Ross finishes Feb in the Red, but he’s still green in 2018!

What’s up, everyone? All right. Here we are finishing the end of February. This will go down as my worst month in over three years of trading. It’s a little disappointing I’m not going to lie. I’m one of those traders that I always feel like I’m only as good as my last trade. I made $117,000 in January. Who’s cares? That was January. This is February, and I lost money. I’m disappointed. I try to keep perspective to remind myself that hey, even though I’m only down $10,000 on the February and I’m still up $108,000 on the year, that’s good, but you just can’t help but feel like you’re only as good as your last trade. You have to keep performing. This month was really difficult for me.

Obviously I lost four trading days of the month being out with my ski injury, so that made it a little bit more difficult. I didn’t have as much time to recover. One of the things that I’ll sometimes do is at the beginning of the month, I can occasionally get a little risky, a little aggressive because I figure that if I mess up, I have time later in the month to recover, and that’s what I did this month. I got aggressive in the first week, and then I didn’t have time to recover because I was out for a week sick or hurt with my ski injury. Didn’t get the time to bounce back. Bounced back a little bit on Monday and Tuesday.

I came into the market today knowing that I was still red $7,000 on the month of February and probably was going to close red, and I am. I lost another $2,900 today. Finishing the month down $10,000, but the good news is I’m still in really good shape on the year. I’ve got a big cushion from the month of January. I can ride that cushion into March, into April. When things start to pick up, then I’ll be really in good shape. Anyways, we’ll do a month in review a little later this week or maybe next week, but today let’s break down all the trades in our Midday Market Recap. What’s up, everyone? All right. We’re going to break down the trades from today in our Midday Market Recap.

You know what? I am just so excited to flip this calendar to March. I just want to put February behind me because it is … It’s just not been a good month for me. It’s been the worst month I’ve had since … Gosh. I mean it’s been at least three years since I’ve had a $10,000 red month. That’s disappointing. One of the things that I, like any trader, deal with is that feeling of only being as good as your last trade. I was joking earlier, with sports and stuff like that, sports are so much you’re only as good as your last season. Tom Brady, he’s good, he’s doing great, but missing that catch in the Super Bowl, people don’t like to see that.

He does that a couple more times and next thing you know people are saying, “Oh, it’s time for him to retire, blah, blah, blah.” You’re always feeling that pressure to deliver. Now here’s one of the things that I tried to do to compensate for that. As much as the gains as I can, as much of my profits that I make trading, I take and then I reinvest into the market in mutual funds. Like last month I’ve been saving up some cash for a while because I was telling you guys how I was concerned that the S&P 500 was really extended. I didn’t feel comfortable really adding more into it. I had taken some of my money and moved it from mutual funds into bonds.

When we had this drop right here, we had this drop from 288 down here. I added two hundred grand into the market right down here on the 15th or 14th. Now I feel a little bit more comfortable riding that back up with kind of a new stop on that money down here at the low. The point being that by reinvesting the profit into the market, 4, 5, 10 years down the road I’ll be able to make money just on my money. I’ll make money on the interest. If I do have a bad month of trading, there’s no longer so much pressure for that performance, right? You start to get to a point where jeez, you might actually be making more on interest than you’re making actually trading.

Last year I made $335,000 in my small account, $380,000 total in my two accounts. $400,000, 5% interest on a $2 million account, $3 million account, it’s starting to make a dent in that P&L, that end of year profit. That’s kind of my goal is to move in the direction in these early years of my career, 7th year, 8th year now, where I’m putting as much of my profits away. If I do get to a point where I just feel I’m not trading as well as I used to for whatever reason, then I can depend on living off of dividends. I encourage you guys to kind of think of it the same way is building these revenue streams. Right now an active revenue stream is trading every single day, right?

It’s active. It’s earned. You’ve got to get out there and you’ve got to earn it, but you can take some of that and put it away. For me like I own two rental properties and those passive revenue streams. You know I’ve got to do a little bit of work, a little bit of maintenance and stuff like that, but the revenue is coming in. That starts to take the pressure off. Then when you do have a month where oh jeez, you lost $10,000 day trading, it’s like well, okay, but that’s offset by the gains from the rentals and the gains from long-term investments and dividends and stuff like that. Then the pressure comes down. It’s less stress.

