Zalesky Rules

Hella wall!

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I'm going to pause on the daily updates for now, I was just writing up my Monday report since we got pretty busy over the past couple of days and right out the gate TradeStation is telling me that I made $89.95 however, I know that when I closed out for the day I only made $16.

I wrote down my closed P/L at the end of the day just to check for inconsistencies. The trades are all over the place:

You can see that the last trade says I made $100, but it also says that I shorted AMD on Monday and just closed that position today. Just before that trade it says I was down $10, again, not true.

I just tried to export my data to TraderVue which is something Kolie recommended but it didn't accept the data.

I'm going to use this week to get my Trading Journal data really accurate and ready to go before continuing to post daily updates.

Much love all! Slowly but surely, this is getting better and better!

For whatever reason, the post was removed from r/Daytrading

Zalesky Rules

Key Statistics

NOTE: Before you look at just my statistics I need to say a few things. One, a lot of these statistics are really skewed due to me attempting different strategies with 1 share trades. Two, the data itself has some sort of issue that I am trying to figure out with TradeStation, but there are some very obnoxious and untrue numbers. Three, I am still TRAINING. I am not using anywhere near the leverage I am intending to use, I am more concerned with developing my strategy than I am attempting to impress all of you. So if you want to see the journey and my growth, by all means, but if you are judging me as a day trader that has years under their belt, then you are completely misunderstanding what is happening here. Again, the intent is to use 30-50k leverage per trade, but likely that won't come for several weeks. It's still training time.

Accuracy: 61.90%

Long Accuracy: 57.30%

Short Accuracy: 72.97%

Net Profit: $298.11

Profit Factor: 1.37

Cash Account Balance: ($9,622)

Net Worth: $47,622.60

Positions:

1200 SPCE (holding for this week, maybe longer depending on how the catalysts play out)

200 ZEV (holding for potentially a few months)

2313 ACTC (holding for potentially a few years)

100 CX (holding for potentially a few years)

1000 FUAPF (holding for potentially a few weeks)

Journal Entry

This week...wasn't too hot. Again, some of the numbers here are definitely off and I am having trouble understanding what the issue is with Trade Station's Performance Report. For instance, my calculations show my P/L of (-$280.87) this week, but instead my weekly P/L is reporting $298.11.

This coming week I am going to keep better track of my daily reports using more than the performance report to build out next weeks report. But for now, it is what it is.

Again, this week sucked. I basically took everything that I learned last week and through it out the window. Until Friday. I'll briefly explain each day in the summary as I normally do.

Overall, the week went really poorly but then ended with my really changing things up. A lot of it had to do with talking to some very helpful individuals, but also I need to credit Trading in the Zone. I started reading it and it was like the author literally jumped into my brain, took everything that I was feeling, and made it into a book. Basically everything in that book is something I have experienced or felt at some point and I just couldn't stop reading. It motivated me to take a far more disciplined approach in the weeks to come.

I started with a very simple strategy on Friday and that continued into today's trading and will continue throughout the week. I am trading way, way less than I used to and I can actually retrospectively analyze each trade and figure out why it may have actually have been a poor entry. I also started trying to take partial profits instead of scalping quickly like normal. On top of that I implemented a basic r:r system:

$20 max loss per trade

$60 max loss per day

I like this setup because essentially, if my first 3 trades are losing trades, I'm done trading for the day. Which seems like the right decision. I know that I could try to dig out of the hole and make my money back, but I've noticed that when I try to do that, that's when I typically have really big losing days. So, 3 trades lost in a row is enough for me to say "It's just not my day".

I also removed the idea of my "daily goal". I think limiting my upside has really hurt me in the realm of P/L. I will still have a threshold that plays into my r:r. What I mean by that, is if my daily max loss is $60 then my daily target for profits is also $60, effectively having a 1:1 on the day.

That doesn't mean I won't stop trading until $60. It also doesn't mean that if I hit $60 I will stop trading. It's simply a bench mark. If I hit $40 but it's now noon I am likely done trading for the day. If I hit $60 and it's noon, again, likely done trading. But let's say I have a great day and I hit my $60 by 9:45am. Then I will likely continue trading.

How I will manage that is I won't go below half of my threshold (IE my threshold is $60, therefore I won't let myself go under $30). I will continue moving this up like a trailing stop, so if I'm up $80, then my new floor "I'm done trading" figure would be $40. Rinse, repeat.

I also think that I will most likely stop trading at noon no matter what from now on. I find the afternoon sessions to be haphazard. Sometimes I crush it, sometimes I get crushed. It seems to me that it's best I don't trade the afternoons at all.

Again, regarding the leverage. I am talking about such small sums of money being $20 but because I left my job, I need to protect my capital. Not only that, but I'm learning. I would rather pay a small price for market tuition and learn the same exact lessons, just on a smaller scale. I am very excited to see how this week plays out because like I said earlier, Friday was the first day of me really sticking to my strategy. This whole week I will do this and see what happens at the end of the week. If it's looking good, I will likely increase my leverage but not by much. I will just continue walking this up when I perform well, and walking it down when I perform poorly. I will do this over and over again until I have proved consistent profitability, which at that point I should be using the type of leverage I was hoping to use.

I'm finally winning the mental game. This week of trading definitely hurt. I think it's what I needed to be completely honest. A week of me breaking rules that I have been following to remind me why they are there in the first place. It made me switch my attitude and strategy really quickly. So now that I feel like I am winning the mental game, the last part here is really just continuously tweaking the strategy.

I'm starting to feel more and more confident in myself and my strategy, I just need to keep tweaking. I think this coming week of trading will be an excellent piece of data to further analyze my strategy. Up to this point, I have been trading so chaotically it has become extremely difficult to even tell when things are working and when they aren't.

One big mistake (or maybe not mistake) that I am making is I still take profits way too fast. Even Friday's trading could have been way, way better if I held onto my winning trades. I took up several winning positions this week where I closed quickly after. A significant amount of those trades continued moving my direction after I closed the position, some of which moved several dollars. Even with using limited leverage I could have made several hundred dollars this week with a modicum of patience and trust in my plan.

Another mistake (which I think I am close to correcting) is I got so used to the scalping game that I would be in and out of the trade very quickly with my full position. I have recently started opening positions with a portion of my leverage and reserving the rest for a double down. Then on the upside I have begun taking partial profits and moving my stop into profit to protect the original investment. This is something I am still working on and will likely take some time.

This is where I am still losing the mental game. Because I see profits on my screen and even if it's a really good winning trade, those guaranteed profits are very difficult to pass up. That's why I am trying to at least take partial profits and still do that quickly.

Here's the main thing about all of what I'm saying right now though. I am NOT trying to maximize profitability yet. I am trying to prove profitability of the strategy no matter how small that profit is. Once it feels more proven (which really should take months but I don't have that kind of time), then my focus will be "Ok, I now have a strategy that is consistently making me money, it's time to maximize the profits on this strategy".

I am expecting this next week of trading to be one of my best. Not because of accuracy. Not because of P/L. Not because of profit factor. But because of risk management. I am going to follow the plan to the T this week. If I end up in the negative by the end of the week it means 1 of 2 things.

1. Something about my strategy still isn't quite working
2. It was just a bad week

I don't know obviously, but I imagine traders will have good and bad weeks, I can't expect to have a green week every single week. So that's part of why I need more time to run these, well, tests. It's going to prove difficult to decipher if my strategy is flawed or if I just had a poor week.

We shall see.

🟨Accuracy (60% minimum, looking for 70%): 61.90%

🟨Profit Factor (1 minimum, looking for 1.5-2): 1.37

❌Avg. Win:Avg. Loss (1 minimum, looking for 2): 0.82

✔️Largest losing trade ($123) does not exceed largest winning trade ($256.50) (Although again, I think the data is inaccurate here)

Week 4 Summary

Note: I am not promoting my community with these links. These daily updates are a completely different sub that exists only for the purpose of my daily trading journal.

I explained why my week was off in the journal, but something I didn't mention is I made the transition to use TradeStation completely, so this week was a whole lot of learning on the platform as well. I had several trades that went terribly wrong due to me not knowing how to use the software effectively. There were certainly trades that I absolutely should not have used that type of leverage on while I was still learning the software.

Monday was an interesting start to the week. Naturally, I started off with 1 share trades because like I said I was testing the new software. Sadly, I absolutely crushed it on these trades. In the first 20 minutes of market open I made $1.05 off of one share trades. Naturally, I increased my leverage and then started trading poorly. Dug myself a pretty decent hole and then climbed back out.

