What’s up everyone? All right, so here we are, May 1st. Spring is in the air, and I’m looking forward to a new month. April was an interesting month for me. There were ups and downs. It was kind of like really, really great ups in the first two weeks, and then frustrating downs in the last two weeks.

That’s carrying over a little bit here into the beginning of May, which I was really hoping I would start with a green day, but I’m starting in the red. Today’s actually my fourth consecutive red day. You know, it’s again one of these things where, right now I’m sitting up about $201,000 on the year. Pretty good, right? $200 grand, and it’s only May 1st. So it’s been a great year.

I was up $225,000. So I’ve given back about 10% of my gains during this cold streak, and that’s not uncommon. I’ll have whatever, five steps up, and one step back, five more steps up, one step back, and each one of those steps represents 10% account growth, or something like that. So we’ve had some hot streaks, we’ve had some cold streaks. And right now, I’m just wanting to break the cold streak.

Today was one of those days where I had a couple of things just not work me. I started by missing my very first trade of the day on HTBX, gap and go trade, wanted to get in 10,000 shares at $3.28, popped up to $3.50. It went without me because I lost my internet connection right before the bell. Bad luck, it is what it is. Internet comes back up, I end up getting caught in two false breakouts on HTBX, and being in the red. Made some money on CHEK, but not enough to overcome the HTBX loss. So today’s a red day.

I’m not going to fight it, I’m not going to get into revenge trading and try to dig myself out of the hole. Doing that is how you double and triple your losses. So right now being down three grand on the day, the mind tells you, what’s the fastest way to get out of that hole? Well, 10,000 shares and 30 cents, right? Or 20,000 shares and 15 cents, or 30,000 shares and 10 cents.

And when you start playing that game and running the numbers like that, you’re focused on the win potential, and you’re not thinking what happens if you take a 30,000 share position, and it gives you another false breakout? Remember, you’ve already seen two or three false breakouts today, so the odds of having another one are pretty high. Boom, false breakout with twenty, thirty thousand shares, you’re looking at a ten, fifteen thousand dollar loss. Obviously, that’s what turns a $3,000 day into a $15,000 red day, a $20,000 red day.

And that’s what happens to a lot of traders, they’ll have hot streaks where they make a lot of money, and then they’ll give it all back during the cold streak. So my approach is that I have to be really mindful about my max loss. I have to be mindful about my emotions. So when I’m starting to have a day where I’m going into the red, that I just cut it, I walk away. Getting up and getting away from the computer is just really an important thing because once you step outside, you get out of this bubble, all of a sudden it’s like, there’s a whole world out here, and you put the trading day behind you and you come back fresh tomorrow. So that’s what I’m going to do. But first, we’ll break down all of today’s trades in today’s Midday Market Recap.

What’s up everyone? All right, so time for our Midday Market Recap. It’s 10:30, so the first hour is done. And recently, in the last month and a half, I’ve really just been trading the first hour. The first hour’s been when we’ve seen the majority of our opportunities. And although there’s been occasionally opportunities in the late morning or the early afternoon, I typically don’t do as well on them. So my approach right now is, get in, get the profit, and get out. So here we are, first day of May, new month, and it is our 70, well, my 76th day of the year.

Now, the last 10 days have not been easy for me. We had an incredible hot streak at the beginning of April. And for me, things really slowed down just about two weeks ago. So the last two weeks have been very choppy, a lot of red days, a lot of false breakouts. I’m just going to be so excited to get on the other side of it, because I’m getting sick of the chop. It just starts to wear on you after a little bit. It’s like going through winter, you just want spring to be here because you want to get a change.

Anyways, today on our watch list, we were watching HTBX, which was a good looking set up for a gap and go trade over three … Let’s see, I had my order ready at $3.28. So pre-market high was $3.34, but we had a little pivot here at $3.38. So let me pull up my orders. Today’s not a green day for me, I’m in the red again. And most of it’s on HTBX. What is so disappointing is that right at 9:29, I lost my internet connection. It’s like one thing after another. So I have my order ready at $3.28 to buy 10,000 shares, so two 5,000 share orders ready at $3.28, and I have my hand … Or actually, I think I put the order at $3.35.

I had my hand over the buy button, and all of a sudden I’m not seeing any quotes, and I’m like, wait, did this thing halt, pre-market? I wonder if it’s halted, if there’s news or something. And then the bell rings and nothing’s happening. I’m like, wait a second. None of my Level II’s are moving and that’s when I realized I lost internet. I switched to my mobile hotspot, and I all of a sudden see it popped up to $3.50. So my 10,000 share order from $3.30 to $3.50, that would have been $2,000. And I missed it because of my internet.

So I then buy … Let’s see, my first entry on this was at $3.60, so it pops up here, we have a high of $3.50, it pops up, a little bit of consolidation right here, so I get in, anticipating a one-minute pullback and a break over 65. I get in at 60, with 10,000 shares. Let’s see, right here. And I stop out on this drop down to 38. So boom, I’m down $1800 bucks, like that. Because I was expecting this to break and it didn’t.

So it drops down here, it then curls back up over high-of-day, so I get back in at $3.60, for the high-of-day break, 7500 shares, and I sell half of it at $3.75, $3.74, and $3.63. So on that one, I made back about $600, $700 bucks. So made back a little bit of profit on this spike here, pulls back, I get back in at $3.78, with 10,000 shares. I end up selling it like $3.80 and $3.79 for $70 profit. I get back in with 10,000 shares at $3.85 and I’m selling at $3.89, so $300 profit. So you know, I work my way from being down $1800 on the name, to down about $600, or something like that.