It’s easier to bounce back when you’re not putting as much pressure on yourself. One of the things we talk about in the class is really trying to get you guys to embrace that mentality of you’re here to create financial independence for yourselves. Yes, day trading is one means to that end, but you can simultaneously start working on multiple means whether it’s rental properties or making a plan for one or it’s putting money into long-term investments so you can live off the dividends in 10 years. It’s having that kind of long-term marathon view. This is not about trying to make a million dollars by January so I can put a down payment on a Bugatti next year.

I mean it’s like this is about the big picture. I say all that to myself to try to make myself feel better that I’m closing the month red, but even as I say these things, it’s not going to change the fact that I’m going to go home, sit down on the couch tonight and feel like a jerk because I’m finishing the month red. It’s disappointing. You don’t want to do it, but at the same time I’m not going to go to bed thinking I’m going to not be able to pay my bills because I made good decisions with the $117,000 I made last month. I didn’t spend it on the brand new I don’t know what. What’s $117,000? A fully loaded Volvo? I don’t know. Whatever it is.

Anyways, let’s look at the trades from today. Finishing the morning down $2,897. Gross. Depressing. What went wrong? Four trades. Red on three out of the four names. Only winner is MYO. Such a contrast to my accuracy yesterday because yesterday I was green on seven out of eight trades. Of course, I lost on that last trade. My first trade today ended up being a small winner. First trade of the trade was MYO. This one was on our gap scanner for a gap and go trade. As you can see here, pre-market high.

It actually squeezed all the way up to $4.47 pre-market and then it kind of opened a little bit lower, which was a little weird, a little bit of a funny open, but I jumped in this at $3.26 and $3.42 and $3.45, which is kind of crazy because look, at 9:30 and eight seconds I filled 2,500 shares at $4.26. Not bad. One second later, I’m filling 2,500 shares at 42. Almost 20 cents higher and another in that same second filling at 45. Now I have 7,500 shares with an average of $4.32 or something like that. I ended up selling them for like a $200 profit. It was like did not end up being a big profit. It tapped for $4.60. Didn’t hold. It dropped back down.

I ended up adding at $4.46 and $4.54. Tried to sell it $4.59. No fill. Tried to sell a bunch. Didn’t get filled on those orders. Filled one share, just remember, enough to get the commission because if I put out the order and it fills zero, I don’t pay commission on it. I only pay commission if some of the order is executed. If this order, which was 2,700 shares, one share executed, that’s enough for the 250 commission we’d like to be. Whatever. Sell more at 46 and then sell the rest at 41. $286 profit on MYO. Whatever. It’s fine. Next trade, MBVX.

This one was also on our watch list pre-market for a gap and go, but it wasn’t a great pre-market chart because it had dropped down. I wasn’t that interested in it and then all of a sudden it started to spike up in this candle. I was like okay. It popped from a $1.10 to a $1.25. I was like I’m game. I’ll jump in. 5,000 shares at $2.25. I added more at $2.50. Tried to sell at $2.59. I now have 10,000 shares. It hit $2.60. Then this thing dropped all the way back down. Just disappointing. I mean it’s actually now red on the day. It didn’t hold up at all. Like 0%. Stopped out of that with a $283 loss, which isn’t bad for a 10,000 share position, but just a little disappointing.

Then let’s see. CHCI. CHCI was not on our watch list this morning, but it hit our momentum scanner here at $2.15, $2.19 and $2.25. I guess someone must have called it out in the room right around $2. Yeah, I guess it was around $2. It pops up here as you can see. Let’s scroll this back. If someone calls it out in the room, they’re like, “Hey, check out CHCI. Pull it up.” I’m like okay. Right. It’s a former runner. I know the stock. I’ve traded it several times. I saw it. It had squeezed up from $1.90 to $2, and so I jumped in right at $2. Let’s see. Move this back up. I jumped in with 5,000 shares at $2 and got a partial fill at $2.03.

Now it actually went all the way up to a high of $2.30. I put an order to sell half at $2.49 and $2.39 because I thought I would scale out up in that area. Well, that didn’t happen. It hit $2.30 and then it dropped all the way back down, and I’m breakeven. I went from being up $1,500 to being breakeven, and then I held it and I ended up stopping out on this candle here. I kind of was like, “Well, I’ll give it a chance for the first one minute candle to make a new high, right, and I’ll sell on the pop.” Guess what? The first one minute candle did not make a new high until right down here at $1.85, and I just couldn’t hold it that long.