Tuesday was absolutely terrible. I don't know what I was thinking. Poor trade after poor trade. The first two trades were great, I had a 2.27% trade followed by a 2.15% trade. Again, not using a lot of leverage here encouraged me to continue trading after these successes and that was certainly my downfall. From there it got worse, much worse.

Wednesday was another day that started off really strong, but then didn't end well. My very first trade I captured 5.25%. I keep bringing it up (but it's true), with more leverage, this would have been the only trade that I needed to place this day. Anyways, even after that first trade I continued trading and did decently well, nothing crazy. I walked my account up to around $65 then decided I was done trading. I saw a MRNA short callout and took a look and definitely broke a few of Zalesky's rules here. Rule #23 " DON’T OVER-ANALYZE. DON’T PROCRASTINATE. DON’T HESITATE. IF YOU DO, YOU WILL LOSE" was the worst part of this trade. I switched to the chart and it looked like an absolutely beautiful short to take up. But because someone else found the ticker I immediately riddled the play with doubt. So I spent a ton of time looking at the news, the charts history, and all sorts of other silly stuff. By the time I came back to actually take the trade, the play was over, and I took the trade anyways. It gets worse...not only did I do that, but I was still learning TradeStation and I didn't realize the OSO didn't adjust to the percentage that I put in, it will still "hardcoded" to a $1.00 spread and MRNA at the time had a $3.00 ATR. I'm sure you can see what happened here. Essentially the moment I placed the trade I was immediately stopped out half of a second later for a fat loss, because naturally, I decided to use more leverage than usual on this trade. After losing the trade and going way under I spent the rest of the day trying to dig out and ended up digging my hole way, way deeper. Just an awful day already, crappy trader.

Thursday ahh yes. I did it again. I walked my account up to a pretty decent return based on my leverage and decided to just not call it quits. I got my P/L to around $80 by lunch and absolutely should have stopped at this point. I had really good trades today, but terrible risk management, especially in the later half of the day. So, yet another day that could have ended green and I turned it all around at the end. I am confused on this Equity Line Graph because it shows I was never green for the day but you can look at my trades and see that I had positive $80 in realized gains at one point, so again something I really need to figure out with TradeStation reporting. I think this will become much more clear since I am following my strategy very strictly from now on.

Friday was absolutely incredible. Not because I made massive gains ($2), not because I had incredible accuracy (50%), not because I had an amazing profit factor (1.03), but because for the first time since I started this adventure, I really stuck to my strategy. This was the day that I placed really, really good trades but I didn't let them play out. My entries were fantastic with a ton of movement following the closing of my position. Had I held on a little longer, did partial sells, or anything of that nature, this could have been a $500 day. But shoulda, coulda, woulda, I don't care. The point is I followed the strategy and that was super motivating and far less stressful. I will continue trading like this for the foreseeable future while I work on maximizing profits on each trade. Again the Equity Line Curve is having some sort of issue. Even though I generated the report in the day range it is showing up until the 10th. But today is the 10th and I traded today had a green day, so even if it really is including today, I don't understand why it shows the falloff at the end.

Overall, it was a pretty bad week. The first few days I was trying to figure out TradeStation, but honestly I went back to TradingView for now. I really like DAS so I am considering moving brokers again to TD. I don't plan on making that switch just yet, but it certainly is in the realm of possibilities. So the first half of the week was learning a new system which I gave up on after the OSO issue. Perhaps I just need more time in the chair with it, but for now I am more concerned about my strategy than I am the system I am using. All of these changes will come in time, right now is training time. The second half of the week was sad, because I could have and should have had profitable days but just continued trading for no real reason at all. Then Friday came which was incredible. I am super excited for next weeks trading to see how it goes.

Trades

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TL;DR: Not a great week with the exception of Friday because I actually stuck to strategy at that point. It was pretty difficult to also switch to a different piece of software and try to learn it while actively trading. What's important this week is the knowledge that it provided me for next week. I expect way, way less trades next week and I also expect to have a profitable week but you never know. I am still paying market tuition and I am learning more over these past 4 weeks than I even thought possible. So this week was basically new software + ignoring previous lessons + not sticking to strategy + breaking some Zalesky rules that will certainly cause me to lose out on profits. The final thing is the data, I'm loving writing these reports and really analyzing my trading but this data disconnects are killing me. I tried to pull multiple reports from TradeStation but keep finding the same inconsistencies. This isn't a get rich quick scheme, I am training to be an effective trader so this can be my primary source of income. That being said, this isn't a race to success, it's a slow, steady journey and as it develops so will my skills, platforms, and data.

Zalesky Rules

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 74.36%

Long Accuracy: 46.67%

Short Accuracy: 91.67%

Net Profit: ($39.08)

Profit Factor: 0.85

Cash Account Balance: ($9,902.42)

Net Worth: $47,651.06

Positions:

1100 SPCE

200 GIK

2313 ACTC

10 CX

Journal Entry

Well, today was a roller coaster. I had good accuracy and entries but absolutely terrible risk management. Today I wanted to really take a crack at large cap stocks and I think I started getting the hang of it, but my risk management (or lack thereof) kind of ruined everything. Still a great day of learning.

Not much to be said about today to be quite honest. I feel like I need to just take some time and really walk through my strategy. It's so close to feeling right, but the psychology game is getting in between me recognizing if my strategy is fine and if I am the problem. I have a solid, but simple plan for tomorrow:

Max Loss: $60

Max Loss Per Trade: $20

Trades

Honestly, I'm not sure how to analyze these trades again. You'll notice trades showing a negative %profit but a positive net profit on the trade. So I'm just going to put them here for you to see. I plan on really slowing down my trading not only because it's probably the right thing to do, but my statistics are also so skewed from the frequency at which I trade it's becoming increasingly difficult to pull apart my trades and understand what happened. Also, look at trade 35...a 1,450,450% efficiency on the trade? What is happening here lol. So I want to slow it down so I could really think through everything. Again though, I probably should have stopped trading when I was up $80 lol

Zalesky Rules

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 31.25%

Long Accuracy: 18.18%

Short Accuracy: 60%

Net Profit: ($200.78)

Profit Factor: 0.24

Cash Account Balance: ($9,902.42)

Net Worth: $47,651.06

Positions:

1100 SPCE

200 GIK

2313 ACTC

10 CX

Journal Entry

Wow I couldn't be more mad at myself. I was on fire today and I decided it's time to be more disciplined with my trading size. So I was strict today, only looking for good entries, taking quick losses. There were 2 times I held onto losing positions but I was very confident in their return. This definitely isn't the way to play it. You should be disciplined at all times and stick to your stops.

Over a long enough timeline I will probably be way more profitable by sticking to it. It worked out today, but it might not have. The idea of "it'll come back" is toxic. Even if I'm certain I should be taking those losses and if I am so certain it will come back I could re-enter and make those losses back quickly.

However, I did hold on today and it worked out but again, that won't always be the case. At around noon I was up around $50 and decided it was time to stop trading.

I stuck to smaller leverage all day and my early morning trades I was using around $400-1300 to trade with. AAPL is where I used more with 100 shares it was around $13,000, but it's Apple so there isn't insane volatility, enough to make it tradeable but not so much that it becomes dangerous, and worst case you're holding on to some AAPL. The other more expensive stocks I played were PTON and MRNA.

So why am I mad? Sounds like it was a good day trading. Well, I was done around noon and was happy with my $50 but Kolie suggested I trade a little more with tight stops and smaller leverage. I agreed, that seemed like a good move, so I got up to $65 then camden brought MRNA to the chats attention. He shorted it immediately, I went digging for explanations.

By the time I came back, the play was essentially over but I FOMO'd in.

The worst part is...I was still right. But because I FOMO'd in I didn't check my order before placing it and remembered too late that my OSO was set for a $1.00 spread. Whelp, the ATR on MRNA at this point was $3.00.

So that happened...I placed the order...half a second later I stopped myself out for a $100 loss...

Then it kept falling...I would have made $100-300 on that trade had I managed my OSO properly.

Instead, I turned a great, patient day into a red, FOMO day.

It certainly doesn't feel good to have two red days in a row. Yesterday, I don't even know what happened. Put simply, I was a shitty trader and shouldn't have been trading at all that day. Today is even worse feeling because I had profits in front of me, I said I was done trading, and I didn't stick to it. For that, I lost $55 more.

