Day 55 of the $100k Challenge +$2,143.11

All right, guys. So here we are day fifty-five of the 100K Challenge. And today’s, I guess a little bit of a redemption day, in a way, because I made two thousand dollars, but it really doesn’t feel like that great of a day because I’m very disappointed with the way I traded HTGM. And I’m not actually that happy about VSR, so those two trades.

And then XOMA was a good winner, but generally I’m just not that happy about how I traded today. So if I look at my stats for the day, even though I’m up two-thousand, one-hundred, and forty-three I over-traded. I took a total of nine trades. Let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven of them were on HTGM. And on HTGM I only made money on one out of the seven. That’s pretty, pretty bad. Right? That’s kinda ridiculous. My accuracy today thirty-seven percent.

So, you know, I’m just … I don’t know what to think. I mean … I … I was trading it, well, I guess I’ll go though, you know, the whole process on HTGM. So … I was watching it. It was a gapper. I was watching it for a gap and ghost trade this morning. I had this on watch and I had SSH on watch. So those two stocks I was watching. Now, I said pre-market HTGM, I don’t know if I like it because it … the move started after hours, and I never really like when moves start after hours. I prefer when they start pre-market.

And from the pre-market high of three-ninety-five, it had already dipped down quite a bit. So I was like, “I don’t think it’s that good, I’m not sure if I like it, if I trade it at all, it’ll be small size.” And I did keep with the small size. I got in twenty-five-hundred shares at three-forty because as this candle popped up I kinda thought, “Maybe it would break over three-forty, three-fifty and we would squeeze back up towards four.”

In a period of one minute, it dropped all the way to three-zero-five. I mean, it was just … it was brutal. It went from three-forty to three-zero-five and then all the way down to three … two-ninety-three. And so I’ll show you guys the chart here, for those of you watching on Facebook. You can see that big red candle, that’s how we opened.

So, obviously a bad open and I lost about eight-hundred bucks, right out of the gates on that trade. I finished the day down fourteen-hundred on HTGM. So, I basically doubled my loss trying to take stabs at it later in the morning.

So, you know, for me HTGM was like, okay, it’s not even worth trading. You know I’m just gonna, just leave it alone, it doesn’t seem like it’s working. And then all of a sudden, and I have no idea why, but all of a sudden at nine, what time was this ten-fifteen, it squeezed from three dollars up to three-sixty. And then it pulled back, it went up to a high of three, let’s see, three-ninety-four.

So I got in up here, I got in at three-ninety for the break at three-ninety-four, it popped up to a high of four or ninety-seven and then dropped down to seventy-six, I stopped out. I got back in at three-ninety, it popped up to a high of four-twelve, and then dropped back down to three-eighty-eight. I stopped out again. I got, I mean just kept getting in for these breaks and I kept getting stopped out on these whips.

Basically this whole move right here, from four dollars up through four-fifty, I just kept getting in at the wrong place and getting faked out and getting stopped out. And that’s … that was just extremely frustrating. Now, I sized down so I was still only taking twenty-five-hundred shares but I just kept losing ten cents … ten cents there, ten cents there, ten cents there. You know, I lost three cents on a couple of them, but it was just, it was ridiculous. And then I had one, thirteen cent winner. So, I was just feeling very frustrated on that, on that setup or that stock. I wasn’t getting the clean follow through, it wasn’t working.

Now, that was on HTGM. Also on the gap and go scanner was SSH, which did the same thing out of the gate. The market opened and it tanked. This one never rebounded, it just sold off. No trades on it.

VSR popped up on our high day momo scanner this morning. It squeezed up here to two-ten, and when I saw that squeezing I decided to jump in. And I got in right in the middle of this candle at ninety-two and ninety-six, I think my average was right around ninety-six. Ten thousand shares jumped up to two-thirteen and I was thinking, “Okay, this looks good.” The reason I was aggressive on this was because the daily set up, to me, looked so strong.

Breaking out of this daily chart, lots of room to go. Well, next candle it dropped down to one-eighty-five, and I’m down, like, a thousand bucks. And I was kinda like, “Okay, well, I’m down seven-hundred on HTGM. Now I’m holding this, I’m down a thousand on it, this does not look good. This is not gonna be a good day for me.” I look like I’m gonna be down, you know, fifteen-hundred bucks or maybe more.

And I was like, “Okay, well, you know what, it’s pulling back.” But the reasons I liked it were for the strong daily chart and the fact that lots of volume came in here as it squeezed up from a dollar sixty to two-thirteen. So I was like, “You know what, I’ll let it pull back. Obviously this isn’t want I wanted to have happen, but I’m gonna ride this pull back and I’m gonna wait for the first candle to make a new high to see what happens.”

First candle to make a new high, right here, goes from eighty-nine right back up to ninety-nine. So all of a sudden I pop right back up and I break even. And at that point I had the opportunity to get out, break even. Obviously, only for a moment because it dropped back down to one-eighty-two, but I did have that opportunity, and I didn’t take it because I still thought this looked good for a move over two dollars and back up to two-thirteen. I still thought the daily was strong and it was gonna be a better set up.

So I held it, and on the five minute, I said, “Okay guys, well, you know. Obviously I didn’t want to hold through consolidation, I’m holding this red. By the time it was down here at eighty-two, I was thinking my stop would be seventy-nine, and I’d be taking a fifteen-hundred dollar loss on it. And that would put me down twenty-three hundred on the day and this would just be a bad day.”

It came back up, consolidating, consolidating, and so on the one minute chart I kept kinda saying like, “Look, you know, this thing is … it looks okay. I mean, it’s not what I wanted to have happen, I’m in it too high, but at the same time I don’t want to panic out by selling on support.” Which is this blue line right here. I don’t want to sell on support, so I’ll just wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait.