I stopped out of that. $1,100 loss. In hindsight, maybe I was too aggressive putting my orders at 39 and 49. I thought it would … I don’t know. I thought it would top those levels. I didn’t think that would be an issue. I didn’t expect it to come all the way back down to breakeven and then turn into a loss. Maybe the discipline on that one wasn’t on point. I should’ve stopped at breakeven. A little disappointing there. Then next one, AHPI. This one kind of frustrating. Squeezes and gets halted. I saw it hit the scanners. I tried to type it in. I typed in APHI. I’m like APHI and nothing comes out. I’m like what’s going on? What’s going on?

AHPI. I retyped it and then I see at that point it’s already getting halted. It goes $4.10, $4.20, $4.30, $4.40, $4.50, $4.60. Halted at $4.60. I was like all right. Well, that’s fine. It’s halted. I didn’t get in. I saw some of you guys actually did get in, which is awesome. In this at like $4.20, $4.30, $4.40, and you guys sold up here at $5.25. When it resumed, I was watching it for resumption. I put my order at $5.25. I had my hand over the buy button like this. It resumes and I press the buy button twice. Actually let’s see. Yeah, I pressed it twice. I thought I was getting filled at $5 because right as it was at $5, I pressed it boom, boom.

Because I used a limit order with a limit of $5.25 … Remember a limit order will fill you up until the limit, up until that price. It popped and I filled at $5.16 and $5.21. I then sold at $5.23 and $5.24 thinking I was booking a profit, and then I looked down and realized that I was getting out breakeven. I sold half of it basically breakeven and sold the rest at $4.40. In hindsight, maybe I should have had my limit order closer to $5 so I wouldn’t have gotten filled so high, but I thought that … It looked like it might open around $5.25 and I was thinking well, $5.50 would be the next target. This thing it opened and it just sold off.

I stopped out here at $4.40. I said that I would stop at the low of the pullback. That was right here at $4.40. You can see this red candle. This is where I stopped out. I was like I’ll give it a chance for the first one minute candle to make a new high, which was right here, and then it rejected, and so I said, “All right. I got to get out.” That was a $1,700 loss. That does it for me because that’s three losers in a row. Losing on MBVX, MYO and … Sorry. Losing on APHI, CHCI and MBVX. Three losses in a row, I throw in the towel. Being down 2,800 bucks, grand scheme of things, isn’t that big of a deal. Obviously I’d rather be green, but it’s not a big loss.

I just have to know when to walk away and not let myself get to a point where I’m trading out of frustration. That’s the last thing I want to do. I don’t want to be frustrated. That’s just going to make me an impulsive and emotional trader. Learning to step away when things aren’t going the right way is very important. Today I did it, so I stepped away down 2,800 bucks. Closing the month of February down $10,000. It’s disappointing. My profit trifecta for the month I haven’t reviewed it yet. I’ll import all of my trades probably tomorrow once they’re all said and done. Looks like my average winners are only about 12 cents per share and my average losers are 18 cents per share.

If we go on a per share basis, it’s a negative profit-loss ration. My accuracy for the month just based on my Excel doc here, looks like it’s about 53%, which is extremely low compared to 70% in January. For sure, a little bit of a setback. Actually I have 76% for January at least in my Google, my Excel. I’ll log into Tradervue and just double check that. Average losers in January were 26 cents per share. They were actually bigger, but my average winners were 20 cents per share. My average winners were almost double. It all comes down to your metrics and your stats, but this month I just didn’t have the metrics of a profitable trader.

Had a couple of big wins. Biggest win was a $10,000 a day or $10,000 single trade winner. That was on … Let’s see. What day was that? That was February 9th. Finished the day with $13,000 in profit, but then kind of sloppily getting back some of those gains in the following week. Then I kind of was like all right. Coming to the end of the month. I’ve got two weeks to get myself back into good shape. Then I was out for a week with my ski injury. Didn’t really have time to recoup those losses, but that’s all right. Again think of this as the marathon, not the sprint. Big picture. Life is good. Green is good. Up over $100,000 on the year as we come into the month of March.

That’ll do it for me. I’ll be back at it first thing tomorrow morning. Pre-market analysis around 9:15. Right around there. Then we’ll get into trading at 9:30 and we’ll be starting a fresh month, which is exciting. All right. That’s the game plan. I’ll see all of you guys back here first thing tomorrow morning. All right. See you guys then. If you’re still watching, you must have really enjoyed that video. Why not subscribe and get email alerts anytime I upload new content? Remember when you subscribe, you become a member of the Warrior Trading family.