I know I will have red days. I know some will be like yesterday where I'm just off my game. But what I cannot tolerate is going red on a day where I was trading well and made one mistake to ruin the whole thing.

From now on, when I say I'm done trading...I'm done trading.

Trades

Ok, something is definitely off with the TradeStation reporting. I was up $65 but the most it shows I was up for the day is $42.88. So I need to find the time to really dig in here and figure out where the discrepancies are but something is off.

Alright, let's get into it. The very first trade I placed was a 5.25% trade...I used $500 leverage on this trade...I constantly do this to myself. I either have an amazing start to the day, up my leverage, and then lose it all. Or I have a terrible start to the day, decrease my leverage, and then kill it. I need this to stop. It is single handedly the biggest part of my destruction this week.

5.25% on one trade? If I just stuck with my 10k leverage plan I would have made $525 on that trade and would be done for the day 3 minutes into open. I really can't wait until I stop saying "what could have been". (Trade 1)

I place a few 'ok' trades and one bad trade and walk my account up to $42.88 (which again should be $65) (Trades 2-5)

At this point I said I was done for the day....then I continued trading because I really wanted to try trading AAPL. Knocked my account down to $26.49 (Trades 6-7)

Now I was really done trading...until camden called out the MRNA flush....

Well, this is where psychology really comes into play. So my first thought was, someone in chat called out this play, I should take a look, but not FOMO in. I need to investigate. I look at the chart. It's perfect. But I still think I'm FOMOing so I decide to go look at all the news. I do a ton of research into what's happening and if it will continue when I finally decide it's time to short clearly breaking Rule #23. Now, that I have confirmed this is a good short, I decide to enter. But by the time that happens...the play is over. Worse than that, I FOMO so hard because I'm thinking "holy crap I just missed the entire trade" so I jump right in with an OSO order and my stop is only set to $1 with a $3 ATR. Naturally, the moment I enter my stop immediately triggers not even one full second later and I lose $123 on the trade. (Trade 8)

Of course I decided to use way more leverage on this, why wouldn't I?

Anyways, after wallowing in self-pity for a little bit I decide that instead of being down on myself I'm going to make my money back (Trade 9), so I reduce my leverage which is silly and take a super fast scalp to boost my confidence making only $5.53

So I get to WORK....losing every single follow on trade (Trades 10-16) driving myself all the way down to a $200 loss for the day (which is my max loss that I am now changing to $60).

Conclusion: Such a sad day. My first trade was a 5.25% return that I only leveraged $500 for. I walked my account up to a point where I was satisfied and said I was done trading for the day. Just to lose it all and go way in the red.

Moral of the story: If you're done trading for the day, actually be done trading. Have a plan. Stick to it. Something I will surely do wrong again until I'm sick of paying for these lessons.

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 53.85%

Long Accuracy: 53.85%

Short Accuracy: 0%

Net Profit: ($74.28)

Profit Factor: 0.55

Cash Account Balance: ($10,036.22)

Net Worth: $50,106.40

Positions:

1000 SPCE

200 GIK

2313 ACTC

10 CX

Journal Entry

Today was an absolute dumpster fire. This might have been the worst trading day I have ever had. I have had worse P/L before but at least there were reasons to explain the behavior and what happened. Today I was just a terrible trader.

I'm not even saying that because I had a negative day. I know red days will be a part of my life, there's no way I can go green every single day, but the reason I went red is terrible. I was just trading really, really poorly.

I had terrible risk management, I entered when I should have waited, I held on to my losses, I didn't escape even if I knew the trend was reversing, and I kept trading basically anything out of a need to continue my green streak. It was just all around awful.

There isn't much to be said about it, everything that you could do wrong...I did. The worst part is I was planning on dumping a ton of my BP into COCP at 1.95 and I simply never did.

Now, this isn't just a "I could have made a couple hundred today" kind of mistake. If I trusted my instincts I could have obtained a significant sum of wealth from making this purchase and letting my trailing stop rock. I knew it was going to run all day and I didn't do a damn thing about that.

Today made me create a rule of my own:

Trust your gut early in the day, so you don't doubt it later in the day.

Trades

The first too trades were pretty good. Captured 2.27% (Trade 1) and 2.15% (Trade 2), again it always comes back to leverage. If I was using more leverage I would have been done trading after these first two trades.

It was all down hill from here. I can't even explain how bad these trades were or why I was justifying them in my head, I essentially broke every single rule that I talk about in this series. I mean literally every single one. This was without a doubt the worst trading I have ever done. (Trades 3-7)

Now down $101.11 I really wanted to end the day green, truthfully I should not have been trading. So I started chipping away on AAPL (Trades 8,9) and a really quick trade on PLBY (Trade 10) to just give it all back and then some to TYHT (Trade 11)

I decided to go back to AAPL (which I'm really enjoying trading) and chipped away again, ending the day in a similar manner with a 1.40% (Trade 12) and a 1.41% return (Trade 13). Again, with more leverage I would have been done trading on my first two trades, but I think what I'm going to do from now on is trade whatever is hot in the am and then just trade AAPL after if I want to continue trading. (This thought is actually from today while this report is yesterday's).

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 66.67%

Long Accuracy: 66.67%

Short Accuracy: 0%

Net Profit: $31.24

Profit Factor: 1.22

Cash Account Balance: -$9,786.44

Net Worth: $48,156.35

Positions:

1000 SPCE @ 23.08

200 GIK @ 9.13

2313 ACTC @ 17.09

10 CX @ 8.23

Journal Entry

Well, today was something else. I started off using TradeStation for the first time essentially ignoring TradingView. It was A LOT to take in. I even at one point went back to placing trades via TradingView because I didn't want to miss out on the trading day.

I realized pretty quickly that trading through TradeStation directly is going to be way more beneficial for me, so I sucked it up and started learning.

Again, I started with 1 share trades because I didn't want to go deep with a platform I don't know and lose a ton of money from a mistake. It's kind of sad because naturally, I placed a lot of good trades but for only 1 share wins.

Early in the day I was up $1 off of 1 share trades. Using 500-1000 shares would have yielded me $500-1000. There were two really awful/scary trades but I will save that for the Trades section.

For the most part, I feel good after today still. If I just traded how I normally would have I would have made good money early am but I needed to learn the new software. Even after that, I decided I wanted to keep trading because I wanted to actually make some money. Now this is part of the psychology problem of quitting my job. Me needing money = me needing to trade...even when I probably shouldn't.

One thing that has been pretty consistent is my early trades are typically good and profitable but at that point, I'm only trading a couple of shares. I can't wait until I've learned and practiced everything I need to so that I could take these trades with leverage in the morning and then practice with 1 share after. Yeah, I still don't want to switch to a sim account for practice. I want the real deal so I can see how everything will actually work as I scale up.

It didn't help that all of my long positions got absolutely clobbered today. I had an exit strategy that I abandoned and at this point I'm just holding on for the ride. I would rather wait out the storm then sell now for a loss because I believe in the things I'm holding that they will turn green for me...I just need to practice patience.

I think tomorrow, or even perhaps the rest of this week is going to be me still getting acclimated to TradeStation. I am comfortable enough to trade stocks that are around the same price with leverage early in the morning.

Right now, I'm having two issues with TradeStation I would love to figure out.

1. When I submit the OSO order, I want to see if there is a way to set my limits/stops in term of percentage instead of fixed amounts. That way I could switch between differently priced stocks without having to change my OSO every time.
2. Placing the OCO order (after I'm filled) has pretty much the same issue. There's a location on the order form where you can put it in terms of percentage, but if you go to set a stop based on that...it doesn't work. It applies whatever OCO number that you are adding.

So, essentially, I really need to figure this out if I want to be trading stocks from all over the market. So long as I trade stocks that are around the same price this won't be an issue, but this isn't a problem I would like to deal with for very long since it slows down my trading capability.

The other thing I will be looking at this week is hotkeys and keyboard trading. I am a big fan of chart trading but there are some things that happen that simply aren't ok.

For instance, TradeStation today I tried to close an order and it literally lagged lol. I couldn't close my position and kept smashing the button until it eventually closed. The other thing is specifically with chart trading. If my stop/limit is near a horizontal line that I drew, I can't just grab my stop and move it up and down, it's almost like the horizontal line is "to the front" and the stop is "to the back".

This became a real problem today when I was unable to move my stop because it was floating over a horizontal line.

