Day 92 – Finishing the week +$2.6k

Alright guys, so, time for our midday market recap. Finishing the week here with another Green Day. I’ll pull up my P&L for you. For those of you watching on Facebook, you can see my P&L there up $733. Traded three stocks, four trades total, and two green names and one red name.

I was up thousand and gave back 270 bucks, or whatever it was. GLYC. It’s, again, one of those stocks that made a really big move, and it just didn’t really give me, at least today, any easy opportunities. Yesterday it was easier to trade. I want to try to pull up my P&L for those of you watching in the chat room. Hang on, I just got to grab it. For some reason my browser is crashing. I’ll pull it up in one second, but yeah. GLYC, I was a little unsure about it this morning.

I saw that we obviously had a huge move yesterday, and I missed a couple of the really good, easy opportunities yesterday, which is what happens when you’re distracted. I have a lot of things going on. I wasn’t as focused as I might have been if I was at home in my office, and that type of thing. Yesterday, I made $126 on GLYC. Today, I gave up 274. Let me walk you through that one first since that’s the one I think most people are interested in. We had the premarket high of 1229. I said right away, like I’m going to be really careful about trying to trade this out of the gates, because even though I think it could break over 1229 and pop up, I’m concerned that it’s just too extended, and it’s just going to be really sloppy.

Look at what happened. Market opens, and it pops up, and it breaks 229 right here. It goes up to a high of 240, and then drops all the way down to 1125. It dropped a full point. Then, all of a sudden, it surges back up and goes back up to this 1280 level. I was watching this one minute consolidation, but at that point, the candles looked like this. This was at 9:40, so we had two Doji candles on the five minute chart.

I looked at that and I was like, “There’s just too much risk on this. I really don’t feel comfortable taking this trade, so I’m just going to sit out and wait for a better opportunity.” That’s what I did, I’ll move this thing over, I sat out, waited for a better opportunity. It pops up, it goes 1350, 14, 1450, and then right through here it’s consolidating.

During this consolidation of here at 1450, and actually, it was right at 952 right here where we were getting this one minute flag. I was like, honestly, I’m not interested in trading this one minute flag because of the fact that this is so extended off of our 20 moving average on the one minute chart. 20 moving average on the one minute chart was 1339. For me to get in right here at the break of this flag at 1420 is too extended.

We don’t have support. Of course, the nine moving average is really far away on the five minute chart, so we’re just overall extended. I was like, “You know what? I actually think I’ve been the guy who buys here at 1420, it pops up, and then it tanks.” I was like, “You know what? I have shares available to borrow on this thing, I’m going to short it.” I didn’t short it as soon as it popped up.

What I did is, we got this pop here too, you can see how this is a Doji candle. We got it. We popped up to 39, and then as we came back down, I shorted at 1419. I was like, “I think this is going to be a good spot. I’m going to set my stop at high of day.”

Well, it pops up, it goes up to a high of 64, and so I stopped out. I was like, “Well, you know what? I got to do the right thing. I got to stop out. I really think it’s going to roll over, but I don’t want to be stubborn. I’m not really a short seller. I focus on trading to the long side. I better just get out of this. I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to do something stupid on Friday, like hold this thing as it squeezes over 1415 goes up to 15, and then 1550 and 16.” I was just like, “Tight stops.” I bailed out.

Now, on this Doji here, as it broke on the one minute over 1550 and came back down again, I was like, “I kind of want to get back in.” But then I was like, “You know what? Don’t over trade it. Just wait.” Well, I ended up having the right idea. You can see here it just has faded all the way back down. I was shorting it. I had the right idea, I was just a little early. You know what? It’s better to stop out quickly then to hold through a squeeze.

Especially on this type of stock. I think I traded the right way. I could have maybe gotten back in here for when it came up it did this attempt at a break over 39, and then dropped down. I could have shorted this at 14 with a stop at 39. With a stop at the high of that move. That would’ve been okay too. Obviously, that would have been really good.

Again, I’m not a big short seller, so I took a stab at it, I was a little early, and so I decided I would just play it smart, scale back, and after all, it’s Friday. I will put my P&L over here so you guys can see it on Lightspeed. This is day four in Lightspeed. 730 bucks. Finishing the week up about $2600, and I traded only four days this week. I traded from my laptops in Las Vegas. $2600 trading on the road, and this is really, for me, it’s just a solid day.

I think this is the definition of freedom. The ability to do this and make this income regardless of where you are. Whether you’re in Italy, Las Vegas, New York City, Vermont, California. This is my portable ATM machine. I connect it to the market each day, I execute my plan, I pull more money out than I give back, and I walk away feeling good.

It’s interesting here in Las Vegas, I really, generally don’t enjoy gambling. I don’t enjoy gambling because I don’t have an edge. It’s the truth. I don’t have an edge. The house has the advantage. It just feels stupid. I know some people enjoy it, and that’s fine, and I can enjoy it a little bit too. I can have a little bit of fun, but generally, it’s like I’m paying a high price for a very short period of entertainment.

