Day 33 of the $100k Challenge: +$2,605.84 | Ep. #36

Day 33 Daily Recap

What’s up, guys? All right. Time for a midday market recap. We’re going to go over the trades from today. Today is the first day back in the office after a four day weekend. I took Friday off. Obviously there was no day 33 recap. Today is day 33. There was no recap on Friday, no trades on Friday.

I was tempted to trade when I was in the airport. I was in the airport right when the market was opening and I was watching Tops. I made my watch list and everything, posted it for everyone, and on that one I said that I liked it for a scalp only but I didn’t trust it but I did like it for a scalp over 4.50 for a move up toward $5. It broke 4.5 and went right up to 4.95. It would have been a good scalp out of the gates. I think I could have done it with 3000, 4000 shares.

I don’t know. Trading from airport WiFi is not probably the smartest thing to do. I just decided to play it smart and no trades. I just sat tight and walked you guys through what I was thinking on that one. I think that was the right move. I think if I had traded, if I had lost, I definitely would have regretted it. I would have been like, “That was stupid.” If I made money I think I might have still felt a little guilty that it was too risky.

All right. Here we are Tuesday morning, back from the vacation, and for me I was sort of thinking that I needed to ease into the market a little bit today. Any time I step away and I’m out for more than just the weekend I kind of feel like I need to get my sea legs back again in a way where I transition back into the market. If I jump right back in with a 15,000, 20,000 share position I can get myself just underwater real quick. I wanted to transition in a little bit more gradually today.

The game plan was that I would take a couple trades out of the gates, hope to have winners on the first three, but limit my share size to 5000 shares. If I could get some wins, build up that cushion, maybe then I would advance up to 10,000 or 15,000. Not until I built up a little cushion. The net today is $2605.84 on four stock which were a total of I think it’s six trades. I took six trades and had five winners and one loser. That’s 83% accuracy which is pretty good. Average winners only 11 cents, average losers 12 cents. Kind of one to one ratio but the accuracy was solid.

Daily Trades

Now to walk you through the trades that I took today I was pretty excited about the gap scan. I thought it looked really good this morning. Let’s pull this up here. For those of you watching on Facebook I’ll show you my gap scanner and my P&L today in one second. 9am this morning. This will be the gap scanner on the left. That was the gap scanner as we looked at it this morning. There’s my P&L for the day. This over here is my live trading account.

APOP this was one of the ones I was watching pretty closely. It’s in blue only because I have my mouse on it. APOP, 3.14 million share float, headline this morning so there was news out. Gapping up 22%, 140,000 shares of volume, IG, gapping up 37%. I was watching IG, APOP, IDXG I was also watching. RLJE I wasn’t super interested in. The volume was pretty light. That was pretty much the thing I was really looking at out of the gates was APOP. That was the first trade that I took.

All right. Let’s pull up APOP and I’ll walk you through what I was thinking on this one. All right. APOP we traded this last week, had some great trades on it, but it tapped twice this resistance level. It hit first 6.77 and then it came up a second time and hit 6.77. This morning we were opening about that level. We got up to a high of 7.50 pre-market. Based on this pre-market flag I could say, “I want to get in this for the break of pre-market highs.” I want to get in at 7.50.

The problem with that is we were consolidating pre-market right around the nine moving average between 7.16 and 7.20, 7.30. We actually had this high, which I circled in blue, right at 7.31 which was the high at 9.20. At 9.20 we hit a high of 7.31. I had two options here. Option number one is that I wait for the pre-market highs to break to get in. I’d be getting in at 7.50. If I get in at 7.50 it’s going to already have popped up at least 20 cents before I’m able to get in which with 5000 shares is a thousand bucks.

I said, no, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to look to get in this right here, right over the break of that high at 7.31 with my first target being a retest of pre-market highs of 7.50. Now if it retests the pre-market highs hopefully we break over that level and we go up even higher.

