It’s Almost Valentine’s Day But There’s NO LOVE In The Market For Me!

 

What’s up everyone? Day 2 of trading in Boston, and so far, I don’t like trading here very much. You know why? It’s cause I’ve been losing money day after day. Today is the second red day of the week. It’s only Tuesday. This is obviously getting a little bit ridiculous, so I’m kind of in this pattern where we’re seeing stocks pop up like five to ten cents and then drop 20 to 30 cents, so my average winners today were only seven cents per share. My average losers were 19 cents, and that’s not sustainable unless I’m right 95% of the time, which even for me, is not realistic.  So definitely in a grind, and I’ll just be so excited when we get out on the other side of it.

You know what gives me faith is that last year, I went through this long slump of really slow trading, two steps forward, one and a half steps back, two steps forward, one and half steps back. It was a little bit of progress. It’s almost like if you kind of picture yourself stuck in a car, and you spin the wheels and you kind of make a little progress, and then you slide back, and you start to wonder, “Am I actually sliding back more than I’m moving forward when I try to get out of this whole?” Right now, it’s kind of what it’s like. It’s a little forward, a little back, a little forward, a little back, and it’s a grind.

But, when I got out of the last slump, I came into the hottest, hot streak I’ve ever had. Over a quarter million dollars in three months, and that’s what gets me excited because out of this slow curve right now, this kind of like little dip, we’re going to come out, and it’s going to be momentum, and that’s when I’m going to have the pedal to the metal, and we’re going to see some great opportunities, so you know, right now it’s a grind, but I’m excited for what’s on the other side.

All right, so let’s break down all of the trades from today in today’s Midday Market Recap.

All right everyone, so we’re going to go over the trades from this morning, almost Valentine’s day which is very exciting, but there is no love in the market for me right now. You know, it’s just a very choppy environment. So today’s another day where I stepped up to the plate and had a couple of stocks I was watching pretty closely, and I made money on two of them, and I lost money on two of them, so two winners, two losers, and the problem is the average losers are like 30 cents, 20 cents … Well 19 cents per share today. One of them was 28 cents, and two of them were smaller. Then the average winners are only seven cents, so small winners, big losers, I’m red on the day. Another red day.

You can see my P and L here. So finishing the morning down $3,100.00 and it’s kind of … I mean, I had that great day on Friday, $13,000.00, and then Monday dropped down. Tuesday dropping down again, so given back some of that profit, and it’s frustrating, and I’m being stubborn. I’m not slowing down as much as I could and continuing to jump on opportunities when I see them, and then they get slammed back down.

We can look at a couple of the trades from today. AQMS. You can see this one here. It just broke over $3.00, then this kind of sharp drop, this quick pull back. I first got in it at $2.50, but it was not easy to trade. What was really interesting on this one is that when I broke over the half dollar of $2.50, it squeezed all the way up to a high of $2.68, and then all of a sudden, there was a big seller at $2.50, and so it dropped right back down to $2.50 cause someone put a big order to sell at $2.50, and I was in at $2.50. So it was kind of strange. We don’t really see that very often that all of a sudden someone just throws a big sell order in the middle of the spread and creates this wall, so obviously disappointing that that happened. I stopped out at $2.50. I got back in, but I wasn’t able to get any big wins. My biggest winner on it was only … Actually, it was only two cents per share. It was just very choppy. A lot of hidden sellers on it.

And when I say hidden sellers, what we would see is someone put an order on the ask, and you’re seeing lots of buyers, lots of buyers, but the price isn’t moving, so you just have someone putting up a wall right there, and that just kept happening on AQMS. Every time it would pop up, it would drop back down, so very whippy as you can see. This whips to the downside, this whip down, back up, back down. It was not easy price action to trade, and as a result, I only made $128.00 on it, so nothing exciting there.

First trade of the day was OPGN. This one I got in at the half dollar at $2.50. I was watching for a break of the pre-market high, so you can see the pre-market high was $2.50. I jumped in at $2.48, popped up to a high of $2.65, and then it rolled over and dropped all the way down here to $2.10, so I stepped out of that one. My entry was $2.50. Stopped out at $2.24 and $2.18, so that was $1,900.00 there. Boom. Right into the red.

