Day 66 of the $583 Challenge +$3k

All right guys, so time for our midday market recap. We’re gonna go over trades from today.

Finishing the morning with $3,060. Not bad. Not a bad way to end the week at all, considering I ended last week with a $5,000 loss. I was already up just under 10 grand on the week and now I’m finishing just under 13 grand, which is almost three times as much as I made last week. This week really was just a big step forward from the way I traded last week. We’ll go over all the stats in our weekly recap when we have the episode of Behind the Trades. That video will be uploaded separately on YouTube and you guys can watch that. That’ll be episode six of Behind the Trades.

Just to briefly recap, finishing the week here with just under 13,000 dollars and 78% accuracy so my accuracy was a real improvement over last week. Now last week was similar in the sense that I had a good start to the week and then I had a couple of slow days, but then I had a big red day. It was Friday. I got aggressive and I had a big loss. This week I had a great start to the week, and then it was a little slow on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday was the slowest day of the week.

So this morning I was like, “All right, look. I’ve had a good week. I don’t need to push it. I really don’t want to lose $5,000 today, so let’s trade with smaller size.” That’s what I did. I traded with smaller size. My first trade was on CLNT. I actually bought only 100 shares of CLNT at 688. Now I tried to get 2,500, but I got a partial fill. SO I was being conservative with 2,500, instead of maybe 5,000 or 7,000. 2,500 shares, 688, and it pops up to a high of 774.

It pulls back, it squeezes up, pulls back, squeezes up. I got in over the high of this first one minute candle for one minute opening range breakout. Then I added to my 100 share position at 774 and I rode that momentum up through the highs, but I didn’t take 2,500 shares shared at 774 because I felt I was already chasing it and I didn’t want to have it drop back down to the low, which would be a $2,500 loss.

So because I got a partial fill on that first trade, I had to size down on the second trade. So I sized down, got a small win, got myself up to being up $700, and then we had the first one minute pullback right here, which I bought. So I added back at $9. It popped up to a high of 940 and then … excuse me … then we dropped back down so I took a small profit on that. I got back in for the second one minute candle to make a new high, right here. Popped up to a high of 935 and then dropped down quickly. On that one I lost about 400 bucks. I went from being up over 1,000 on the name to up only 600 and then I got back in right at 42 for a break of high of day on this candle and we squeezed up to a high of 93.

Those were one, two, three, four, five trades on it. Note that my commissions are $128 and my ECM fees are 150. So almost $300 in commissions today. I definitely over traded, but I guess it felt like a good day to overtrade once I had a little bit of a cushion on this name. So I had those trades.

Then the last trade I took on it was a five minute set up. The first five minute candle to make a new high and I got in at 950. We popped up to nowhere. We went to a high of 950 and then in the next candle we dropped all the way down.

Now I got in there thinking this was a good five minute setup, first five minute candle to make a new high is over 47, I got in, we hit 50, and then it was like crickets. We didn’t get that momentum and we didn’t get that squeeze over the half dollar. Anyone who got in there started to get nervous and panic. I got out at 35, so I lost like 10 or 15 cents, which is good that I stopped out because it ended up dropping all the way down to 774. It actually got halted because it dropped more than 10%.

That was the end of that one, but overall finishing just under 1,000 on it and I’m fine with that. I mean I wasn’t as aggressive as I could have been, didn’t get a fill on my first trade, but I also didn’t do anything that was really risky, which is important.

Next trade, SSKN, was hitting our scanners and squeezed up and got halted. This was a recent reverse split. We’ve seen this reverse split setup up 100% today on the reverse split. So reverse split is announced and then it starts squeezing up. It got halted at 4 and it reopened higher. I got in after the first halt at 425 and then I added an got myself and average of 445. We popped up to a high of 515 and that was the big winner today; $2,000. Really solid.

I scalped the move from 450 with a 445 average, up to a high of 520 and then we got this little one minute pull back here, which I traded, but it didn’t hold up and I stopped out. I thought the one minute micro pullback was a good set up, it just didn’t hold that level. That was SSKN.

Next trade was on … let’s see … CETC.

So CETC, I mean another stock that just kind of out of nowhere popped up, pulled back. I missed the five minute pull back on it. It was such a clean five minute pull back too. I’m really disappointed that I missed, but in any case I missed this five minute set up and so I said, “Well I’ll buy the first one minute pullback.”

