. So $60,000. My average losing trade was $1,318. So obviously being pretty aggressive. That’s an average loss. My average winner was $1,800. That’s a pretty big winner. Percentage of success, 68%. So this is kind of the big picture of my stats and $60,000 in total gains.

Now, let’s look at the month of April. So two months later, month of April … Trading pretty much the same way. My average loss was $1,364. So essentially taking the same amount of risk, my percentage of success was 60%. So it was a drop of about 10%, my success rate declined. That was definitely a dip in average success rate. But not crazy, crazy bad. Here’s the real problem, my average winner was only $780. My average winner was only a third of what it was … Actually, less than half of what it was in February.

So that was the big difference between the month of April and the month of February. Two months where I was trading the same strategy, taking the same amount of risk, but in February, I was getting the home run trades. I was getting the big winners. And so my average win rate, my average winner was $1,800. Whereas in April, I was stepping up to the plate, I was swinging for the fences, risking the same amount, but my win rate was lower.

My accuracy was a little lower, but what was much worse was the fact that my average winners were only $800. So that set me up with a negative profit-loss ratio, where I was losing more on average than I was making, despite the fact that I was right 60% of the time. I came out of the end of that month down $4,000, closing my first month red in a really, really long time.

You know, and that was kind of like, “Okay, wow. I need to do something different. So, going into May, I need to switch gears.” And what I decided to do was step back, reduce my share size. Stop trading with 10, 15, 20,000 shares because trading with size like that is how you quickly lose $1,500 or $2,500 when the trade goes the wrong way. So I was like, “Reduce your trade size, and focus on base hits.” 500 here, 1,000 there. And by doing that, you’re going to get yourself back into the driver’s seat.

And that’s what I did for the month of May. And I finished the month of May right around 16, $17,000 dollars. Something like that. I’ve got to get my … I’m waiting for my broker statements to total it all out. But I finished the month of May in a much better place. And so that’s why when you look back at my total equity curve, you’ll see now that I’m kind of grinding higher.

So let me click overview. 90 days. Curling back up and, you know, making my way back up towards the high, which was $123,000 in total profits. And I’m right now at $114. So $9,000 off my highs, and this pull back was obviously because I was swinging for the fences being super, super aggressive. And it wasn’t working.

You guys all watch me every single day in the month of April, uploading these daily recaps to YouTube and Facebook and stuff like that. And I wanted to be fully transparent about this journey. To show you the good days and the bad days. It was a lot easier to talk about how my days went when I finished the day up $5,000, $8,000, $15,000 or $20,000, but that’s not going to be realistic that that’s every single day of the life of a trader.

Every trader is going to have some draw downs, every trader’s going to fall into a rut. So I wanted you to be able to watch over my shoulder as I went through that and what me come out on the other side with the focus of adapting the strategy to a changing market and working on rebuilding my account, and making my way back up to the high of the year for me. And then from there, forward. At this point right now with $150,000, $152,000 in total gains on the year, if I’m able to make 10, $15,000 a month for the next six months, I’ll finish the year probably close to $250,000.

If I can get myself up to $20,000 a month or I have another month where I hit 50, 60, $70,000, it’ll get me closer to 300. So this is still … Even though the last month has been slow, this has still been an awesome year and you have realize this is part of trading. You’re going to have the ebb and flow. Periods were you can be super aggressive and where you have to strike when the iron’s hot. And then, weeks or months where the best thing to do is just slow down, or even stop trading just … Go way, way, way down on share size until things start to seem cleaner.

All right, so … Anyways, that’s my recap here as we finish the week and I will see you all first thing next week, the first full week for June. All right. My max share size, when I slowed down, I brought it down to 2,500 shares. Max size. Before that, I was trading with 15, even 20,000 shares on almost a daily basis.

So, that was the big thing, bringing down my share size. All right, guys. So anyone watching on YouTube or on Facebook, feel free to leave comments. I will go back through and answer them this weekend. All right, I’ll see you all first thing Monday morning. I hope you all have a great weekend. Bye guys.

Oh hey, I didn’t see you there. 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.