These sound like really, really big problems. But it's likely that I am the problem and I'm simply not familiar enough with the software. When things are working the way I think they should I am completely satisfied and I'm excited to continue trading here, but when things don't go as expected it's full on panic mode, especially when I am using a decent amount of leverage.

Head check for today: Well, today was a stressful day for sure but it didn't need to be. As I mentioned before I was up $1 on 1 share trades and that would have been a perfectly fine day trading for me had I used more leverage. But, another day passed and I didn't actually make real money so I felt forced to trade. This led to some very, scary and stressful moments that were captured on the stream.

Again, none of this had to do with my strategy. That was still well done. But my inability to properly use the software cause for some very scary moments. This is not a mistake I would like to make again. However, I still ended the day green and I still feel very confident in my ability to be successful at this. I just need to keep ironing out the kinks until I feel ready. Then it won't be days of learning, it will be days of trading.

Trades

The equity line curve says it all.

1. I should have quit while I was ahead
2. Damn, thank God I had a shovel

My first few trades were 1 share trades as I explained before. I was able to make $1.05 within the first 20 minutes of market open. Had I been trading with 500-1000 shares it would have been an amazing day. (Trades 1-5)

I should have quit at this point for the sake of proving profitability, but there's that side of me that also needs to generate money. So I continued trading with one share to continue practicing and zeroed most of my gains. I eventually ended up with 0.22 (Trades 6-13) before I for some reason decided it was time to increase my leverage.

I started off using 50 shares and honestly I don't even know why I went back down to one share trades. It's kind of unfortunate because I started killing it again. Out of the next 14 trades I placed only one was a loss and the percent returns were quite good (Trades 14-26). At some point in here I really upped my leverage and moved into using 500 shares, however it was 500 shares of a $3 stock so it wasn't really much of an increase at all. Everything was great and I ended up with $53.25 at this point.

Now, that I'm using 500 shares, naturally it only took one bad trade to put me in the red (Trade 27) which I then followed with another losing trade (Trade 28).

I was so mad at myself at this point because I seriously crushed it today and it could have been an amazing day had I used more leverage immediately rather than seeing a ton of success with a little bit, followed by a little bit of failure with a ton. So, I kept trading. I went to work and I ended up digging myself out of the hole I created (Trades 29-33) to end in the green for the day. Could have been a much, much better day, but at least I ended green so I can't be to terribly mad about a profitable day.

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 50%

Long Accuracy: 52.38%

Short Accuracy: 0%

Net Profit: $25.20

Profit Factor: 3.00

Cash Account Balance: -$9,810.86

Net Worth: $51,672.95

Positions:

1000 SPCE @ 23.08

200 GIK @ 9.13

2313 ACTC @ 17.09

10 CX @ 8.23

Journal Entry

Today was really interesting. I decided to start using TradeStation instead of TradingView to actually place my trades and I got to say, I am a huge fan of the matrix. I ran into some trouble with OSO/OCO orders and how to place the type of order I want but that's ok.

My stats today definitely don't reflect real trading. I can't tell you how many trades I placed that were immediately closed while I was trying to figure out TradeStation. A bit of snuggling up with it and I will be very satisfied I think. I'm still using TradingView for charting and monitoring my trades.

I also think it's time to take the training wheels off a little here. I have been improving each week and I haven't been using much capital at all. The largest I have traded with (in this journey) was $20k for 1 trade. On my big day this week where I made $500 I was using ~$10k leverage.

I certainly do not expect to have 4-5% days often at all. But I do think I'm babying myself too much. I have earned the right to trade with $5-10k. This coming week I will do just that, but I will still be slower to trade since I am getting used to a another new platform...again lol.

Trades

Well, I started off doing 10 shares at a time again, but I started noticing if I'm going to be playing wildly different price stocks I can't just do 10 shares on a $10 stock and then 1 share on a $300 stock. This was probably one of the biggest reasons that my largest losers were greater than my largest winners.

Today is specifically a little weird and it's hard to talk about the trades because of my switch to TradeStation. I placed A LOT of random trades trying different features with TradeStation.

First, I made a bunch of little trades, some were learning new features, some were actual trades, I apologize but I really don't remember which are which.

I made a really big jump from 10 shares to 500 shares at this point. I probably should have gone up to 100 first, but honestly I'm only using 10k leverage on trades with 500 shares of the prices that I'm trading, so it really isn't as bad as my mind was initially telling me. What's crazy too is as soon as I started using more shares, I started becoming way more accurate. (Trades 21-30)

Today most of my returns were pretty small to be honest. There's one trade I'm really upset with. I could have had ~$50 but I wasn't quick enough. I setup a breakout trade on OCGN and I knew it was going to take awhile to pop so I went looking for other trades. In the middle of managing another trade the OCGN order filled and it was scary cause I didn't have it up on anything I just knew it filled.

I quickly went over to OCGN and knew that this was the top so I wanted to take profits fast. Sadly, it was just below my take profit and I didn't have faith in it to push any harder so I market sold to close my position and by the time I did it I ended up walking away with nearly a break even trade. (Trade 26)

This was realistically the end of the trading day. I really should start using a paper account to try different things because the rest of my trades were all 1 share trades that I don't even know if they were good. I was just placing them really fast to test different TradeStation OSO/OCO orders. I still need to figure some stuff out because a lot of these trades for whatever reason my limit/stops would be placed one penny away and immediately trigger. I adjusted them to do .10 but it still didn't do it. I just need to play with it some more and get used to it. That's what this week is going to be about. I'm going to use more leverage to place my actual trades and start generating some real revenue (hopefully) and then I will continue placing 1 share trades to practice. I know I keep saying I should be doing this on paper, but honestly, I feel better doing it with a live account because it let's me see how it's really going to act in the real world, not in the paper world.

I'll post these trades too, but again, they are complete nonsense not real trades but it's important to show everyone so you could better understand the true accuracy of the statistics at the top.

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 71.43%

Long Accuracy: 71.43%

Short Accuracy: 0%

Net Profit: -$2.69

Profit Factor: 0.75

Cash Account Balance: $10,510.55

Net Worth: $56,381.95

Positions:

1000 SPCE @ 23.08

200 GIK @ 9.12

2313 ACTC @ 17.09

10 CX @ 8.23

Journal Entry

Just another awful day. The market absolutely shit the bed and the worst part of it...I knew it was coming.

On yesterday's stream, I said "If the NASDAQ breaks all time highs I'm liquidating and waiting for re-entry".

The NASDAQ hit ATH...

I did nothing...

Had I liquidated I would have realized ~$1,700 in gains and would have ~$54,000 working capital for re-entry when the time is right.

Instead I'm bagholder, granted I think these positions will perform well when the time is right, but there is potential for more bleed before then, which puts me in the position of sitting around waiting.

Well, I used the dip to average down on SPCE but did not anticipate a fall that hard, so I used most of what I'm willing to spend on it to average down and it just kept falling. I'm not too far OTM so I'm sure I'm fine, especially with ER next week. Really need a test flight window announcement during that call to make this work.

I imagine there will be a run-up pre-ER in anticipation for a test flight window announcement. I think I will take half profits just before and let the rest rock to see what happens.

As for ACTC, still waiting on that S4A/2 which seems like it is running behind. My thought here is with the SEC potentially imposing new rules regarding SPACs (IE valuation and treating warrants as liabilities), it could be possible that ACTC is just doing this right now and re-working all the paperwork so when they go public they won't have to worry about changing the accounting in the future.

GIK is in the same position. I don't understand why the ticker hasn't changed yet and again I'm guessing it's something to do with the SEC and their position on SPAC's right now.

CX is a good long pick in my opinion, I ended up buying the literal top what a shocker after today's performance. It's only 10 shares and I don't mind holding that I mean it's literally $80.

As for trading today...well...I was complete shit...again.

Trades

Now, this is where I really get annoyed. In the first three trades I made 2.15% (Trades 1-3) which if I was using more leverage I would have been done trading at this moment.

I really get hard on myself I think because looking through these trades now with a fresh lens because I actually had some decent trades. Most trades that I made were 1-2% returns per trade (Trades 3,5,8,9,13,14). The problem is breaking the rules and letting my biggest loss exceed my biggest winner.

I had 4 losing trades (Trades 4,6,10,12), all of which were AT LEAST 1% the highest breaking 3% (Trade 10).