$600 profit on ARPN. This was a decent trade here, but it didn’t have the level at all. Again, like it popped up and then just totally rolled over, so this is kind of what we keep seeing, and it’s definitely … I’m stepping up to the plate. I’m looking at these setups, and I think they look decent, and in another market, they would work really well.

I don’t feel like I’m doing anything particularly different from what I did last month. It just seems that we’re not seeing as much follow through, so I buy. The stocks pop up. I buy in the breakout point, the place where I expect them to go to pop up. You see here, ARPN, it works, and then it doesn’t hold the level. It doesn’t sustain. It drops back down, and it drops lower than where it even started from, so we’re just seeing these sharp reversals.

That was a nasty one on ARP, and then CATB. This is the one that really frustrated me. It’s frustrating. You get in to this type of setup thinking it’s going to be a nice breakout, and that’s that big red candle. You can see right here, that big kind of rejection where we get in the first candle to make a new high. It’s a decent set up, and then it just gets slammed back down.

This is one where I was never even really green on it. It just … I got in at 25. It went to 28, and then dropped to $2.06, so I lost 18 cents on that one, and it’s just … It’s the market that we’re in right now.

One the things I was saying is how quickly the tide has shifted from an amazing January to a really slow February, and there’s no doubt about it. I’m frustrated. No one likes to come in and trade day after day and lose money. My job is to come in here and be a profitable trader, so the fact that I’m red six out of nine days this month, it’s probably the worst month … This is probably one of the worst months I’ve ever had. I’m only down 9,000, but it’s very, very difficult right now.

Again, it’s a great time to be trading in the simulator, to be practicing, because right now, trading with real money, if you’re a beginner trader … If you can do well now, you’re going to do well in probably any market, so there’s that, but at the same time, it’s just not very rewarding because even good, quality setups aren’t working. That’s what’s frustrating is a good quality decent setup is only popping up five cents at the breakout point, and then it reverses 15. It’s a good time to be trading in the simulator. Today’s my second red day in a row. I’m hoping tomorrow is a green day, and I’d really like to be able to finish the week green, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.

Like I said yesterday, it’s almost an environment where it’s better to not trade than to keep getting stopped out. You can see the stocks I traded today can’t short CATB, can’t short ANPE, can’t short OPGN, can’t short AQMS, and I can’t … APRN, I don’t think I can short either. So, none of these stocks I can short. I can only trade them one direction. It’s just simply not an option to short these with most brokers.

Now, if you open a brokerage account with CenterPoint, they might have shares of some of these. Their minimum is $50,000.00, so most traders are not going to be able to open an account there. Interactive Brokers, I have my IRA account there, and it really hasn’t been the best experience trading with them. I use my account there just for the IRA< but I wouldn’t really feel comfortable putting more money with them.

So, Interactive Brokers hasn’t been very good. Trade Zero. I’m a US resident, so I can’t trade there. Sure Trader, commissions are so high, I wouldn’t trade there. So, kind of just backs you into a corner where you can only trade one direction. At least, that’s way it is for me. I’ve got one option which is trade to the long side, and I can either sit tight, or I can keep stepping up to the plate and keep looking for opportunities, and if we see them, then I’ll try to capture some profit.

And [inaudible 00:10:55], yeah. I mean, I’m sure there are people that will do that. I’m sure there’s people that will short if I buy, and in a market like this, I mean, I guess that works, but obviously in a market like in January, those guys are going to blow up their accounts because you short a stock that runs up 200%, I mean, that’s not strategy just to do the opposite of what someone else does. Statistically, over the long haul, if you did that, you would lose money because I make money 70% of the time. This month has been an anomaly. September was a red month, and April was a red month. Right now, I’ve had three red months in the last year in a half … Really, in the last two years, three red months.

It wouldn’t benefit me to always do the opposite of what I think I should do, like any time I’m going to buy, to short. Statistically, that would not work at all. Even if you could find shares available to borrow.