We’re getting this five minute set up and I said “At this point I’m waiting for the first five minute candle to make a new high.” That happened right there, we got six-hundred thousand shares of volume, and it popped up to a high of two-zero-six.

Now I wanted it to go all the way to high of day, which was two-thirteen. And when it didn’t, I said “All right, at this point, I’m just going to sell”. We made new highs, which was good. First five minute candle to make a new high, but I’m not going to keep holding this, so on that one, two-hundred and forty bucks, or two hundred and fifty-four dollars. And I’m fine with that, it wasn’t obviously .. you know it wasn’t the best trade.

I held it … I guess I was up fifteen-hundred for a moment, and then I was down fifteen-hundred and I ended up getting out, basically break even. You know, two hundred and fifty bucks, small profit. So I’m fine with that, you know, in hindsight, I should have waited for the first one minute pull back to even take my entry. Right?

And you look at this and you say, “Why did I get in there?” I got in there because I was anticipating this break of the whole dollar. And I’ve been in the habit of doing that, it’s worked really well in February, but it has not been working as well in March.

And I keep getting myself into these kind of situations where I’m in a stock at too high of a price and now, as it pulls back to support I have to decide, do I sell it on support? I mean I shouldn’t, because its support, I should wait for support to break. But when you’re in that high, support is a lost. And a break of support is a bigger lost.

So that is of course the benefit of buying at support. You know, buying the first five minute candle to make a new high right off the nine moving average is a much better entry. And in this case you could of gotten in here at ninety-five, and scalped ten cents up to two-zero-six. Now it ended up going up a little higher, to a high of two-fourteen. So you know, it ended up working out reactively well. My problem was that I mismanaged my entry, I got in too high. So little bit disappointing there.

And as I finished up that trade, I’ll definitely give props to Sam in the chatroom, Sam G., cause he said “Hey Ross, look at XOMA, you’ve got a bull flag on the five minute chart”. I pulled it up, and I was like “Yup, that’s right”.

High there was six-fifty-seven, I saw the flag, this has moved earlier today from six dollars up to six-eighty-six, and during that set up, I had said “No, I’m going to wait. I’m not sure that it’s … I need to wait for a pull back”. It never pulled back, it just kept going. And then all of the sudden, I looked at this and it was already spiking up before I punched my order. I got filled at six-seventy, so I actually got filled on this one fourteen cents higher than the right entry point.

Which again is … is not ideal. That was because I was using my hotkey, and my hotkey has an offset built into it. So as soon as I press it, I got my ten cent offset. And I must’ve pressed it right around sixty and I got filled right around seventy. So, you know, I got filled a little high, but I jumped in at ten thousand shares and my target on this was a break of high a day. Which was eighty-six, and then to move up to seven-zero-seven.

I added seven dollars, and we got the pop here at the high of seven-fifteen. And I sold on this candle here, mostly on this candle, which was the first candle to make a new high. Now, this is one of the things I mentioned to be careful of; when you have a candle to make the new high, because although sometimes you get really good follow-through, other times that’s where traders sell. Who are in from this first candle.

So in this example, I was able to get in on this candle on HTGM, you know I missed getting in on those big green candles with the spike. Just because I wasn’t watching it. And I don’t know what happened that got it started.

On VSR I was holding, during one of the big candles, which was right here. So this big candle right here, I was holding when the big candle spiked up and we have three-hundred and fifty-thousand shares of volume.

You always want to be holding before one of those candles, because of course … you know that’s better for your position. But in any case, XOMA from six-eighty’s up to … six-seventy’s, six-eighty’s up to seven-ten, seven-fifteen. VSR you know, from two dollars or one-ninety-five or one-ninety-seven, one-ninety-eight. Not much. HTGM, you know, six losses and one winner. So that’s why I’m a little disappointed with my trading today because I feel like I kind of over-traded.

Now if I look at my … and I traded a lot today. You know, I did. I got nine stocks, and if I traded each one of them, three times. Because one entry and one selling half, and another selling a quarter or whatever it might be. Scaling out, you know that ends up being whatever it is, thirty-five tickets or forty tickets. So those commissions add up pretty quickly, which is obviously why my commissions and ETM fees are on the high side. But that’s part of the deal with trading with bigger sizes. It’s not something I can really avoid that much.

All right, so that’s kind of the recap for today. Again, a not the most impressive day, but a green day none the less. And it will get me up to about ninety-six in this account. Where I started at five-hundred and eighty-three, on January 1st. So making my way up, I got over a hundred, dropped down below that level, and now trying to get back, up above 100k. So hopefully that will happen here, at some point in the next … well maybe we’ll see, maybe next week. I’m getting close.

So any questions that you guys have on trades from today?

Let’s see … and yeah for the most part these were pretty straight forward. VSR, the five minute set up was the cleanest. XOMA, five minute set up was the cleanest. HTGM, has never really given us a solid five minute set up today, just because it got so expensive and pulled back, and kind of just all over the place.

All right guys, so … and Maurice to answer your question about the options. Most of these stocks that are ten dollars don’t have options. So it’s just not even going to be a possibility.

Yeah … trade’s fills, it the same. No fill, usually means no trade. Ten-thousand shares, Gilbert, on XOMA, I got in ten-thousand at sixty-eight, seventy, and then I added twenty-five hundred at seven, and just sold that over seven.

All right, so we’ll wrap it up there. Any questions you guys have, if you just put it in the comments below, either on Facebook or YouTube, I’ll come back and answer them then. So … and yes we do have a webinar starting in about forty minutes. One PM webinar, I’ll give you guys the link for that as well so you can join us. That’ll be getting started in about forty minutes, so you guys will probably want to log in on the early side. All right I’ll see you there.

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