What’s up everyone? All right, so finishing the day here in the red but not by much.

Today is one of those days where I only actually took one trade. I took one trade in my main account, one trade in my IRA. I got a partial fill in the IRA, which was so disappointing. I got in the stock, [inaudible 00:00:17] about midday recap at 3.95 … Oh no sorry, it was $3. I got filled like 2.75. I tried to get 6,000 shares and I only filled 700. It ended up hitting a high of 3.95, that would’ve been a $6,000 winner, but I missed it.

So I ended up being like a $300 winner. And then I got in the trade in my main account a few minutes later and took a small loss there, so it is what it is. This is been an incredible hot streak, $84,000 in the last two weeks basically of trading, so I can afford to be in the red today and sit tight, sit on my hands, no pressure, not going to be aggressive. I’ll just be back at it first thing tomorrow morning and hopefully we see good momentum ,and I can finish the week with two more green days.

All right, so we’re going to break it all down in today’s Mid-day Market Recap. So we’re going to break down the trades from this morning and yes. Today is the first red day for me in … I had 13 green days in a row and $84,000 of profit. Today is a red day, I’m down $1,549, and all things considered, that is not bad at all. So one of the things that’s really important for your long term survival as a trader is to be able to know when to be aggressive, when to put the pedal to the metal and when to slow down and ease up a little bit.

So today’s a day where I actually had … I really didn’t have a lot on my watch list. I had very few stocks I was watching closely pre-market. We had … Let’s see. It was, I’m now trying to remember because we didn’t take these trades. Let me put up my gap scanners here. All right, there we go. DCAR, D-C-A-R, was on the watch list pre-market.

But by the time the bell rang, it ended up fading. So it didn’t hold up very well at all. MDGS was on the scanners but that didn’t hold up either, it sold off. And so neither of these ended up working out. So I’m sitting here at 9:30, 9:33 waiting for the first stock to the scanners and someone in the room mentioned IZEA. So I pull up IZEA, I look at it and I think, “Okay. I like it,” because you can see here it was doing a one minute micro pullback. So it’s doing a one minute micro pullback right here under $3.

And even though it had a little bit of resistance up here at 3.76, the 200 moving average, I thought that it had a good amount of room at … For getting it at $3 and selling at 3.76 would be a great winner. So I wasn’t too worried about that. All right, so I go here into Interactive Brokers, and I press the order to buy. Let’s see, this was at 9:33:56. I press the order to buy 6,000 shares.

As you can see, I filled only 700. So I got a partial fill, only 700 shares filled. And what’s crazy, it’s so crazy, is that, I put the order at $3. Actually I had at 3.03 and I got filled 700 shares at 2.79 and 2.80. And I was like, “I’ll fill the full 6,000.” So I press the button and I’m sitting there and I’m watching, and nothing’s happening. Nothing’s happening and I’m like, “This is crazy, 6,000 shares come on.” A

nd next thing you know, boom! Volume comes in and it’s at $3.50. I don’t know what happened. I know what happened, I didn’t get filled on my order. The routing is slow and this keeps happening. It happens every single time I try to trade with Interactive Brokers, and it sucks. It’s really, really frustrating. I’m trying to trade in my IRA account here, as soon as I get above 25,000, I’ll move it over to Lightspeed. But right now it’s just so frustrating.

And you guys know yesterday I took a … I don’t know, it was like $1,500, $1,800 loss in this account and it’s like every time I miss a winner like this, it just hurts more and more, because if I got and filled 6,000 shares … Let’s say I filled all the way up to $3. Fill at $3, that’ll be fine. Well, it’s squeezes up to a high of 3.50 and then at 3.74 and was halted. It resumes and taps 3.98.

All right, it taps 3.98 and I’m like, I’m holding 700 shares, whatever. It’s no big deal. I’m going to just hold it, maybe it will go into a second halt. And so in my main account, I jump in with 2,500 at 96. Literally like at high a day, I thought it was going to break over four dollars. So I jump in with 2,500 shares, it ends up dropping down to 3.30 and it stopped out at 3.15 and 3.03 and I accidentally shorted 1,000 shares. And then filled it at 2.88.