Yeah, I suppose you’ll have people that if they see I’m in a position and I’m holding it, and it’s not working out, they might short it and figure, “Well, he’s going to have the pressure on, so he’s probably going to bail out, and when he sells, they’ll drop more cause he’s got big size.” But again, that’s not really a strategy. That’s just kind of piggy backing, and I don’t know that there’s many people that would really do that cause I don’t think they’d be profitable in the long run with that type of strategy.

I think if anyone does that, it’s probably just their pissed out that I’m making money most of the time, and they want to try and take a little advantage of the times that I’m in the red or push the … Try to sell and short stocks that I’m in to make it harder for me. But again, that’s kind of silly. That’s not a strategy. That’s just kind of an emotional thing for someone to do. If they want to do that, again, that’s on them, and in January, when I made $117,000.00, if they’re shorting of those stocks, that’s not going to work out super well.

Again, for me, I try not to think too much about what other people are doing cause I don’t want to compare myself to others. I don’t really care if someone else is making money or losing money. It’s just not … That doesn’t help me unless they’re trying to teach. I show you what I do every day to teach you so you guys can learn from what I’m doing whether it’s right or wrong, so there’s benefit there. I don’t sign on to Twitter. I don’t do any of that stuff cause I just find it helpful. I see it as more of a distraction than anything else.

Right now, for sure, it seems like a lot of the stocks that I buy haven’t really been following through as well, and I think that’s more cyclical. I don’t think it’s anything more than that. This isn’t any different from the ebbs and flows that I’ve had in the past.

One of the things that does get me excited is the fact that last year, when I went through kind of a rut like I’m in now, I came out on the other side of it, and made a quarter million dollars in three months. I made $80,000.00 in November … Well, I made $30,000.00, in October, $80,000.00 in November, $84,000.000 in December. So that was 200 grand, and then I made another $117,000.00 in January. So $320,000.00 in four months. That’s what I’m looking forward to. When we do come out of this slow period, and I can have another $300,000.00, $400,000.00 hot streak.

If I have a month where I lose 10 grand, and I then I go back into a hot streak where I make $300,000.00, $400,000.00 in three months, that’s … Keep it in perspective. Right? That’s good. That’s what we like to see. That makes you kind of say, “Oh well, yeah, I guess being down $8,000.00 or $9,000.00 in a month isn’t really that big a deal.” And again, we still have two full weeks left in the month of February for me to try to get myself back into the green. I’m not going to throw in the towel on the month yet. I think that there’s definitely opportunity for me to finish in the green, but it’s a difficult market right now.

We saw a little bit of follow through on ARPN. AQMS very choppy. OPGN didn’t work at all, and CATB was pretty choppy as well. I don’t know. All of a sudden, it popped up right on this candle from about $2.00 to $2.34, but then it didn’t hold that level, so now it’s kind of coming back down.

I think right now is a good time to try to exercise discipline as much as you can. Try to keep the losses as small as you can, and again, that’s relative to your account size, relative to what you’ve done in the last three months. For some people, losing $3,000.00 in a day is devastating. You’re at your wits end. For me, this is all just part of the noise. Being down more than $15,000.00 would be a really bad day for me. Being up more than $40,000.00 would be a really good day for me, and anything in between is just the noise. It’s just part of doing the job. There’s days where you come in, and you’re green, and there’s day where you come in, and you’re red.

Like I said also earlier today, trading is, I don’t know, 50% skill and 50% emotions. Dealing with the emotional side is the harder part for me at this point. Now that I have the skill, it’s just dealing with the emotions of trading. Dealing with the fact that over the last six weeks of the year, I’ve made $110,000.00, and wouldn’t it be a lot nicer to just average … What’s $110,000.00 divided by six? $18,000.00.  Wouldn’t it be nicer just to average $18,000.00 a week or $3,600.00 a day and have a green day every single day? Make $3,600.00 every single day. Course I’d rather do that than have a day where I make $18,000.00 like I did two weeks ago, have a day where I make $13,000.00 like I did on Friday, and then have days like today and yesterday where I lose money. But that’s not how it works. You have to deal with the ups and the downs. It’s just how it is.