The market opens and I take 5000 shares at 7.31. Oops, 7.31. You can see here in this candle the market opens and we pop up to a high of 7.77. I was actually up almost 50 cents on 5000 shares which is like $2500 bucks. I didn’t sell it. I held it because I thought this had potential to get over $8. What I did, which I wasn’t doing last week, was I put my stop at break even. When it came back down in this red candle I stopped out, break even, actually made a hundred bucks. I made two cents on 5000 shares.

For me, I was really glad that I kept my stop. That I didn’t hold it as it went red because it ended up dropping down to 6.60. I followed my stop. Yes, I was annoyed that I wasn’t able to lock up the $2000 profit but I would have been a lot more annoyed if I ended up taking a loss on it. Popped up, didn’t take the profit, thought it had more in it, came back down, stopped out flat. That was my first trade of the day. At that point I was thinking, “All right. That’s now how I wanted to start my day.” I obviously like to start with a winning trade. Now I’m a little unsure and I’m only up maybe $70 after commissions.

Next trade was VRML. VRML was on the high day scanner squeezing up here. You can see it moving up on this five minute chart. Now when I saw it hit the scanner I was like, “All right. Well, this looks good. Volume is coming into it. It’s moving up. What I’m going to do is I’m just going to jump in here and try to ride the momentum.” We had the high of this first candle. This is when it hit the scanner on this candle at 9.45 and then we pulled back. On this pull back here, as we pulled back, I said, “All right. Look like we’re going to break over 9.40, I’ll get in.”

Ended up getting in, 5000 shares, 9.37. Then we popped from 9.37 up to a high of … Sorry, 2.37. We pop up to a high of 2.66. All right. A high of 2.66. That’s 30 cents. Just about 30 cents, 5000 shares, $1500. Get a little bit of a pull back. I stop out of this with a total of $980. Not the biggest winner ever but that kind of got me on the map. That gave me the trade that I needed today to get myself up to the daily goal and really help me build that cushion.

After that trade on VRML I was like, “All right. Now I’m getting a bit more of a cushion. I can start to be a little more aggressive.” BLPH I jumped in this one, 5000 shares, when it hit the high of day scanner I got in at 1.30. It pops up to a high of 1.34. Normally I don’t like trading this price range because this is often what they do. They pop up just a little bit, they don’t follow through, and then they’re just choppy. Ended up only making two cents on that, $108. That trade done and then I was like, “All right. Look for the next one.”

We’ve got AEHR. AEHR had news this morning of a four million order. A headline this morning. Someone calls it out in the room when it was at 4.45 and says, “Hey, take a look at this.” I pull it up, I’m getting ready to get in at 4.50. I’m like, “Yeah, it looks good.” There’s a headline. I get in at the half dollar. It pops up to 4.75. I said, “You know what? I’ll get in here. I’ll just buy 5000 shares and I’ll add over $5.” This is strong. It’s a strong stock. It’s a former runner. It’s got a good daily chart. It’s spiking up right now with volume, we’ve got the catalyst, I’m going to jump in.

Got in. 4.75, 5000 shares, and the stock is halted. It opens at … Let’s see. We opened at 4.99. We open up 25 cents and we squeeze up to a high of 5.28. At that point, again, I was up like $2500 but I’m thinking, “Okay, this might continue to 5.50, maybe even $6. I’m going to ride the momentum.” Well, it ends up rolling over and I stopped out as it came back down at $5 which was about $1200. Right around there.

Then I decided to get back in, I’ll show you on the one minute chart, I decided to get back in for the break of $5 right in here on this candle. On this one I only took 1700 shares. I wanted 5000 but I got a partial fill. It pops up to 5.05 and then it rolls over. I canceled my order so I didn’t get filled as it came back down. Then I stopped out at 4.80. I gave back about $300 on that. I’m finishing the day up $1036 on this name.

I was like, “All right, not bad. Not bad.” A couple trades here put me up about $2000 on the day. Then I jumped back into APOP. I saw APOP starting to curl back up on the five minute chart. People in the room were like, “Hey, take a look at it. Looks good.” I pulled it up, I said, “Yeah, it sure does look good.” Let’s pull back the one minute chart here. All right.