So it was just like super sloppy. And so I lost 1,800 bucks in my main account on that trade, which … Again, this is $100,000 account, $1,800, it’s not a big deal. It really doesn’t matter. But what’s really disappointing is that I could have easily been selling 6,000 shares at 3.80 for a $6,000 winner. And a $6,000 winner that would have put me up close to $25,000.

So it’s just so disappointing. It’s so, so frustrating. I’m just getting frustrated because this isn’t the first time it’s happened. This is like the … Well, what’s today? The 67th day of the year? So it’s probably the 50th day it’s happened. Every time I try to take a trade this is what happens. And sometimes I get filled but the fills are very, very slow. I am direct routing. I’m not using SMART, I’m using BATS. I direct route my orders. On this one I just … I don’t get filled, so that cost me six grand and I’ve probably lost $30,000, $40,000 in missed opportunities this year.

This happened on HEAR, remember last week? HEAR only got a partial fill. Let me see, how many shares did I get on that? Trying to remember, in my main account I think I made $12,000, in my IRA only got a partial fill, and so I only made a couple hundred bucks, but whatever. $310 total profit, sold it on the way back down at 3.24 and it is what it is. So that’s a bummer there. It’s disappointing, but at the same time I was like, “Okay, I’m a little bit frustrated, so I’m not going to push it. I’m just going to slow down a little bit.

I can sense myself getting irritated, foma I missed a good opportunity, no fault of my own. I missed a good opportunity because my broker didn’t fill my shares.” So that’s just the luck of the draw or the choice of my broker. And again, the only reason I use this broker is because they offer a settlement margin, that means that I don’t have to wait two days for these trades to settle.

I can go and trade another trade right now, with all this money. I don’t have to wait for settlement. So that’s what’s awesome, I could trade three times in a day if I wanted to. But the downside is that the executions are very, very slow to the point where it almost makes my strategy untradeable with this broker, which very disappointing.

So I was like, “Okay, I’m feeling agitated, I’m feeling upset, I missed a great opportunity and then I got in high in my main account, lost 1,800 bucks. So this is just getting really frustrating.” I saw VTVT popping up and hitting the scans and on this one I just sort of was like, “You know what? I’m not sure about it because it’s looking like it’s going to be a little bit of a tug of war.” You can see VTVT now has 20 million shares of volume. And so what I’ve sort of found with these is that when they start to get crowded, they start to get really high volume, you start to see more false breakouts.

So things like one minute micro pullbacks, like what you have right here they don’t work as well. Pops up and fades, pops up and fades. And often times when stocks have this level of volume, it’s almost like … As soon as they pop up there’s some big seller trying to short it, as soon as it drops down there’s some big buyer wanting to get in. And it just creates this grinding action where you don’t usually get 15, 20, 30 cent moves in one breakout. You get like a five to eight cent breakout, maybe a 10 to 15 cent breakout if you’re lucky.

So as I watched it here, yes I saw this was the first counter to make a new high over … At that point it was 84, but on the level two there was a $50,000 share seller at 93. And so I saw that seller there at 1.93 and I thought, “You know, it’s probably just … It’s probably going to be an issue. It’s probably not be able to break over that level.” So it hits 93 and it pulls back.

It comes back up again and I’m like, “Oh, there it is. There’s that seller, he’s getting bought up.” So it goes from 50, 40, 30, 20, 11, 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three. It pops up and there’s another 50,000 shares seller at 95. It’s like you think you’re getting headway and then it pulls right back. So it dropped back down here, it then consolidates and curls up right here.

Let’s see. Again, gives it second try but at this point I was just like, “You know what? The time here was 10:08,” usually if I’ve had really good trades, by 10:00 I’m already at my daily goal. I’m in a really good shape. So the fact that it’s 10:08 and I’m down 1,500 that’s a red flag and that’s a caution flag. And a caution flag means, be really careful about what you’re willing to trade, because it’s much better to be down 1,800 bucks on the day, than to be down 4,000 or 5,000. And it doesn’t take much for the day to spiral out of control.

Remember when we talk about how day trading is risky only when you choose not to manage your risk. You can reduce the risk of trading just by managing your risk on every trade. And so that’s what I sort of decided to do, I said, “You know what? I’m going to sit tight here. I don’t know if this is really going to work.” It breaks up and hits 2.05, and then drops back down to 1.95. So it’s kind of pinballing, pops up, pulls back. Pops up, pulls back. And then it pops up to 2.09, and then drops back down to 96. And then right here it starts to open up.

