Day 65 of the $583 Challenge +$745.58

All right guys. Time for our midday market recap. Today is day 65 of the $583 challenge, and my account is just under $115,000 here in 65 days of trading. So not bad. I hit 100K in 44 days, and the last 20 days have been challenging in the sense I’ve only made $15,000. I had a little bit of a setback, back up,  another setback, back up, but I am making my way up towards 125, 130, 140 etc. So that’s good.

In trades today, for the most part, we’re pretty light. Last week I definitely got aggressive at the end of the week. Totally unnecessary. I said it on Friday, even before I took that trade, “Today’s Friday. I should take it easy. I don’t want to push my luck.” Next thing I know I’m in a big position losing $5000. I just let my emotions get the best of me, which was disappointing, but is part of trading. That made me want to be especially mindful this week of doing things differently.

What I wanted to do this week was of course be aggressive in the early part of the week. I have my biggest gains on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Thursdays and Fridays slow down. So I wanted to be aggressive at the beginning of the week, try to build up my profit cushion, and then from there ease back a little bit on the risk unless I saw an A quality setup.

Closing today was $745.58, which is my smallest green day. It’s my smallest green day in quite a while. My last green day that was less than 1000 bucks was … I had two last week. I had two slow days last week and then I had that big red day.

Here I had a couple slow days. Tuesday I only made 1200. Wednesday I only made 1200. That was off a $6500 winner on Monday. Then here we are Thursday, 750 bucks. This is not a great day for me in the sense that I didn’t hit my daily goal of a thousand dollars and I didn’t have any big winners to get me the 3, 4, $5000 trade.

It puts me up about 95, 9600 on the week, which is a great week, and it’s double what I did last week. Even though the last three days have been relatively slow I had one home run trade at the beginning of the week and I’m able to kind of hang my hat on that trade and now just sort of coast.

But here’s the thing; it puts me in such a great position, not just me but in general, when you get that one big trade, because then you can sit, you can be patient, you wait for A quality setup and then you strike. You get it and then you get another big winner.

Now you can you put that winner away and sit tight, wait for the next one. While you’re waiting for the next one, yeah, you need take some of these so-so setups that are … Maybe they’re B quality. I say you shouldn’t take anything less than an A quality setup, but if you truly do that you may only be trading three times a week or four times a week. I try to trade the best setups each day, but an A quality setup on a day when the market is choppy may not do that much.

Today, for instance, my biggest share size was 5000 shares, so I scaled back my risk. I had a couple good winners, traded four names; green on three out of four, and I’m totally content without. I didn’t push it. I didn’t overstay my welcome. I got in, took a couple trades. I got in at the right spots too. It just happened that none of the trades ended up being really big winners.

We’ll go over my trades here in a moment. I’ve got the fancy stock trading platform in the background here.  Those of you on Facebook Live you can see my PNL, $745.58 and you can see the leader board here of our students trading in the simulator. Looks like today we have probably close to 500 students logged in. Yeah, exactly 500 right now logged into the simulator.

That’s good to see you guys practicing, testing out these strategies in a safe place before your risk real money. Until you’ve proven you can be profitable in a simulator you shouldn’t be trading with real money. Today we have about just under 200 who are profitable and 300 who are red on the day. So definitely exemplifying the importance of practicing before jumping in with real money.

Let’s see. Let’s look at today’s trades. Today we started with a kind of a weak gap scanner. I wasn’t really excited about anything that was on our gap scanner this morning. I’m going to reset this to historical date of 9a.m. this morning. At 9a.m. this morning we had SCON at the top of the gap scanner. When I looked at that when I first logged in I was like, “Aw, that’s kind of all right.”

Four million share float. How does the daily chart look? The daily chart looks good. We’ve got resistance maybe at the 200 moving average up at 224, but until then we’ve got room. What does the pre-market chart look like?

Pre-market chart is decent. Kind of popping up and a little bit of pullback. So I said, “Okay, I like this for an entry over the pre-market highs.”  Pretty simple. But we opened at … Actually it’s interesting; we opened a little on the high side. We opened at 88 and we dipped down kind of like right away. We dipped down and then as we popped back up over 85 I got in at 85.

Inside this red candle I got in at 185, anticipating the break over 190. We got the break over 190, the break over the pre-market high, but we only went up to a high of 194. We hit 194 and then the buyers were gone. We didn’t see continuation. We didn’t see the break over the whole dollar. So I said, “You know what, I’m going to back out of this trade.” I got out of it 2500 shares and I made two cents.

Total profit on SCON $52.02. Nothing to be super excited about. Just a small trade, but not a loss, and I didn’t take a lot of risk on it so I didn’t have any … Even if I have stopped out at 80 or 75 it wouldn’t have been a very big loss. So SCON failed. The gap and go setup sold off. I didn’t buy the red to green move; I just left it alone.

We also had on the gap scan NVFY gapping up 21%. NVFY is the one that I did the best on, but I didn’t trade a gap and go setup on it. I kind of was iffy about it pre-market because I was like, “Well, it has a pre-market high of 208, and it’s right here at 193. It looks interesting over two, but then when the bell rang it kind of dipped down here.” I wasn’t really thinking about a red to green move on it because it just didn’t have much volume. Then all of a sudden in this candle the volume was 245,000 shares in a one minute candle.