I jump in at, let’s see, right here at 7.50. It pops up to a high of 7.58. Then it drops all the way down to 7.20. I go from being up eight cents to down 20 cents. You never want to have that. That’s like the negative profit loss ratio. On that one I decided to hold through the pull back and I was like, “All right. This is really not good. I was up $2000 on the day. Now I’m holding through a 30 cent pull back.”

I said, “You know what? This is a good five minute setup. It looks like it’s going to retest high of day right here but remember what you did last week?” Last week when you took these types of trades and it dropped down and several of them popped back up just the way this did, I didn’t sell through the pop because I still wanted it to go back to high of day.

I made that rule last week that if I get into a trade and I’m down like 30 cents or 40 cents that I’m instead just going to try and get out and break even. I’m not going to try and let that trade hold it to become a winner. I’m just going to accept the fact that I was down 30 cents immediately. It’s not a good trade. It just didn’t work out. Get out, break even. It pops back up to 7.50. It goes to a high of 7.68 and in that pop I was able to get out actually with a little bit of profit. I put my orders out to get out at break even at 49, 55, and then in that pop I was like, “All right, hey, that’s great.” I captured a little bit of profit so up $753 on the day and that one traded added about $600.

Overall, at that point I was like, “I’m done for the day. That was a close call. I almost just gave back my daily goal. I’m just going to be done for the day. I don’t want to push it. I’d rather just close the day green.” That’s kind of the best way when you come back from a vacation or whatever, just get back into it, close the day green, get that confidence back up, and then that is a better way to start the week.

Looking Forward

I’ll go into tomorrow feeling good on finishing the day here, Tuesday, with a green trade. I started the morning with $66,674″ in my small account. Well, it’s my only account now. Tomorrow I’ll open just under 70,000. Right around 69,000. That’s definitely pretty impressive. This is day 33. I started 33 trading days ago with $583. Now I’m up close to $70,000. I’ve got my eyes set on breaking $100,000 hopefully in March. That’ll be something that I’ll be very excited about.

You guys have obviously been able to watch me grow this account from day one and we’ve been doing these daily recaps every single day and it’s just the same strategy. I look for the top basically three to four stocks each day that I think have the potential to make a big move. The ones that I think have the potential to move 20% to 30%.

Now I’m being aggressive. I am being aggressive. I’ll absolutely admit to that. If there’s a stock that’s going to go 20% or 30% if I put my entire account into that stock my account will grow by 20% in one day. If I put half my account into that stock my account will grow by 10% in one day. That’s how I was able to grow this account to this level. Now a lot of traders, long-term investors, stuff like that, would say, “Never put all your money in one basket” and I understand that there’s certainly risk with that. If I look at my average dollar position size just for the month of February it’s $41,000 per trade.

My account is now in the sixties but obviously at the beginning of the month it was quite a bit lower. I’ve been using leverage. I’ve been using my margin. Using that buying power. I think it’s a tool. It’s a tool that if you know how to use it safely by all means. You can use it. You have to recognize the danger and the risk that comes along with trading on margin.

That was especially true when I was trading at Sure Trader because they gave you six times leverage. You put in $1000 and now you’ve got $6000 in buying power. If you lose $6000 well you lost a thousand of your own money and now you owe them $5000. Obviously there’s risk in doing this but we know day trading is risky. I’m not afraid to take that risk when I know the reward potential. That’s what it’s all about. Risk/reward.

For me, if I had to be really aggressive and leverage my account, leverage that money to take $500 and turn it into $70,000 in 33 trading days then it’s what you’re going to do. The important thing to recognize is that if a beginner trader tried to do the same thing as me, 90% of them would fail. I don’t know if any of them would be able to get as far as I’ve gotten in this amount of time. You need a combination of years of experience and just good market conditions to be able to do this.

The reality is if you have the skillset, if you’ve got the strategy, if you’ve got the right tools, you can grow a small account. You absolutely can. This is the proof of that. In any case, that’s where we’re finishing up here today, day 33, of the $100,000 challenge. I will see you guys all first thing tomorrow morning as we’re building our watch list and hopefully preparing for a good day on Wednesday. All right, thanks, guys. I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning.