I’m in the Red, But Still Feelin’ Good!

What’s up, everyone? All right. Here we are finishing the fourth trading day of the month of March, and I’m in the red, down 945 bucks, but you know what? Today’s actually a little bit of a breakthrough because I did something that I almost never do. If I look at my calendar here, if you look at my losing days, well, we don’t have the month of February because that’s gone, I don’t even remember what happened, but we look at the losing days from, let’s say, the month of January, down $4,600.

That was a losing day. Down $4,000 on another one. These are pretty big losses, and usually what ended up happening is I said, “I’m below my max loss. I can’t keep trading.” I stopped trading for one of two reasons. Either I hit my daily max loss, or I had three losing trades in a row. If I have three losing trades in a row, that, for me, is my rule that I’m done trading. I’m not going to take a fourth trade.

Today, I didn’t have three losing trades in a row, and I also didn’t hit my max loss. I just calmly said, “You know what? I’m not feeling it, and I’d rather just not keep trading today. I’m down 945 bucks. That’s not that bad. I’d rather just keep the losses small.” I said to myself, “I had this goal for the month of March that I would close every day green,” and so as I was down $250, I was sort of looking, “Okay, what can I do to get that trade to get me just up over the break even spot, even if it’s only $251, and then I said, ‘All right.'” I took another trade, and I lost. Does it really matter? Because that’s focusing on the sprint, and we’re thinking about the marathon. I’m in this for the long haul. I’m at $440,000 in my account that I started with $583.

My goal is to break over a million dollars. I’ve got 600,000 or 550,000 to go. Who cares about today? Today, we’re not seeing a lot of momentum, down 940 bucks. I’m throwing in the towel. I’ll be back at it tomorrow. That’s, for me, almost just transcending. It’s getting above the ups and downs of each individual day and trying to separate myself from the emotions. It’s very easy to get this tunnel vision where you’re just looking at the P&L, and you’re seeing that’s it red and you’re thinking about how you needed to make this amount today and blah, blah, blah, blah, but step back. Let that go. Look at the big picture.

Last year, I finished with $380,000 profit, $1,500 a day was pretty much my average. Some days were great. I had a day where I made $40,000. Other days were a little slower. I either was break even or lost money, and that’s all okay. Everything in between is just the noise.

Right now, we’re in a market that is a little tricky. It’s kind of just a grind. That’s okay. The momentum will come back, and when it comes back, I’ll be there to step it up with big size, but, for right now, I’m just going to go with slowing things down, trading with smaller size, and not being too aggressive because I just want to take it slow and have a good month of March.

Anyways, that’s where I’m at here for today, fourth day of the month, and we’re going to break down all of the trades in today’s Midday Market Recap.

All right, everyone. We’re going to break down the trades from this morning with our Midday Market Recap here. Today’s the first red day for me for the month of March, down 945 bucks. Although being red is obviously a little disappointing, the good news is that I’m keeping the losses pretty small. You can see here … Let me drag this up. My P&L, green on two names, red on two names, sort of just mixed followed through today, and I didn’t have any big winner to really offset those two pretty moderate losses, a $535 loss and a $680 loss. Not a big deal. It was just, today, I didn’t happen to get a good winner, like a $6, $7, $800 winner that would make up for it. First red day here for the month of March, but, really, it only gives back yesterday’s profit and a teeny bit of Friday’s profit, so still well green on the month, which is good.

I think one of the goals for me this month is, number one, not to have a loss bigger than … not to close any day down more than $1,000 if I can help it. That would be really nice, number one. Number two, to move in the direction of trading with smaller size. I can just not get as frustrated. Right now, we’re in a market where frustration can easily take over because it’s frustrating to come in every single day and trade and not see good follow through.

If you look at my calendar for the month of January, I was making $8,000, $5,000, $12,000, $13,000, $18,000 back to back to back. It was crazy. Right now, having days where I only make $700 or where I lose 900, it can become draining when you’re used to these really big green days. That’s something definitely to be mindful of.

It looks like I’m not sure if my livestream on Facebook is really working. It seems like it’s maybe lagging a teeny bit, but, in any case, one of the things that, for me, it’s like I can get very aggressive with my share size and, even today, I took a 12,000-share position on CHFS, and, of course, losing only $500 with 12,000 shares is really not bad at all. I got in this at 3.80 with 12,000 shares. It popped up to $4, was up 2,500 bucks, expecting to break over 4 and just scaling out, 4.10, 4.15, and it didn’t happen. Stopped out with $500 loss.

Overall, that’s not bad. Risk 500 to make 2,500. Its’ good risk/reward ratio, but if I keep swinging for the fences with that type of big size, it’s inevitable that I will have a day that I’m on the wrong side, and I take a $3, $4,000 loss, and I really can’t afford that right now, financially, but even more so emotionally, in terms of confidence. It’s the last thing that I really need after closing February red. I just need to build that confidence back up and almost trade with size that’s so small that I don’t even really care. Trading with 2,500 shares or 3,000 shares because if I lose 20 cents on it, it’s no big deal, and if I make 20 cents, it’s great, but it’s also no big deal and just keep doing that until we start to see better opportunities, and then I can amp up the share size.

INNT, I thought this would be the big momentum stock that would bring small caps back to life when it goes from $5 to 20 bucks. TENX, another one that made this a really big move, but it doesn’t seem like that’s really happened. Today, the small cap market was pretty much dead. AMDA popped up to 3.37 and tanked at the open. CHFS popped up to $4 and came back to 3.50. CLBS, which I didn’t trade, sold off right at the open and has just been weak. Even the larger cap stocks, YY, look at this gapper. Gap and drop. It dropped 15 points, which is crazy.

Right now, we’re in what is a little bit of a more difficult market, and if you look back at my P&L from 2017, you would see that January, February, March were three amazing months for me, and then things slowed down in April, May, June, July, August, and September, and I was only making about $5, $6,000 a month, which, for me, was very low. For a lot of you guys, $5, $6,000 a month, you might be really happy with that, but having had months where I made $60, $70,000, or even $100,000, 5 or 6,000 almost feels like nothing. It feels like one day. I might as well take the whole month off. That’s how it feels.

That’s where you’re kind of in the grind, and you’re in the trenches, and it’s just day in, day out, trying to capture a little profit, 300 bucks, 400 bucks, 500 bucks, and then once you feel like you’ve gotten a little progress, boom, that’s when you get hit with a $2,000 loss, and you just gave back a week of profit. That’s kind of where we’ve been right now, and it’s no doubt a little frustrating. It can be draining. I would say that if you can learn to trade during this type of environment and consistently make 200 a day, then you’re going to be in great shape for when the market does start to open up.

Right now, I’m up probably $2,500 on the month, and we’re four days in, so I’m averaging $600, $700 a day, and I know for a lot of people, $6, $700 a day would be incredible. You just get used to these big, big green days, and you can stop appreciating the small days, but you got to be able to adjust your expectations to different market conditions. You’re simply not going to be able to make $5,000 a day every single day for an entire year. That would be a million dollar year, and very, very few day traders can put together a million dollar year. Just, it’s not very common, but putting together a $150,000 year, a $250,000 year, a $350,000 year, I really believe that is well within reach for 80% of you, in the chatroom and who are going through our classes. I think that is a realistic goal to strive for. Start with 200 a day. Then 300 a day, 400 a day. By the time you’re doing $500, $600 a day, you’re crossing six figures.

Even for me last year, I averaged $1,500 a day, which totaled to $380,000, which was a great year. It obviously comes in waves. There were months last year where I made a lot of money and months that were a little slow. It’ll be the same in 2018. It’ll be the same in 2019. It’ll be the same in 2020. That’s just the way trading is. You have to be able to come in expecting that. Again, if you can be a profitable trader during these types of markets where it’s a grind, then that’s when you know you’ve really got it.

Anyways, trades from today, AMDA, gap and go trade, this one I jumped in it at 3.15 for a break of the pre-market pivot. The pivot was the high of this candle. Actually, I got filled on this at 3.18 and 3.27, and in the same second. That’s how fast these can move. Sold a second later, 3.35, 3.39, 3.34, and then I stopped out the rest of it at 2.98 as it dropped back down. It didn’t hold that level, and I couldn’t afford to keep holding, so ended up only being $177 profit. It was about a $400 winner, and then I had to stop out. That was AMDA.

Next one was CHFS, and at 75, 77, 82, 83, 85, sold half at 91, was ready to sell the rest above 97. Well, this was as it started to drop. I tried to put out orders and then had to stop out at 85, 72, 67, and 52. Ended up being a $535 loss, but, again, with 12,000 shares, that’s not that bad. Adding some liquidity, I guess, the 6,500 shares, so that’ll reduce my commissions a little bit on that trade, but kind of a bummer that it didn’t work out well. The chart on that one, it hit the scanners, wasn’t off our watch list. It was off the scans, so, boom, hit the scans, and I saw that and thought, “CHFS, this is one of the ones I’ve traded well in the past. We’ve got a couple days back here, right here, the day it went up to $20 the next day.” I think this was a stock that I made $30,000 on, so was excited to see it on the scans, jumped in pretty quickly, but it just didn’t hold up, came back down, flagged sideways, but it didn’t get back in it, so I just said, “Whatever.” That’s it on that one.

Next one was INNT. At this point, I was down about 360 bucks on the day, and then INNT squeezed up and got halted on the circuit breaker. It squeezed up 10% in a one-minute candle basically or right in this candle, got halted. It resumed higher. I jumped in it at 6.58, sold 100 shares at 17.02, sold the rest at 16.70 as it came back down. Average was only 20 cents with 500 shares. Not a big winner, but $93 profit.

With those three trades, I was down to $226 dollars on the day or right around there, $260, and I was looking for that next trade to try to get me back to break even. Wasn’t seeing anything in small caps. WBAI, a little outside my price range, but what I liked was the fact that it had just made this big move from $20 all the way up to $23, and so I thought, “Okay, well, you know what? It’s strong. I’ll buy the one-minute micro pullback,” which I did. I got in right here at 22.71, 1,000 shares.

We popped up to a high of 22.91. I put out an order to sell at 89, did not get filled, tried to sell at 86, did not get filled, and then I had to sell on the drop, which was right here, boom, all the way down to 21.50. That’s the hard thing with these stocks is that when you have this price range, you can lose all of a sudden 680 bucks, and I lost 68 cents per share. Did I have a potential to make a $1.28 per share? Gees, I just don’t know. I don’t really think so. The risk/reward on that one wasn’t very good, and I probably could have done without that trade and just closed the day down 250 bucks, but I took the trade, so going to pay the penalty on that one, and it is what it is.

Down 945 on the day. Just grinding right now. I paid myself $100,000 of profit for the month of January. I paid myself nothing for the month of February. I didn’t have anything to pay myself, lost 10 grand, and now, in March here, I’m just trying to build the account and hope that I can get a paycheck here either at the end of this month, take out a little profit or maybe it won’t be till April, but that’s okay. The 100 grand will tide me over for quite a while. I don’t even spend that much money, so most of it’s just sitting, and that’s okay.

That’s where we’re at right now, finishing the day in the red, but not too frustrated. I didn’t have two losses in a row or three losses in a row. I just am voluntarily saying, “I’m done today.” That’s nice. I’m not leaving because I hit my max loss. I’m not leaving because I hit my max consecutive losers of three in a row. I’m just saying, “You know what? I’m not feeling the momentum today, and I’d rather save my capital for tomorrow.”

I’ll be back at it first thing tomorrow morning, 9:00, 9:15 pre-market analysis, live in the chatroom and on YouTube. We’ll start trading when the bell rings at 9:30 and, hopefully, tomorrow, I can get myself back into the green, make up today’s losses and start to work towards that $4, $5,000 weekly goal. That’s where we’re at, and I will see all of you back here first thing tomorrow morning. See you guys in the morning.

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