At that point, after two candles like that, I was like, “All right, I’ll watch this now for a one minute micro pullback. The high was 223. We had this little red candle here and I got in over 220. The break of the dime, expecting as we broke over that little mini psychological resistance level, that we would hit 223 and then the micro pullback I would be resolving and making new highs, but we only went to a high of 35. So it was only a 15 cent breakout, which was not that exciting.

We pulled back here and at this point I was like, “Well, the micro pullback only resolved by 10, 15 cents, now we’re pulling back here, is this really something I care that much about. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to tell.” Then all of a sudden we popped up through the highs and all the way up to 260.

It ended up resolving on the first clean one minute pullback down to the 20 moving average, but because of the way it wasn’t a very good micro pullback on the setup I wasn’t sure about is so I didn’t take that trade. I ended up getting in the right here for the break over 250. This was the first five minute pullback right here, with an entry over 230. By the time it had popped up to 230 it was already a little extended on the one minute.

But in any case, I let it pullback here and I said, “Okay, I’ll get in over 254 for the second five minute pullback.” Second five minute pullback is right here. I got in at 250. We get the pop up to a high of 263, and then you know quickly reverses back down. Ended up being kind of a false breakout, but still enough in those two trades to make $686. Share size was 5000 shares on both of those trades. I think it definitely worth the stab. It just didn’t resolve the way I thought it would. That’s okay.

Next one down, AKTX. $13 stock. This one I was a little iffy about because of the price range. I just thought, “Well, this is a higher price stock. The spreads are going to be bigger. It’s going to be harder to manage risk on it, so I’m not sure what I want to do.” I was kind of thinking as soon as the bell rang it would be worth watching over the pre-market high or the pre-market pivot. Pre-market high was 394. The pre-market pivot was right at this level of 1394 right here at 1370.

So I was like, “That’s kind of a possible spot to get in.” The bell rings, it pops up to a high of 1450, if I zoom in on the one minute chart. We’ve got a high of 1450. I was like … I got a high of 1477 … So I was like, “Well, let’s just let this pullback for second.”

It pulled back at 1440. I said, “The first candle to make a new high will be my entry,” and I got in right here for the break over 1440, and then you can see we got that move … You got to move up to 1550 but one pop and then pullback and then the second one ended up going a little bit better. It was just not the easiest one to trade.

In any case, $365 on it with a 1000 shares was 36 cents. Not a bad trade. Didn’t take big size because I knew if it went the wrong way I could lose 50 cents quickly, and I didn’t want to lose 1000 bucks on it, which would’ve happened with 2000 shares.

Next one and the last one was LPTH. This one was kind of funny because it spikes up here. You get the pop up. I’m like, “Okay, well, looks interesting enough.” I buy the one minute micro pullback. I said, “I have to wait for the pullback and then I’ll get in.” I get in right here at 97. We pop up to a high of three. I’m expecting that we break over the whole dollar and then we come all the way down in this candle down to 62.

I stopped out at 87. It was a just under a 10 cent loss with 2500 shares at 9 cent loss. It popped up, and as soon as it couldn’t get over that level and it started to come down, as soon as it broke 90 I bailed out. My stop is always 10 cents off the whole dollar. So if I want to be getting in at three, my stop is 290.

In any case, those are my four trades of the day. I was also looking at a trade on Coles. I was considering that but I didn’t end up taking it just because by the time it was pulling back I just wasn’t feeling it. In total it really only pulled back a teeny bit before surging back up. Not the easiest stock to trade. High price, but it was a reversal setup that was worth watching.

That’s a quick breakdown of the trades from today. Nothing super exciting. The important thing was that I was able to scale back my risk to adapt to a market that was just a little slower. Then when I see an A quality setup, whether it’s … Won’t be today because I’m done for the day … If it’s tomorrow morning … Well tomorrow’s Friday so if it’s Monday, Tuesday … The next time I see an A quality setup I’ll be ready to be aggressive, because I know that when I see that good setup and I amp up my share size, I can get a 2, 3, $4000 winter. Until then I just have to be content with some smaller gains. A couple hundred here, couple hundred there.

The fact is, over the last three days, even though I haven’t had any big winners, I’m up 3200 bucks. 3200 bucks isn’t bad. The fact is, last week I made $9800 and then like an idiot on Friday I lost 5200. So I ended up closing the week up only 4600 bucks. I was pushing my luck. I was getting too aggressive. I flew a little too close the sun and I had a big pullback. That’s not what I want to have a repeat of this week.

I want to be slow, steady, wait for A quality setups, and then when I see them I’ll get aggressive. I’m just going to be very mindful of the fact that we’re coming into the end of the week, I’ve already had a good week, the best opportunities for me happen to be on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

All right. That’s about it for today. I will see students in class at 4p.m. Today’s class is on a parabolic stocks, how to go long and short. We’ll review three long strategies and three short strategies for trading parabolic momentum stocks. I’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning and we’ll finish up the week hopefully with a couple of good trades. All right. Thanks guys. That’s it for now.

With that trade that I tried to take on KSS, I tried to short at 3950, my order was at 49 and the current bid was 51. So no reason it shouldn’t have gotten filled, but it was a smart route order. It didn’t fill immediately. It didn’t fill within two or three seconds and so I just canceled it, because it dropped to 47. I canceled it because it came right back up through the 50s and then 60s.

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