Like blackjack at $25 a hand. To play even for an hour, it’s going to cost you a couple hundred bucks, unless you’re on a hot streak or something. Generally, the house has the advantage, and will always win over the long-term. That’s the big difference between the way I feel about trading, and the way I feel about being at the casino here and gambling.

When I’m trading, I have an advantage. I’m right 68 percent of the time. We were looking at my stats in the inner circle seminar yesterday. My stats for the last 14 months, 15 months, is $370,000 in profit with 66 percent success. I have an advantage in the market. The house doesn’t have the advantage. The market doesn’t. I have the advantage. My edge is that I have a strategy. I have a plan. I come into the market every single day, I trade the plan, and six out of 10 times, 6.6 out of 10 times, I walk away with money. That’s really the big difference.

Now, a lot of people will say day trading is gambling. It can be gambling. It can be gambling if you don’t have that edge. If you don’t have a strategy. Because then the house will always win. The market will always win. You’re just coming in and basically doing a little of this, and a little of that. You’re going to give up profit, you’re going to lose money, and at that point, it basically is gambling because you don’t have a strategy.

The strategy is what’s really different. That’s what really gives you the potential for this to be a career, rather than just something that’s based on luck. For traders who come into the market, and within the first couple weeks they hit a couple big winners. You can’t build this type of career on luck. It has to be based on skill. That’s definitely something that’s been on my mind as I’m out here. I haven’t even gambled yet. I’ve been here since Tuesday, and I haven’t gambled.

To me, I don’t mind risking 400 bucks on a trade knowing that the statistics are in my favor that I’m going to come out with 600 or $800. I don’t have those same statistics at any of the tables in here. The only people that would have that type of edge would be someone who knows how to count cards or something. I don’t. This is just, whatever, gambling, some people like to do it, it’s may be fun or whatever.

It’s one of those things that I have a little bit of a hard time with it because I deal with risk management all day long, and so when I think about I’m putting out money, it’s like, well, what am I getting in return? I don’t drink, so I’m not getting the drinks, so it’s like, I don’t know, I’m not sure what I’m getting in return.

A little bit of entertainment for a high price. Which is fine, you pay for a concert, might be 200 bucks for a concert ticket, it’s only two hours long. It’s okay to pay a high price for short periods of entertainment, but you just have to know that that’s what you’re doing. This is not a career. You don’t come to Las Vegas to make money. 9.9 out of 10 people don’t.

I was actually asking that question last night is what percentage of poker players are professional poker players who actually make money and do competitions and stuff like that? It’s got to be a really small percentage. I think that that’s not unlike the percentage of day traders who are actually successful. Who actually have a strategy that’s backed up with historical data. I would guess that there’s, percentagewise, more successful traders than more successful poker players. I would guess, but I don’t know what those statistics are.

Anyways, that’s it for me today. 700 bucks, that’s a good day. I’ve been settling in with $500-$700 a day. That was my goal for the month of May. May was about being in trader rehab. Scaling down on the share size, taking the base hits, a little bit there, a little bit there. Knowing at the end of the week and at the end of the month it would add up. I’m up like 14 grand on the month right now. 2600 on the week.

We’ve still got two weeks left. Solid week and a half. Next week, I’ll be trading from California, so I’ll still be on my mobile trading station, and I’ll continue to trade with smaller size. I’m not going to be crazy, crazy aggressive knowing that I don’t have all the tools at my disposal, or maybe 100 percent of my focus here, because I’m traveling and stuff like that. It is kind of nice, because it forces me to stay in rehab a little bit, and be conservative on share size, and just get a little bit here, little bit there. Build that account up.

My goal right now is to hit $50,000 in my Lightspeed account. I’m going to open on Monday around 44,000. So 44,200, or something like that. Keeping my eye on those next targets, but the same time, I’m not going to beat myself up if I have a slow day or if I have a red day, because it’s about the marathon. It’s about the big picture. It’s about, really, a strategy that can make me $20,000, $30,000 a month.

Not just for three months in a row, but for the next 30 years. Potentially. One day doesn’t matter too much. If it’s a slow day or a red day. I think that’s something that traders struggle with, because we get into this tunnel vision of every day has to be a green day. It doesn’t. If you lose 200 bucks, it doesn’t matter. You can make it back the next day. In any case, I’m feeling good about May right now.

In contrast to April, at this point in the month, I have two red days. I have two red days so far in April, or in May, sorry. I lost $156 on the second, and 700 on the third. I’ve been green since then. Now, in April, by this time, I had already had over $8000 in losing days. Now, I was still green on the month, but I was having much bigger swings in the P&L. It’s nice to scale that back. I’m feeling less stressed because I’m not dealing with $5000 losses, and 10, 20,000 share position sizes.

Okay, so that’s it for today, and I will see you guys in the chat room, I’ll see you guys first thing Monday morning. Those of you who follow us on Facebook live, I’m going to try to sign on at some point. Probably tomorrow from San Francisco. Maybe Sunday from Napa Valley, and then be back on Monday for our midday market recap at lunchtime. That’s it for now, hope you guys all have a great weekend. All right, bye.