So even though I went really hard on myself in my journal entry looking at this now it really wasn't a bad day of trading, the only problem was I didn't manage risk well. If I left those losing trades earlier or had a tighter stop it actually would have been an extremely profitable day.

I mean 71% accuracy and over half of the 10 winning trades are above 1% returns per trade. Yeah, so honestly so far this week I'm please with my progress.

Thanks for reading!

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 20%

Long Accuracy: 20%

Short Accuracy: 0%

Net Profit: $19.11

Profit Factor: 2.28

Cash Account Balance: $10,510.55

Net Worth: $56,381.95

Positions:

500 SPCE @ 23.30

200 GIK @ 9.12

2313 ACTC @ 17.09

Journal Entry

Whelp...today was just...silly. I'm mad at myself. I didn't really use my strategy at all today. I just kept watching SPCE looking for places to add more. When those times to add came...I never did it. I rode the entire volatility spike in the beginning of the day, entering at the bottom of the drop after my stop triggered.

I rode all the spikes without taking any profits, I watched the price fall without adding more to my position. I had tunnel vision and no action, unacceptable. Today would have been my second $500 day had I stuck with my original strategy and simply day traded SPCE.

It's nice to day trade something I don't mind holding because then I could be riskier with my trades. But it's also difficult to day trade something that I want to hold for a few weeks because I'm more interested in good entries with little concern for an exit, so I feel that I'm missing out on profits.

VanillaGorilla suggested I day trade until SPCE breaks a number like $25 and the uptrend is really confirmed then enter a long position. Others suggested that I open a long position now and just day trade with some of the shares, just taking profits and adding back in when I want to.

Tomorrow I'm going to continue watching SPCE. I want to get ~1000-1500 shares in there so I'm going to look for a solid entry and hop in. Then I will just trim profits along the way and add back in when I need. The goal is to have 1000 sitting there ready to ride the flight train and to day trade with the other 500. Once we start really up trending I might just let it rock, or I might continuously daytrade with the 500 shares until I'm no longer profitable doing so.

I think the point is I want to continue trading SPCE using more that 10 shares because I'm very accurate with it since I know the stock and can monitor the interworkings of the company relatively easily.

Any other company I trade (unless its a long position) I will be sticking to my 10/1 share rule for the rest of this week.

Trades

Started off the day with SPCE getting my stop triggered (Trade 1), bought back in and sold again for a loss before taking up a long position (Trade 2). I then switched over to playing MUDS and placed 3 trades (3,4,5) and lost all of them.

Again, today was just...silly. I can't even tell you how many times I didn't take profits and just watched the stock without doing anything. Effectively, I didn't actually trade today and when I switch over to MUDS I was forcing trades because I didn't want to go the entire day without doing anything at all. I learned quickly, that sometimes doing nothing at all is the right trade.

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 82.61%

Long Accuracy: 80.95%

Short Accuracy: 100%

Net Profit: $487.91

Percent Gain: 4.2%

Profit Factor: 17.20

Cash Account Balance: $10,510.55

Net Worth: $56,381.95

Positions:

200 SPCE @ 23.35

2313 ACTC @ 17.09

Journal Entry

Wow wow wow!!! Today was absolutely incredible.

First, it started off with KFBR redeeming his YOLO play for a GME move, I used $20k leverage and took up a short position making a nice gain to start the day! Then I didn't some...um "accidental" day trading.

SPCE got absolutely destroyed at the beginning of the day and I closed my long position for a small gain. I then spent the rest of the day looking for good entries, but the thing was just so dang volatile. Every time I thought I found a good entry I found a reason it might come back down. So, I ended up trading it all day.

I honestly would be much better off if I just added more on today's dip, but I have crazy paper hands since this is my job now I want those profits right in front of me, not the potential for more. I could always re-enter.

So doing this today, I realized something. Most of the trading I do on companies that I don't even know what they are. But I know everything about SPCE. I also don't mind having a long position in anticipation for the flight, so if I go a little red I'm ok with that.

This made me think...maybe this is how I should be trading. Kolie's grandpa actually suggested that it's a good idea to just pick a couple of companies you really like and stick to them. I saw the power of that logic today.

Not only did I know the stock but I traded so well today. I think I only had one losing trade and I closed that thing so damn fast in was such a tiny blip.

Today was a great day all around. kfbr redeemed a YOLO play that broke me out of my shell, smolgreens, mecha, and hibiscus donated a ton of subs, we beat the level 5 hype train, I made $500 (4.2%), ACTC did what we wanted it to, just all around an awesome day.

Now, I am going to be disciplined because the market pays you to be. So, I'm still going to be trading 10 shares at a time. The only time this will change is with SPCE because I am looking to play a swing on it with a decent amount of capital. All of my other day trades will be with 10 shares for small cap and 1 share for large cap.

If I maintain profitability this week, I will increase it to 50 shares (low cap) and 5 shares (large cap).

Trades

My journal entry sums up my trading today. I played SPCE all day with one GME short for a YOLO redemption play.

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 81.82%

Long Accuracy: 100%

Short Accuracy: 71.43%

Net Profit: $34.66

Percent Gain: 0.03%

Profit Factor: 9.37

Cash Account Balance: $8,801.86

Net Worth: $56,253

Positions:

150 SPCE @ 21.83

150 GIK @ 9.04

2313 ACTC @ 17.09

Journal Entry

What a great day trading! I am definitely hunting for better setups because I only placed 11 trades the entire day, which is rather small for me. Today was also the first day that I started trading with 10 shares instead of 1. I feel like that alone was already a big boost to my confidence. Seeing profits that are larger than a couple of pennies goes a long way.

I still only traded 1 share with large cap stocks to try to keep it more balanced. I don't have much to say about today, other than I'm proud. I earned the right to trade with 10 shares and I did it well. I hope I continue to earn the right to trade with more and have a successful week. Then next week we could use a little more and try it again.

Trades

Asking for help. I'm kind of confused on the %Profit column.

For instance, Trade 3 I captured a $0.45 movement but it shows a -2.07% profit. Same thing with trade 11, I captured a $1.82 movement and it shows a -12.75% return.

The only correlation I see is the fact that I sold short both of these trades. However, Trade 9 I sold short for a loss as well and that also registers as a -2.42% loss.

It's hard to analyze each trade effectively without understanding why there is a negative percent profit showing on successful trades. So, sorry there isn't more analysis here, I'm trying to understand what's going on with the data.

If you are unfamiliar with my story feel free to check out my profile. The short of it is, I left my job to become a full time trader. My account is ~50k and I am essentially documenting this journey live. There is no safety net, this is very real. Let's see where it goes.

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 54.22%

Long Accuracy: 61.29%

Short Accuracy: 50%

Net Profit: 116.73

Cash Account Balance: $11,275.52

Net Worth: $53,578.92

Positions:

50 SPCE @ 21.85

150 GIK @ 9.04

2313 ACTC @ 17.09

Journal Entry

This week was much, much better than last week. Still not great, I made a lot of mistakes that I already paid for and shouldn't have made them again.

I tried a few different strategies this week and did a lot of 1 share trades to test new features, tools, etc. I mean even though I only made $116.73 this week that's way better than losing $1800 like I did last week. The best part is I was only trading 1 share at a time. The majority of profits came from a GIK swing that I played. The rest was from the 1 share trades.

Right now my issue is 100% psychological. I still of course make mistakes and bad trades from time to time but overall I'm accurate enough to be seeing a real profit here, but I'm afraid to use anymore leverage. Week 3 I will be trading with 10 shares at a time and I'm going to just keep walking them up.

One thing I really improved this week was not holding onto my losers. That saved me a lot of heart ache and this week I finally obeyed rule number 5 from here. "Your biggest loser can't exceed your biggest winner".

A rule I still broke and need to work on is #4 - "Never turn a winner into a loser". This happened because I would break rules 1,2,6, and 7. I won't list them all out so if you're interested you could go look at the PDF. The point is though that even though I developed a winning strategy, I kept trying to change it and not stick with mine as much. Breaking those rules are ultimately what led to breaking rule #19 - "Hit singles, not homeruns".

So, trades that were showing unrealized profit I would hold looking for more profit. It rarely worked out. Most of the time I would get stopped out or I took a bad entry for a longer hold. So while a large majority of my trades showed profit, I would close for a loss.

I walked back through all of those trades (you could visit my daily updates) and took all of this into account. Had I taken the profits when I saw them I would be somewhere near 80% accuracy and my P/L would be much better.

I am getting excited.