It’s consolidating in this range, and I see it drop down and pop back up, and so right there, I got back in at … Let’s see, I’ll skip over this one just to show you this … I got back in at $3.88 and $3.90, anticipating the break of $4.00, and on this candle, it did a very sharp false breakout and it dropped down here all the way to $3.42. And just like that, I went from being down $600 on the name, to being down $4,400 on the name, because that was 10,000 shares, 30 cents, is $3,000. So that was a really disappointing, very frustrating trade. I just felt like on this one, I missed that first opportunity, got caught in this false breakout, and then got caught in this false breakout. I just couldn’t get a good edge on this stock.

What adds salt to the wound is that it ended up curling all the way back up to $4.14. Yeah, it’s like I did stop out about ten cents off the lows, but you just don’t know. You don’t know at the time, that this isn’t going to continue to go lower and be back at $3.00 in an hour. You have to have your max loss.

Now, I did try to take a trade on COCP. This one hit our scanners at 9:30 or 9:35. I tried to get 10,000 shares at $3.10, but it only filled 200. So I was like, all right, 200 shares, whatever, I’ll just see if I can get an opportunity to add. It pops all the way up to $2.48, and three minutes later it’s back down at $1.86. So you know what, it’s good that I didn’t hold it. Or it’s good that I didn’t add on it. It’s good that I didn’t get filled, I guess. It just popped up and dropped back down. I didn’t call this one out in the room. I tried to get in, it didn’t fill, and it spiked up and then came back down. So it really, it just didn’t hold up, so disappointing there to see that type of rejection. And HTBX was another one, but this one was just kind of continued to drift lower, so this isn’t one that you’d want to just be holding and holding and holding. Yeah, it would have worked on HTBX, it wouldn’t have worked on that one.

And then CHEK, this was the other one I traded. A little scalp in this range here, as it was breaking out, $1300 profit. A decent little trade but nothing that exciting. The problem now, of course, is that being this far in the red, you know $3,000, with 10,000 shares, with one 30 cent winner, I’m back in the green, but I’m certainly not going to take that type of size on CHEK. And we’re just not seeing right now good opportunities for me to try to regain some of those losses. So my next best opportunity is tomorrow morning. I hate to close the day red, but you’ve got to draw the line in the sand somewhere. So down $3,097. Like I said, my very first day of January was a $4,000 loss. Down $4,000 first day of January, and I finished the month up $117,000. So yeah, I’m starting in the red, it’s not what I like, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to be a bad month. It just means right now, today, wasn’t the easiest day. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

I got a message from Doug earlier today. He said today was his first day making more than a thousand dollars, which is awesome. So congratulations Doug, that’s really exciting.

You know, HTBX is a stock that you could have made money on, you had to take that first trade and then scale back and be a little careful. CHEK, pretty easy trade here, from my entry at $13.75, it’s up $15.15, so continuing higher. There was opportunity today, you just had to be really careful about your entries and for me, that tendency to be a little bit overly aggressive got me, I guess into a little bit of trouble today, again. But share size’s been restricted a little bit, down to 10,000 shares, not taking massive size. Trading less, still following the rules. If it’s not working, I’m going to get out, I’ll be done and today’s just a day that’s a little bit choppy.

Those of you guys who have been watching me trade for months, or even years, you see it in real time. It’s like April, incredible. Day after day, it was $11,000 profit, $14,000 profit, $3,000, $9,000, $7,000, $13,000, $7,000. I mean, these are just the numbers on my calendar. And then all of a sudden, three red days in a row. I had three red days in a row, lost like $7500 bucks, made back $4800 the following Monday, and then had another three red days. So it’s tricky.

Actually today, today’s actually my fourth red day in a row. I was red Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday. So a four-day red streak, don’t like that at all. It hasn’t happened often, but I’ll have to log into Traderview and see when the last time I had a four-day red streak was. I didn’t even realize today was the fourth day until today. Which I suppose is good, it’s better not to overthink these things. You just have to focus on the trades. But, we’re setting records here, but not my favorite type of record to be setting. Yeah, this is my first four-day red streak in 2018. So, you know, whatever, it’s not been the easiest couple of weeks.

But for those of you who are getting started, it’s a good time to train because it forces you to be disciplined. It doesn’t teach you that you could get away with chasing these stocks. It forces you to focus on good quality entries. And then in a hot market, you’re going to do that much better. So it’s a good time to be learning. It’s a good time to be trading in the simulator and practicing. And just get yourself ready because when the next hot streak comes, when that train leaves the station, you want to be prepared to capitalize on the opportunity. There will be a time, whether it’s a week from now, or two weeks from now, where we start seeing, where I start seeing back-to-back five, ten, fifteen thousand dollar days, or where I’ll make $30,000 in a good week. So you want to make sure you’re ready when that hot streak comes so that you can really capitalize on it.

So anyways, that’s about it for me today. First day of May, another red day, but we’re back at it, first thing tomorrow. I don’t give up. Back in the saddle and hopefully we’ll see a couple good opportunities and be able to start to put some green days between me and this red streak. All right, so that’s it for me. I’ll see you guys first thing tomorrow morning, 9:00, 9:15 for pre-market analysis.

Oh hey, I didn’t see you there. I was just working on the dream board for my next home-run trade. Hopefully, it comes soon. Until then, make sure you subscribe to get email alerts any time I go live, or upload new videos. Until then, happy surfing.