Day 70 of the $583 Challenge -$1k

All right, guys. Time for a midday market recap. Let me go over the trades from today. Today is another just really slow day in the market. It’s a little annoying, I guess. the day down $1003. A little bit of a pull back today. Second red day in a row. For me, I was really focused this morning on just trying to hit my thousand dollar a day goal, not trying to make back all the losses from yesterday or doing anything like that, but just to try to have a good day. Take some good trades, book some profit, and be done with it.

On my first two trades, I made a combined profit of like, $70. My first trade was on AHR, which was a [Gap and Go Trade 00:00:52]. I jumped in it at 440 for a break of the pre-market highs. Makes sense. It popped up to a high of 450 and that was it. There was a big sell at 450, 20,000 shares seller. I said, “You know what? I’m getting out of it. Doesn’t feel good.” Stopped out with only a couple cents of profit. I actually only sold 500 shares of my 2500 share order. Partial fill and made $35. Small win on that one.

Then I jumped into ADPT. I saw this one spiking up, and I was like, “Okay, well, I’ll buy the first one minute pull back.” That’s a smart entry, it’s a good setup. You can see right here, first one minute pull back was an entry at 40. Popped up to a high at 54, and then came right back down. On that one I only made $35. Those were two tiny winners. I was like, “All right, well this seems like it’s maybe going to be a little bit of a slow day.”

Then I jumped into ADPT again, let’s see. I got in, this is so annoying, I got in right here on the second one minute pull back. Got in at 68 for the break of that one minute candle to make a new high. We double-topped at 74, 75. I saw an 18,000 share seller at 75. I was like, “Well, I’ll give it a second because I think that there might be enough buyers that it breaks over that level.”

Then it immediately dropped down to 54. I stopped out of that with 7500 shares and like a 10 cent loss, or 11 cent loss. Then I’m immediately down $800. That’s how fast it is. Immediately, down $800.

I was like, “All right, well looks like this is going to be another tricky day.” Cali pops up on the scanners and just kind of out of nowhere squeezed up. This is one of the China stocks that was strong last week.

I was like, “All right, I’ll jump in this.” Just basically, just try to ride the momentum up to $3. I took a partial position at 75 and 80, and then added over 90. My average was 85. Got myself with an 85 average. This was scaling in knowing I was buying it extended, but being a former runner, I thought it made sense. We got to move up, a little bit of a pull back.

A secondary move up to a high of 325, which was not bad. I mean, it’s like 40 cents. Then we pulled back pretty quickly. It just didn’t really, didn’t really do that much.

Anyways, unfortunately on that one I only made $1100, which was not bad. I mean, that’s not a bad trade. $1100 got me out of the hole by a couple hundred. Then I immediately gave it all back on CLNT. I was like, “Okay, Cali is running, some other China stocks are popping up.” I jumped into CLNT and you can see how it just did one of these total fake out moves.

It popped up and it came all the way back down. That was quick. Finished the day down $1000. $700 in losses, plus $270 in commissions. You know, that’s it. That’s the day.

Obviously a little bit of a red day, but nothing super impulsive. I really don’t care. I’m not upset about the trades today. I stepped up to the plate and came into the market, not very good opportunities, so I lost some money.

I didn’t keep trading. I just stopped. I was just like, “You know what? I’m not feeling it. I’m just going to call it a day.” That’s that. I will, this is just part of the deal with trading. I know that when I have some great opportunities, I can get in with 10, 15 thousand shares and make $7500. I can have an awesome green day, but not until I have a good setup.

If I force trades because I’m wanting to make back my loss from yesterday, or I’m wanting to make back this $1000, the only way I’m going to be able to take trades is if I lower the threshold of the quality that I’m willing to take. Then if I start taking low-quality trades, I’m more likely to have screw-ups.

ADPT, I mean, well CLNT was maybe a bad trade. I was trying to capitalize on the Cali move and I thought we would have sympathy momentum, but we just didn’t. ADPT yesterday was obviously in play.

I didn’t capitalize on it very well. Today followed through, I kind of already thought it would be not very good follow through. I was just going for a little scalp, but then obviously it pulled back pretty quickly. Not the way I really wanted to finish the week. A lot of, you know, I really wanted to avoid having big volatility this month. Just try to be steady, slow and steady, but obviously a little bit of a draw down yesterday, a little bit more today, and the market’s closed tomorrow.

I don’t love how that positions me on the month. I was up $18,000 on the month and now I’m up only about $10,000. It’s kind of frustrating, but I’ll have next week and the week after. Two more full weeks to try to get myself back up towards 25, 30,000. That would be nice.

I know that even, really even with a good trade or a good setup that one of the ones that goes from $2 to $4 to $8, if I’m aggressive on one of those I could make 10 or $15,000 on a single trade. I was fortunate to have a couple of those in March. Sorry, in February. Maybe this is a slow month and then I bounce back with some really big trades back to back in May or in June or whatever it might be.

For all I know, Monday and Tuesday will be fantastic. You never know. The important thing is the next time you see that A-quality setup starting to form that you’re ready to strike on it, and that you’re able to identify that this is what I look for. This setup has everything that I want, and this is the one that’ll make up for all the slow days. Either that I’ve already had, or maybe the slow days that will be coming in the future, the coming weeks or months.

Yeah, today kind of being even though it’s Thursday, it’s Friday because it’s the end of the week. Going to a holiday week, some traders may have taken Thursday off. It’s possible. Maybe a little less follow through, just not quite as much momentum today. That’s fine. We’ll bounce back.

I’m not going to, I’m not beating myself up about the loss today. I was a little more frustrated about the loss yesterday because I thought I was being too aggressive on my position sizing for lower quality setups. Today was fine, so that’s good. My goal on Monday will just be to try to hit my daily goal, $1000. Hitting your daily goal, I mean, that’s what you want to do.

Yes, if you’ve had a loss, you know you maybe have to hit three times your daily goal or four times to make it all back. At the same time, if you can just focus on rebuilding one day at a time, next thing you know, you’ve put some days between you and that red day and your account’s growing back up. The confidence is coming back. Then when you see the A-quality setup, you’ll be ready to strike and have that big win that puts you back over the top.

That’s kind of where we’re at right now. Opened today with 116,000. Monday I’ll be at 115,500, so down just a little bit. Little pull back off the highs, consolidation, and then hopefully get some good trades back under my belt and make my way back up towards 125, 130, 140, 150.

All right. That’s about it. As we go into the long weekend, I hope you guys all get some rest and enjoy. No class on Friday, but we do have class at 4 PM today, and then we have classes starting again next week, starting on Monday at 4 PM.

We’ll keep going with the classes and keep trading each morning. Hopefully we’ll have some good opportunities early next week. All right, so that’s it for now, and I will see you guys in class at 4 PM. All right, thanks guys!

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