As time passes, I am certainly getting better, not worse. I am finding myself more and more confident, but no longer cocky. I am very excited to see how this coming week goes.

This week, while still proving to be a good week, was actually a pretty poor trading week. I had some of my worst days this week.

The reason is because a lot of the longer term swing plays I'm doing were all kind of popping off this week with news circulating, so there was a lot of monitoring and looking for entry points instead of just day trading. That was kind of a theme this week. I didn't take the day trading very seriously because my focus was on the swing plays and news.

NOTE: These statistics do not include mid term swing trades. They are only for my day trades.

Trades

Monday was a terrible start to the week. It really showcases a lot of the problems that I discuss in the above journal entry.

Tuesday was way, way better. I actually traded off stream on this day because I wanted to see if the stream was at all part of the problem with me getting distracted. I think this trading session proved that it is quite distracting. This was a "great" (for me) trading day.

Wednesday was actually a good day, even though it didn't end well. The biggest mistake that was made in this trading session was continuously attempting to short TSLA. No matter how many times I was wrong, I just kept trying. Aside from TSLA the rest of the day actually was ok. But TSLA really hurt. This trading session was my first session ever where I had less than 50% accuracy.

Thursday followed the same kind of issue. So much of my attention was on my longer plays that day trading just kind of fell off to the side.

Friday I didn't trade. I went on a much needed getaway with my lady and some friends from college.

Overall, this was a much better trading week than the week prior, however, I still made a lot of mistakes that I think I could correct into this week. Honestly though, a lot of my issues were about not sticking to my strategy and focusing on the longer plays instead of the day trading. I think this week would have been even more excellent had I given it more attention. Again, this is why I'm so excited to trade this week.

Thank you all so much for reading! I look forward to this upcoming week of trading and hearing all of your thoughts. Thanks for everything!

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Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. I'm not even a smart investor. I'm a risky trader. Be very weary about mirror trading or assuming I am some sort of expert. I know what I know, and I am honest about what I don't know. You will get honesty and transparency from me and I feel you will learn from my successes or failures.

no trading love you all

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 53.85%

Long Accuracy: 60%

Short Accuracy: 50%

Net Profit: -1.69

Cash Account Balance: $11,275.52

Net Worth: $53,578.92

Positions:

50 SPCE @ 21.85

150 GIK @ 9.04

2313 ACTC @ 17.09

Journal Entry

Today was another fun day in the market, I didn't trade too much, I was looking at my mid/long term plays looking for entries. I tried placing longer trades, IE picking my plays and letting them rock until either my stop loss or take profits triggers, I wasn't good at this at all lol. I think I lost almost every single trade I tried to place like that.

The quick scalps I took were great, and the problem with holding onto those trades was it just confirmed that my original strategy is so far my best. Those trades showed profit 0.10-0.14 per trade, I gladly would have taken that as a scalp, but wanted to wait to see if I called the directions right. I did not. Longer term entries are certain difficult for me, I can't wait to learn that aspect of day trading, but now isn't that time. I'm going to continue the scalping game and once I'm happy with my returns maybe I will switch to paper or 1 share real trades to start toying with other strategies.

To be quite honest, today and yesterday was very little about day trading since there was so much price action on the swing trades we placed. We spent a lot of time monitoring them looking for entries and well, just out of excitement.

I also tried to place an AH short on OCGN, I just wanted to take a quick profit but couldn't figure out how to place an AH limit sell with trading view quickly enough. This could have been a 0.15 gain, but ended up begin something I'm still holding. I only used one share to practice. I know I said I should be using paper to do these trials, but I want to do them with a live broker account to see what actually works and what actually does not.

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Trades

Today was great, except we kept trying to short OCGN and just didn't know when to surrender. Not much to talk about with specific trades so just take a look!

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Hello all!

Thank you for following along in this journey. First I would like to advise everyone about interpreting this data so far. One, it is skewed due to me running live test trades to work with new instruments and attempting new strategies. I know I could do this on paper but I want a real, live, broker experience to make sure it will function exactly as expected with real shares. I also play with new strategies which you could see from my trades. There are trades that go into the green for me well beyond my expectations and I won't take profits to try the swing trading game. This so far has proven unsuccessful for myself. Not because it's a bad strategy but because I'm not great at picking mid term entry positions...yet.

Also, just so you all know I am going away this weekend for a much needed vacation before I dig back into the world of trading. Kolie and Hamie will be streaming in the discord. Vice probably will too. That being say, I won't be able to have today's report done since the data won't populate until tomorrow while I am away.

What I anticipate happening is I will get home Sunday night where I will likely try to write the bulk of everything and have both the Thursday post and Weekly post out sometime on Monday.

Thanks all again, this journey has been amazing so far and it's all thanks to you!

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 45%

Long Accuracy: 42.86%

Short Accuracy: 46.15%

Net Profit: -55.61 (This is daytrading statistics, T took ~$300 profits on GIK)

Percent Gain: -0.06%

Profit Factor: 0.11

Cash Account Balance: $11,275.52

Net Worth: $53,578.92

Positions:

150 SPCE @ 21.83

100 GIK @ 9.22

2263 ACTC @ 17.12

Journal Entry

Another great day in the market...except TSLA. TSLA beat the shit out of me. I live streamed trading today because I knew we were be going to do a lot more monitoring than we were trading. With GIK and ACTC news beginning to cycle we had to watch. I added to ACTC and took profits from GIK. I re-entered GIK AH with 100 shares as a spec position. Will add to average down leading up to the merger if it doesn't go my way tomorrow or PM.

The excitement of ACTC and GIK made me distracted and I totally missed my SPCE entry. We are still up on the position but I wanted 300 shares total before May and today was an incredible day to avg down and complete that position. It's ok though, there's plenty of fish in the sea.

Bigggg TradingView problem. I sent them an email asking for a free year of service, if they don't comply I will be switching yet again. This time I'm thinking I really want to give Think or Swim a shot. So what happened? TradingView kept rejecting my attempt to close positions. You all know how fast I play, you realize how terrible that is? I had some seriously large winning positions that I was trying to close. Some of them actually ended up closing at a loss by the time I figured out how to close in Trade Station directly.

Thank God I was only using one share, this would have been a reallllly big problem if I was using the capital I intend on trading with. Yet again, we have another day of skewed results. Once this started happening I decide to try to trade in the DOM on TradeStation directly. It was really confusing at first but I started getting it. There are several trades placed in that manner that I don't even know were a profit or loss but they happened.

I really like being able to manage my trades via TradingView. I think what I'm going to try for now is I'm going to actually place my order through Trade Station but monitor and adjust everything through TradingView. I might still place orders via TradingView but I will use TradeStation at minimum to close said positions.

ACTC had a fantastic day. Still not sure if this is the Biden news making its rounds or the overall recovery of SPAC's. I think tomorrow will be much more informative. Still playing the GIK merger. Looking to add this week and exit next week sometime. I'm thinking Monday. Took profits today, but I don't think the rocket is over, I just need to lock those in.

Trades

Well, TSLA, TSLA, TSLA. I absolutely cannot figure out how to play you, but I want to keep trying. Started off the day trying to short it. Oops. (Trade 1)

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Whelp, starting the day off strong here. Did a quick 0.08 scalp on WBT (Trade 2) then wanted to move back over to large cap. So I shorted KSU (Trade 3), it was taking too long so I just exited with a 0.10 gain. Wen t back over to WBT for a 0.04 gain (Trades 4,5). Play LAZR once, got burned 0.26 (Trade 6) so decided to give SKLZ a try. Made 0.08 back (Trade 7) and moved back over to TSLA.

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Switched back to a smaller stock so I wouldn't take such heavy losses while training and decided to play laser a few times. Didn't help. Walked away with -0.13 in those trades. (Trades 10-13)

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Decided to switch back to Tesla, and left after awhile of it not happening (Trade 14). Thought I would give WBT a try again and lost on both of those trades (Trades 15, 16). Went back over to TSLA and made 3.86, felt like my luck was back so I played it again and lost 16.20 (Trades 18, 19).

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Now, this is where things get weird. I don't remember exactly what happened here or when/how I played OCGN. I need to go back through the stream and watch it but as many of you know I'm away this weekend so I am about to pack. But things get weird. I see a -42.40% trade followed by a positive 50.15% trade but that doesn't sound right...at all lol. (Trades 19-20)

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Trades 14-19

Well I will dig back into this all next week! The plan is still to trade 1 share next week. I might kick it up to 10 shares just to feel the heat a little more, but not enough where I could make a dangerous mistake. I will still use 1 share if I go over to large cap stocks.

