Finishing month of Aug +$6k and starting Sept!

All right, guys. So we’re going to do a little midday market recap, go over the trades from today. This is definitely not the funnest way to start a new month. I hate having a red day recap in general and having it on the first day of the month is disappointing. It’s actually no different from how I started the month of August. August started with two red days. So it’s not uncommon for me to hit a red day right at the beginning of the month. It’s a Friday.

I pushed it a little too hard and I’m going to finish the day in the red which is for sure disappointing. But the reality is it’s just one day. So we’ll go over, we’ll talk a little bit about the month of August here now that August is in the books. Go over my trades from today. Also, I’ll let you guys know. I mean, today’s a day rundown. I’m a little bit in the red but I’m not going to sweat it.

August was a pretty decent month. What I decided to do yesterday was donate $30,000 to a couple of charities to help everyone that’s trying to rebuild in Texas. So my daily gains, it’s certainly nice to have big green days and it’s disappointing to have red days but the big picture is that I’m a very successful trader and it’s nice to be able to give back a little bit when people are in need. When we had hurricane Irene up here in Vermont, it was a really difficult time. I wasn’t in a position to make a big donation then so it’s nice to be able to do it now and to help some of the organizations that did help folks in Vermont at that time as well.

So anyways, I know we’ve got a number of members in Texas who have been logging in and talking about trading on generators and trying to I guess just keep some sense of what’s normal and keep on trading. I know I’m the same way. I just want to keep doing my thing and even if I’m going through something or whatever, trading is my routine so I get that you guys are doing that. But it’s definitely a long road ahead for rebuilding. So any little bit helps. Anyone else that wants to help, I’m sure it will be much appreciated. All right. So that’s something I wanted to talk about a little bit or at least just let you guys know. That’s something that was important to me.

Today is the day where I stepped up to the plate and was red on three out of three trades. This is the funny thing with the way I trade. This is very common that I’m either green on three out of three or four out of four or whatever it is or I’m red on three out of three, four out of four. It’s like I’m either 100% or I’m 0%. At the end of the day or the end of month or whatever it is, I look at my accuracy and I just hope that I’m green more than I’m red. That’s been the case obviously for a very long time. But let’s go over the trades from today.

So I started the day holding a swing trade. I was carrying the swing trade from, when was it, from yesterday on MRNS and it’s so disappointing because I really liked it. I thought it looked so good for a breakout. You can see here this very clean set up entry at 297. Yesterday we popped up to 312 then dropped back down today and so I had to stop out of it. The loss, only 170 bucks. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a little disappointing because it was such a what I thought was going to be a good quality set up.

For what it’s worth, I’m a little confused on my PNL, how it’s minus 4,400 when right here it shows minus 4,117. So I don’t know what’s going on with that but I don’t know, I guess we’ll see where it is tomorrow. I’ve never seen that happen in Light Speed so that’s a little strange. But whatever. A couple of hundred bucks, at this point doesn’t really matter. So it’s fine. We’ll see what it looks like on Tuesday morning, I guess. But so MRNS was my swing trade. Got stopped out on that. I was in the green but I didn’t sell it so whatever, red on that.

Next trade. First trade of the morning for our day trade was PYDS. Continuation, I got it for the break of the pre-market highs which was 44. I chased it a little bit with an entry at the half dollar, 49 and 50. A little bit of a chase. Not too bad though. I thought it was going to break over the half dollar which it did. It popped up to 59 and then it dropped here all the way back down to 22. So I mean, really, when you look at this range, it popped up about 10% and then it dropped about 20%. It’s such a range. So on that one, I had to throw in the towel, minus 1,100 bucks.

So first trade, first two minutes, I’m down $1,100. That’s the point where obviously I could say, “Well, I’m at my max loss. I should just stop.” But I try to give myself a little bit of room if I hit my max loss and it’s still the first minute, I’ll let myself take another trade sometimes. Today was one of those days.

So FENG was on the scans for a possible swing trade. Looking for a break over 80. Now, I didn’t want to hold it over the weekend so I figured I would take a day trade on it and if it worked out really well, that would be great. But because it was a swing trade set up, it was that much stronger. So right out of the gates you see it pop up from the 50’s all the way up to 60 to 75. So I jumped in this. I wanted to get in at 75 as it was kind of just right around this area. I was thinking target was five bucks. It pops up to 82 and then it drops down to 69.

I held it, held it, I was like, “All right. Well, we’re flagging a little bit.” On this candle, I had to bail out and I got filled at the bottom of that candle. So lost 2,700 bucks on that. I got slippage. I filled on the bottom of the candle. Lost an $1,700 in slippage so a little disappointing on that. But it’s the luck of the draw and then I sold MRNS. So that’s it. Those were the three trades today and it didn’t take much to put me down over grand on the day which is certainly disappointing but and not the way I like to finish the week or start a month.

But it’s the way it goes. So today is the 161st trading day of the year, 161, minus 4,400 bucks or whatever it is. One of the things that I’ve said a million times and I say it on my bad days is that if you could go to me and say, “Hey, Ross. This year, I’m going to give you the chance to make $250,000 day trading or $200,000 day trading.” But you’ll probably make about $600,000 and then you’ll lose $350,000. Those $350,000 in losses are going to be span across 25 or 30 or 40 really bad days. How are you going to handle that?

That’s the thing, sure, would it be nicer to just take that $1,000 paycheck every single day and not have the swings, the big ups. The big ups are great but it’s the big downs that are so frustrating. Yeah, sure, maybe that would be better but that’s not the way the market works. So you got to take the good with the bad and if you can’t handle the draw downs which are inevitable then it makes it really hard to have long-term to be a trader because it’s part of the deal.

So sure, today seems like a red day, it is a red day but that’s when you’re really hyper focused on just the one day. When you step back and you look at the bigger picture, the bigger picture is that I’m up $170,000 on the year and I’m still trending exactly for my annual target of 200 grand. The thing, Louie, with the comment there, the market’s still open, I can still get it back. That’s true. The market is still open but statistically, I don’t make money in the afternoon. Just my statistics are that in the afternoon when I try to trade, I lose money. So it really wouldn’t be a good idea being $4,000 in the red to keep trading. I’m red on three out of three names.

So the day that I should be aggressive would be the day that I’m green on three out of three names or four out of four names. That’s when I should really be aggressive. That’s the day when I’m doing pretty well. So  for me, it just makes more sense not to push it when I’m in the red and instead push it when I’m in the green. That’s just sort of pedal to the metal when things are looking good rather than trying to really fight through the storm when things are choppy. So that’s basically my recap for today on today’s trades. Nothing to be super impressed with.

But fortunately, I was able to keep my losses pretty tight. I mean, relatively speaking, I just had two losses today which is the swing trade’s 170 bucks, whatever, that doesn’t bother me. The $2,700 on FENG, it’s annoying. But for me, a bad day that’s going to frustrate me is probably like closer to seven to 8,000, 10,000 or 15,000, that’s disappointing. My worst day of the year is 15,000 in the red. Best day of the year is 22,000 in the green. So all of this is kind of noise. It’s the in between stuff. I got to keep a close eye on it because I don’t want to have multiple days like this back to back to back but that’s just part of the deal.

So let’s see. Show you some of my reports here. This is I guess the last 90 days of trading. Those of you who are watching this, let’s see on Facebook or on YouTube. So you can see, the last 90 days included part of April which is when I … I’ll call them back. Part of April which is when I fell into the red, fell into the red then came back up. So it’s been a little bit of a grind, kind of like slow and steady, some draw down, back up. But this is part of trading. You look at any long-term chart and you’re going to see the same patterns. So you see it with your own equity curve as well.

We’ll just look at the SPY, we’ll look at SMP500. So when you look at your statements each month or whatever, you might do for like long-term stuff, 401Ks, you see you’re up and then you’re down and then you’re up and down and up and down and as long as you’re generally trending up, you don’t want to freak out on the day when you’re red, you just want to take it in stride.

So going back here, we’ll sort through just August, 8/1, let’s see. So I’ve got August imported here and you could see it’s not the most exciting month. I was in the red like right away. I had to try to get myself back into the green. I didn’t even get back into the green until like halfway through the month which is kind of disappointing. A couple of bigger red days right here, $4,500. A nice big green day, 5,000 but overall, just sort of a choppy month, finished with, let’s see, just under $6,000 in profit which makes it my probably slowest month of the year.

So slow month of August, 6,000 bucks, 65% accuracy. Profit loss ratio is negative. Average loser, 960. Average winner only 761. So I didn’t get any home run trades. I didn’t get any really big winners. I mean, I got one which is $5,000 and that made up for the one $4,500 loss. So nothing there super, super exciting. Made the most money on Fridays which is not typical but was the case this month. Lost the most on Mondays. So kind of a breakdown of how the month panned out for me. Nothing again that I’m super excited about.

Starting from January 1, this is my account that started with $583. Doesn’t include the 35,000 that I made in my other account. So just from the $583, up 138,000. Largest gain, 10 grand, largest loss, 7,500 or 7,100. Accuracy, 66%, about a one to one slightly negative profit loss ratio. Ratio was much better earlier in the year and then through the summer, it kind of started to slow down a little bit. But hopefully that picks back up in the fall and we get some good trades. Typically Mondays as you can see here are my best days. That’s when I do really well and then later, Thursdays and Fridays I don’t usually do as well.

So one red month of the year so far, April, down 4,000. The rest of the months have been green but as you can see, kind of like a decline which is a little interesting. I’ve had this happen before where I’ve had really hot months into a decline and then we’re just waiting for that to kind of ramp back up. If you pictured the bull flag, the push up, the pull back, now waiting for it to crawl back up. So hopefully that will be September, October, November, December although September isn’t off to the best start.

So if I have to grind at five, 10,000 a month until things pick up and we have better opportunities, that’s fine. I’m not sure if it’s the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency that’s taking volatility out of the small cap market or if it’s something else but it’s definitely been a little slow and I’ve just kind of been in a little bit of a grind, making consistent gains but would like to see it pick up a little bit more. So in any case, this is our recap here for the 161st trading day of the year. We’ve got four months left and hopefully we’ll be able to see some really good opportunities here coming into the fall.

All right. So I hope everyone has a really great long weekend. Market’s closed on market. Our Labor Day sale is underway so anyone who’s been thinking about joining the community, getting some education, would love to have you check it out, [Bank Code 00:16:17], Labor 30 will be 30% off. All right. So that’s about it and I will see you all first thing on Tuesday morning. All right. Thanks guys.