And so this is the spot over 2.09 where yeah in hindsight, maybe I could have taken the trade but at that point it was coming up on 10:20, the end of the first hour. I was not in the driver’s seat, I had no profit cushion today. So if I didn’t make money on that trade, I would have been just going deeper into the red. And by that point the stock had more than 10 million shares of volume.

And typically when we have more than 10 million shares of volume I don’t trade very well because we get into the tug of war. So I didn’t really think that it would make this type of move here. But it squeezes up to 37, it pulls back. It does do a one minute micro pullback at 36, pops up to 54, drops back down, a little bit of churn here. And so yes, in hindsight there was an opportunity there, but I feel like because I didn’t have a profit cushion on the day, I couldn’t afford to take the risk to take that trade, because it wasn’t really my go to set up.

It wasn’t for me what I would consider to be an A-quality set up. And so that’s what’s really important, to know when to put the pedal to metal and be aggressive and when to be a little bit more conservative, and say, “You know what? I’m a little off today, I’m a little agitated, I’m a little in the red, this might be a better day just to step back and slow down, and not try to be as aggressive. And look. I can always come back tomorrow and if we see good opportunities, a good gap scan I can go right back to 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 share positions.”

But in total today, I only traded 2,500 shares in this account right here, 2,500 and I only traded 700 in my IRA. So it was like today was almost like a nonevent. When you’re averaging $7,000 a day, losing 1,500 is nothing. And I know these are big numbers, but just think of it relative to whatever you’re doing. If you’re averaging $700 a day, then this is a day where you lost 150. And so that’s why I don’t care. I’m not annoyed … I mean I’m annoyed of what happened there, with the fills but I’m not annoyed at myself, I didn’t break rules, I didn’t get aggressive and try to take 20,000 shares out at the halt and then lose $15,000.

I just took a trade out of the halt small size, I lost on it, no big deal and I didn’t get filled here in this order. So definitely a lesson for you guys, anyone who’s trying to trade really aggressively, if you’re trying to trade fast, you have to have the right tools. Because there’s just no way …  It’s like anything else, it’s like trying to build a house with a screwdriver instead of a power drill, or trying to … I don’t know, go skiing without a good pair of skis.

I mean it’s just, if you don’t have the right tools for the task, you’re not going to do well. Trying to go downhill skiing with cross-country skis doesn’t work well. Trying to ski in the terrain park with Telemark skis is not going to work well. You have to have the right tools for the application, and this is not the right broker for the strategy that I’m trading. And I’d heard a lot of people say that over the years, that the fills were slow with Interactive Brokers and stuff like that. I see it firsthand and you guys can watch all the recordings of my trading in the Warrior Pro classes.

And you’ll see how I press the button and it just stays there, nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens, and then finally it fills or whatever. It’s really disappointing. So anyways for me I’m trying to, I guess build half of the house with the screwdriver until that new power drill comes out on the market. And that’s going to be Lightspeed offering settlement margin on IRA accounts. And they said they’re going to bring it to their brokerage soon.

So maybe it’s three months away, maybe it’s four months away, in the meantime I’m just going have to deal with trying to build this house with a screwdriver and getting frustrated from time to time, and trying to make the best out of a difficult situation. Now if you trade a different strategy, if you Swing trade, maybe you trade [inaudible 00:14:49] strategy, this might be fine for you, it may not be an issue. But for me seconds matter, so I need very, very fast execution. I mean milliseconds matter and so for me when I don’t have that it’s a problem. And unfortunately today, I was focused on trying to get filled in the IRA because I’m trying to build the account up, and so I didn’t take the trade in my main account before the halt, and then you know.

So I ended up basically missing it on both sides. But it is what it is. I’m not going to … There’s no reason for a pity party for me. I’m still up $73,000 this month, $84,000 since my last red day before today. So life is good, it’s no big deal. This is just one of the things that’s part of trading, and you all probably deal with it at one point or another, so I’m throwing that out there as what I’m going through today. The experience of my morning. All right, so anyway 67th day of the year, down 1,500 bucks but I’ll be back at first thing tomorrow morning and hopefully we’ll be able to finish this week in the green. All right, so that’s it for me, I hope you guys have a great afternoon and I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning.

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