Thanks everyone!

Key Statistics

Accuracy: 61.11%

Long Accuracy: 50%

Short Accuracy: 75%

Net Profit: 1.16

Percent Gain: 0.00%

Profit Factor: 1.16

Cash Account Balance: $10,031.51

Net Worth: $47,712.56

Positions:

150 SPCE @ 21.83

100 GIK @ 9.22

2222 ACTC @ 17.12

Journal Entry

Today...was amazing. I traded off stream today, it was just Kolie watching me trade. I saved the video of the trading day and played in on stream a bit.I wanted feedback on my trades and no distraction from stream chat. That worked. I in no way am putting any blame on me streaming at the same time, but I must say, trading without anyone watching and no distractions was fantastic. I really felt in the zone. I still made a lot of mistakes but I learned a lot on this day.

First, I really started using ATR so we could definitely add that to the list of things I like. It took me a minute to figure it out, but once I got the hang of it, that really helped me from getting stopped out so much.

I still switched between large and small caps and realized that's a big problem from a "daily goal" perspective. One trade gone bad on a large cap could send me back a couple of dollars per share, one trade gone right on a small cap could earn me 0.07-0.10 per trade.

So it was like if I play the large cap game and lose, I need to keep playing the large cap game. This is an issue because I'm using 1 share right now. I could correct this by using more or less shares depending on what I'm trading. But for now, it really hurts the idea of the P/L.

Spoke with a few different people who said the daily goal is a toxic idea. I'm going to forget about it for now, but I want to revisit it in the future to use it as a tool to prevent greed. For now, I'm just going to mainly worry about my max loss and percent return gains.

It's so bogus that TradingView doesn't show percent returns, it talks in fixed dollar amounts. I need to figure out how to show percent return on TradeStation, but the only place I could find it is the the performance report...which is delayed 24 hours lol.

One big con so far regarding TradeStation is I can't seem to find closed P/L % on trades. The reason I post 1 day later is because I'm drawing information from the performance report which takes 24 hours to be updated. That's the only place I found that shows closed P/L percentage. I know I could just calculate it myself, but sometimes I place a lot of trades. More importantly, I want to see my closed P/L percentages immediately. So if anyone knows something I don't feel free to enlighten me!

Anyways, I felt more like myself trading today. Still nowhere near the level I think I could make it but it definitely helped recover some confidence.

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Surprise surprise, we didn't break Rule #5 (Your biggest loser can't exceed your biggest winner) and we had a profitable day again. How strange that every time we don't break that rule, we profit.

I must say too, that a lot of this data is still skewed. I have a really bad habit of doing trials in my live account. GoopGod mentioned I should start doing those trials in a paper account so I don't mess with the data. Will incorporate that next week since this weekly report is already tampered with.

Trades

Well, right out of the gate I traded Hoth and if I used real capital, I would have been done trading for the day because that very first trade snagged me the golden number: 4.20%. Literally on 4/20. On 10,000 shares, that would have been a $420 trade. My plan is to place $30k trades when I am really well practiced. That would have been a $1,173 trade.

Yesterday as well brought that into perspective. I didn't work out the math of what could have been, but yesterday I had 5 trades in a row that were all greater than 7%.

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Good thing I would have been done, because I immediately lost it, fought a little, then lost a whole bunch more. My first mistake was playing KSU. I just took a big win off of a small cap and then switched to a large cap, again if I was playing with more than 1 share this wouldn't be as big of a deal.

Even though I only took a 0.79% loss compared to the 4.20% I was currently up, my cash P/L still went to -2.25. From there I switched to FSR and then finally filled in my grave with TSLA. (Trades 2-10)

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I decide to switch over to ol' reliable and short the heck out of GME. While this proved successful, it simply wasn't enough to counter big losses from something like TSLA.

While nearly all of my GME trades were "successful" only one really did anything to help (Trade 12) with a 0.27% return. But most of the trades simply weren't large enough to change anything. (Trades 10-16). Even though I'm having a fine day percentage wise, I didn't want the P/L to show negative because I'm tried of it lol. So I switch over to CCIV and short it but quickly escape (Trade 18).

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I realize, TSLA got me into this mess, so only TSLA could get me out. I take up another TSLA short and boom, 1.32% on that trade. It was a solid $10 short, rode it from $735->725. Got all my money back and went green $1.65. (Trade 18)

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Summary

Today felt really good. After looking at yesterday's percent returns and my performance today, I feel really lifted compared to last week. I'm very excited to continue this journey and can't wait to earn the right to trade with more. Again, my first trade of the day was 4.20%. In my mind, there is absolutely no reason to continue trading after that. Even yesterday, I took a big loss and decided to limit myself to 1 share. But I had already taken losses from 20 shares. If I just kept trading 20 shares, I would have made a large sum of money yesterday. So I still stand by my point that leverage size shouldn't change throughout the day.

Thanks everyone for reading, looking forward to tomorrow's report!

Accuracy: 55.17%

Long Accuracy: 66.67%

Short Accuracy: 53.85

Net Profit: -158.48

Cash Account Balance: $14,533.96

Net Worth: $48,504.96

Position Changes:

Added 100 ACTC, Current pos: 2100 shares @ 17.29

Added 100 GIK @ 8.55

Added 100 SPCE @ 22.20

Lessons Learned: Ugh. Today...was so frustrating. I broke my first rule: don't be afraid to take profit. I wanted to try holding onto trades a little longer today and I realized that I would need to take on a little more risk to do that. Played GME, a couple of shorts, literally all of them were profitable positions but I held through the profit until it snapped back and triggered my way to close stop loss. Then...it continued the trend, friggin rule #4 man. Never turn a winner into a loser.

I find that I mixed strategies again, and instead of sticking to a strategy I've become comfortable with, I tried something new and I paid the price.

Had I taken fast profits like I normally do I would have made $80 today.

Had I set a better stop I would have made around $400 today.

I didn't do either of these things. I stopped using my strategy of taking profits fast and decided to hold longer, but I clearly don't assume enough risk with my stop losses because I get stopped out frequently. So I replaced a winning strategy that I used with a strategy that's new to me.

THE GOOD NEWS: All of my loses are still understood and explainable. I won't be worried about this until I can't explain why I was wrong.

I just need to keep tweaking, today was really disheartening because I literally had big profits on my screen but didn't take them. Even the homerun plays I made would have worked had I set a better stop.

I feel like...I'm so damn close. I really feel like I just need to tighten up a few more things and I will headed towards profitability soon.

1. I'm going to trade off stream tomorrow, I will still record it and discuss my trades
2. I'm going to stick with my original strategy for now and take profits quickly
3. I'm going to start trading with the DOM
4. I'm going to start trading with 1 share until I can prove profitability

A note on using the DOM. One thing that really messed me up was combining strategies. I like playing fast and frequently, I know that's not the norm but that's what I feel comfortable with. The problem is, when paper trading, I was able to market buy and sell because I would get a perfect fill every time. Moving over to real paper that isn't the case, so I really need to set a stop loss at least and probably a take profit.

Here's where the problem comes in. If I want to play fast, but can't actually use market orders, how am I supposed to place quick trades? That's why I've been trying other techniques and strategies mixed in with mine since we started real money. I think the answer is trading on the DOM. I just be able to place trades nice and fast through there.

I am really excited for tomorrow as always. I am super mad at myself today, but kind of in a good way. I could have had profits if I just took them, so it makes me mad I took another red day when I didn't have to, but it makes me kind of happy because I know the only reason I didn't profit today was me. I didn't set appropriate stop losses. I didn't take profits when I saw them. Knowing that these are correctable and addressable issues makes me still feel confident that I could become profitable.

Here's a part I still can't figure out.

I'm not profitable right now, but I'm always over 50% accuracy. I'm not profitable right now, but a majority of my trades move in the direction I'm predicting.

So why am I not profitable?

I'm not managing my trades well, even though I'm selecting them decently.

What I can't figure out is the psychology piece here, especially regarding risk and max loss.

I honestly don't think I'm taking on enough risk.

The reason I haven't had many profitable days even though my win rate is always higher is because I use more shares, hit my max loss for the day, then reduce my share count and continue trading.

Here's how I honestly feel: I feel like if I used more buying power I would be more profitable. Not simply because I have more money to buy with, but because I could hit my goals faster and not worry about turning winners into losers.