Emotional conditioning and getting yourself to a place where you can handle those swings is probably the hardest point, and you guys see it with em every day. It’s not something that I don’t still struggle with even after having done this for years and years. I still have those feelings of frustration and disappointment when I have red days, and when I have a green day, it’s pretty much just like, “Well, that’s good, but it’s no big deal.” The red days are the ones that are hard to deal with, but hopefully we, again, start to see better follow through. Hopefully things do start to turn around. I still think it’s going to be the first stock that goes up 200% or 300%, and any of those traders who are shorting whenever I sell or whenever I buy, plus all the other short sellers out there. They’ll start to get squeezed out. Long traders like us will start to see a bigger opportunity. We’ll start to get a little more aggressive, and that’s what will usually start the next round of momentum. That’s what typically happens.

It’s waiting for that catalyst to get people excited again, and yeah, it might be another couple weeks. I don’t know how long this slow period will last, but there are still opportunities here and there. Had a great day last Friday with $13,000.00, so that was a big step forward, and now the last couple days stepping back a little bit, so waiting for that next step forward, but probably keep having these steps up, and then a couple steps back, step up, and a couple steps back until we really start to open up again.

I think that’s probably the name of the game. Get in, get the profits, get out, be quick. I’m trying to be quick. I was pretty quick on the first couple trades. OPGN just slipped down, got me good, and CATB, that one, again, those false breakout rejections are tough. I’m not sure exactly how to anticipate those better because this really was a decent set up in my mind. I suppose probably the best thing to do on something like CATB maybe is watch the low of the last one-minute candle, stop out right there as soon as it breaks rather than wait to the low of that drop. That might be something to do, but that might help a little bit.

OPGN, let’s see. Pull that one back up. If I’d stopped at the low of the previous one-minute candle, how would that have worked? Let’s see. I would’ve stopped out at $2.30. I stopped out at $2.24. So yeah, I mean, that would’ve been better, so smaller size, be quick to pivot, quick to get out if it’s not working, and when things do start to pick back up, those winners will stack up quickly, but you just want to try to avoid getting yourself too deep in the hole.

I’m kind of getting a little closer to the edge of the red, edge of the draw down, and I’d like not to go too much deeper into the red. After a big day on Friday, it felt worth being a little aggressive and pushing because I had such a great day, but now I’ve stepped back.

Again, kind of that analogy of you get stuck in a ditch, and you start to get out, and you’re like, “All right. I think I got it.” And you push the gas pedal down, and then, next thing you know, you’re just spinning and sliding backwards, and then, “Oh no. Oh no. And now am I going to be actually more stuck than I was to begin with?” That’s what you want to try to avoid.

Anyways, this is it for me today. This, for you guys, is an opportunity to really get a glimpse into what it’s like to be a trader, to watch a trader who goes through the ups and the downs, and every single day makes a video to talk about it. I want you guys to see both sides of the coin and to realize that, yeah, we have great days. I’ve made a great living as a trader. $400,000.00 last year was awesome. It was a great year. I’m already up over $100,000.00, and it’s February 13th. So, so far, this is a great year despite the fact that yeah, I’ve got a couple red days. This could be a half million dollar year for me. This could be the best year ever, and at the end, they’ll be people that are probably hating, saying, “Oh, he makes money every single day.” Whatever they want to say, but the reality is I didn’t get there without the red days. I didn’t get there without the frustrations and having to go through the same stuff that all of you guys have to go through.

That’s kind of where I’m at today, a little frustrated. Not as frustrated as I was yesterday cause the loss isn’t as bad, so. We’ll get back at it first thing tomorrow morning, Valentine’s Day. Hopefully, there’ll be some love in the market, and we’ll be able to start build up the account a little bit.

For those of you guys studying, it’s a great time to study. Don’t get frustrating. You guys are in a simulator. It’s the right place to be. Just keep working at it. Keep practicing, and when the market does pick up, you’ll be able to capitalize on the opportunities.

All right everyone. So I hope you guys have a great afternoon, and I’ll be back at it first thing tomorrow morning. Pre-market analysis around 9:00, 9:15. All right. I’ll see you guys in the morning.

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