Let’s drag this out here a little bit further.

The first one minute pull back after the five minute breakout was right here. Let’s see. It was right here. So that was the first one minute pull back after the five minute breakout. Then the next trade was right here. The second five minute pullback with an entry at $5 and this popped up to 518 and then got rejected as well. You know this one just … I don’t know. I missed the right entry and so kind of made it hard to be aggressive and do well on it. So I finished only $60 on that one.

I don’t know. I’ve got this trend line that’s stuck here, doesn’t want to move.

Anyways. So CETC. Last one was CHNR.

We noticed a few China stocks were squeezing up. China Natural Resources here. Pullback, squeeze, pullback, squeeze, pullback, squeeze. Not bad at all. I traded through … Let’s see, which one was it? This first pullback, squeeze here and I locked up at $235.

These aren’t huge winners, but when you add four of them together it puts me up over $3,000 on the day, which is awesome. So great way to finish the week. My goal this week was to be disciplined, to not let myself overtrade, to stay focused on a quality setups, and I did that. The 78% accuracy goes to show that I stayed very focused. Today I traded more than any other day of the week, so I was definitely trading quite a bit, but I think that it was worth it because we sort of had this little feeding frenzy.

We had these China stocks running up; CHNR, CETC, CCCL, China Ceramics, CCCR, China something. So you know we’re just … I don’t know. It’s just kind of a day where we’re seeing some momentum. I think it was all sympathy off this big move on CLNT right out of the gates. That’s what kind of got things started today so that’s why today was a good day to be a little more aggressive.

Now I had no idea that’s what today would be like when I sat down at 9 AM or 9:15, but once we started to see the momentum I realized, “Okay, this is a day that I do need to try to strike at these opportunities even if I’m not gonna use really big share size I want to try to capitalize on these moves,” and I did.

That finishes up day … I think we’re on day 65 … no day 66 of the $583 challenge. So 66 trading days into the year and up about $118,000 in this account. This account that started at $583. So total on the year I’m up just over 150,000 because in the first month I was also trading in my regular account.

All right so this is a great start to the year; just into the second quarter here. Hopefully we’ll see this momentum continue through April. I mean $12,000, 13,000 in the first week; that sets me up for a great month if I can be consistent at 10,000 a week. 5,000 a week is fine. That’s $20,000 a month, but I really want to try to be in the 30 to 40,000 or, if I can, 50,000 monthly range.

I finished last month with about 28,000, 29,000. The month of March, 28,000. The month of February, 68,000; best month I’ve ever had. That’s enough money to buy a fully loaded Volvo. I mean that’s some Volvo money there. I could really do something with that. So 68,000 and then January was 30,000 or so.

Anyways, this is good year. I mean it’s really starting out better than any other year I’ve had and we’ll just see where it takes me. I mean the important thing to remember is that there will be cold streaks, so I want to make sure I put this money away and do the smart thing so it can tide me through a cold streak. I think that’s what most smart traders would do.

I think there is a tendency, sometimes, that when you have some really big weeks, like you make 10,000 or $15,000 that you’re like, “Oh, you know I can go buy a $10,000 Rolex,” or something like that, and then what you don’t realize is that what if next week you make nothing? Or what if next week you actually lose money? Or what if you go through three weeks where things have slowed down? Well at least you have the watch, but you spent that money.

What’s even worse is if you do something like you go put a down payment on a really expensive car and now you know you’ve got monthly payments that you’ve gotta make on it and you were counting on being able to make 25, $30,000 a month. So when things suddenly slow down, you’re not really prepared to handle that slow down. You’ve over extended yourself. I even did that a little bit as a beginner trader. I started to see a little success and I was like, “All right, things are going well,” but then I would have those setbacks.

So in today’s episode of Behind the Trades we’re gonna talk about being an up and down trader, being a roller coaster trader, which really is kind of what I was last month. I mean I had some big ups and big downs and this month I really want to steady that out. That was kind of … especially ending March with a $5,000 loss was like, “Okay I need to kind of switch gears for April a little bit and step back and reevaluate.” So we’re gonna talk about the April game plan in our Behind the Trades, episode six and it’s called Being A Roller Coaster Trader.

All right so we’ll jump into that and I’m gonna upload that video separately to YouTube so you guys can watch that.

All right so we’ll jump over to our episode 6 of Behind the Trades.

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