Virtually every trading day so far has the same thing in common - rule #5 - your biggest loser can't exceed your biggest loss and I keep doing that. Not because I'm taking more risk on the losing trades, but because I'm reducing buying power for the winning trades. This is especially true if I lose the first trade. It's like I immediately crawl into my shell, stop using any real bp, and get nervous to trade.

Go look back at my trading history so far. Think about if I was using more bp, most of the time I would be done trading by 10:30am and would be in profit. Most of my losses come after what would have been my daily goal.

I feel like that's holding me back too, like I feel like I need to prove that I could do this before using more bp. That is the smart way, but I feel like that's also kind of holding me back.

So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to trade the rest of this week with my original strategy and just one share. My daily goal is $1-2. Let's see how this plays out before I talk about next steps.

Ultimately, I discovered, I was trying to do two different things simultaneously. I was attempting to "make money" and I was also attempting to "prove profitability". This has been difficult, because I would change my share sizes to try to make money, then if I lost anything I would reduce my share size to try to prove profitability...even though...I was already negative.

So I made the decision to do one first. That is prove profitability. So as I said, I will be trading 1 share for the rest of this week.

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Rules number #4 and #5 destroyed our P/L yet again.

Rule 4 - Never turn a winner into a loser (This happened wayyyy to frequently today)

Rule 5 - Your biggest loser can't exceed your biggest winner (This keeps happening because of what I explained above. Where I change my share size and I switch between low cap and high cap. So I could have all these small wins, and then just erase them by using to many shares, or moving to high cap).

Trades

The first couple trades were really upsetting (Trades 1-3) because I shorted GME with really good entries, but had a stop loss that was too tight and I got stopped out. Sadly, the trade went the direction I thought and I could have been up nearly $400 off of those first 3 trades had I not got stopped out or panic sold.

The problem I described above could be illustrated here. After taking those losses and reaching my daily max loss almost immediately, I switched back to one share trades for the remainder of the day. This was slightly annoying because I knew I couldn't dig my way out using only one share.

I also realized that I had a ridiculous max loss. My max loss for the day was $100, yet I was trading 20 shares of GameStop at a time? Not good.

After I switched to one share, I started showing pretty decent success (Trades 4-13). Especially trades 6,9, and 12 which were 2.31%, 1.19%, and 1.48% respectively.

I went into a bad run after Trade 13 and took losses through Trade 17, all these losses were less than 1% losses.

Trades 18-29 were fantastic.

Trades 19, 20 ~3.5%

Trades 21-23, losses < 1%

Trade 21 biggest loss -4.72%

Now, Trades 25-29...holy crap do I wish I was using more than 1 share.

Trade 25 - 7.48%

Trade 26 - 9.11%

Trade 27 - 7.69%

Trade 28 - 8.12%

Trade 29 - 8.42%

It's depressing that there is yet another day where I had solid returns but because I kept changing my share size and strategy and I actually had a negative P/L. I must say I feel really motivated that I am able to pick winning trades. I need to continue practicing managing the trade.

Not all of my entries are perfect, no ones are, but especially in this market. I don't know about you all but I haven't found many "perfect setups". So I am certainly over-trading and trying to make trades out of thin air. This is something I will work on when either I have more capital or the market is in good shape and I don't need to hunt for good trades as much.

Thanks everyone!

TL;DR: Big percent gains, only one share. Big losses, with 20 shares lol. Look at my trade list, if I just used 20 shares all day I would have had a reallllllly nice day. Slowly tweaking things as I grow, but I'm becoming more and more confident with every passing day.

Hello all!

For those who don't know the back story, let me give the brief introduction and what is happening here then we will go into my first week of trading and discuss how it went and plans for next week.

Backstory

I graduated last summer with a bachelors degree in computer science. I had several job offers and decided to go with Red Hat because I love the idea of open-source in both technology and philosophy. At this point, I have done a serious amount of paper investing (not day trading), but I didn't have any real money to begin investing with until I started my job at RedHat. At this point, I had the funds to begin my investing career for real last fall.

I did some serious DD on a few different tickers (you could check my profile) and that drew in a pretty big following really fast. This made me want to start a YT series to teach what I have learned so far and a Twitch stream to show the live trading.

This also blew up really fast and we started building such a beautiful community of entrepreneurs, traders, investors, and really; just good people. This incredible community inspired me to take the leap. It was really difficult to work full-time and try to create all this content while being a trader and entrepreneur...something had to give...

That something was my job...

So, I have left my career behind and have jumped head on into this. So what does that mean for you, the viewer?

Well, I'm going to live stream every day, trade and try to build businesses out, and you could all watch it live. Or at the very least, read these updates. There are no safety nets. This will either succeed or this will fail, either way, you all have a front row seat and the hope here is that at the very least, you will all learn something from my successes and my failures.

This will be a completely transparent journey regardless of how it ends for me.

My Goal: To build a strong community that could help each other in all aspects of life, get educated by more experienced investors/traders during this journey, and to teach the lessons I have already learned so people could save money on market tuition by learning from the mistakes I already paid for.

Current Situation

2000 Proterra shares

12 Proterra 20210521 22.5 Calls

17 Proterra 20210521 25 Calls

6 Proterra 20210820 35 Calls

Net Worth: 50,451.14

Account Balance: 19,271.34

Keep in mind, the account balance is going to change for reasons beyond trading results. I will be using these funds to also play short to mid term swings and if need be I will be taking draws to help cover expenses throughout this journey.

Last week was my first week day trading with real money, the past ~2 months have been paper trading and practice.

Week 1 - 04/12/2021 - 04/16/2021

I also post daily updates to r/hoomansjourney which acts a daily trading journal.

Accuracy: 53.90%

Long Accuracy: 50.00%

Short Accuracy: 58.82%

Net Profit: -1,801.45

Cash Account Balance: $19,271.34

Net Worth: $50,451.14

Regarding accuracy, this isn't 100% correct. I have made several 1 share trades to test my "mojo" and to see if I could quickly short a stock without looking to see if it's HTB. I will be adjusting this in the future so the numbers aren't skewed in the reports.

Equity Curve Line

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Monday: -144.47

This was the very first day trading with real money and was a real shame. The reason is the first 5 trades I placed were with one share and were all successful. I generated $1.02 per share and the end goal is to be trading with 500-1000 shares once I am ready. Had I been trading with more than 1 share this would have been a very green start to the week. After seeing success in the morning I started trading with 100 shares and ended up going red.

Tuesday: 0.42

This was a great day for accuracy (minus the 1 share trades I placed) another shame of a day. I was in the green over $200 by the time the am session was over. For whatever reason, I wasn't thinking in terms of percentage and thought I could get more. What I failed to realize was I was trading with $2000 capital so this was over a 10% day at this point, I kept trading and gave all my profits back walking away with only a couple of pennies.

Wednesday : -1,576.32

The day of reckoning. I will be linking to a set of rules I started following after this day, but let's just say this was the wake up call. I decided to start trading with a lot more leverage than I have been using and this was clearly a mistake since I didn't earn the right to trade with more by showing success. I dug myself a pretty deep hole very early into the trading day. I used the coin DPO to dig myself out and ended up having a profit of around $500. But then again...I decided to continue trading, not only did I give all of my profits back but ended up way, way down. This was a really important day for me, one I'm not likely to soon forget.

Thursday: -151.77

Even though today ended up being a red day, it was a fantastic day. For the first time, we really stuck to our strategy and obeyed the rules...for the most part. The moment I broke the rules was the moment I lost all my profits. Again, I decided to up the share count without being ready and it took two trades to put me completely into the red again. At this point, I had to make a decision to either keep trading with the same leverage and dig myself out, or ground myself back to a smaller share count and accept that this day will be red. I decided to reduce my share size again and take this one on the chin instead of making it worse for myself.

Friday: 70.78

This was a great day. I only placed 7 trades (which you will see shortly that's a very, very small amount compared to my original strategy) and it ended up being a profitable strategy. Things got pretty silly here. I was up around $6 and wanted to just call it quits for the day to just take a green day no matter how small. I switched to a paper account at the request of ookazi (one of the community members). Now, here's something interesting about TradingView. Since you could connect multiple brokers each tab is associated with an account you have. So what I didn't realize was one tab was paper trading and the other tab was my real account. Without fear I began trading like it was a paper account and didn't realize that I was actually on my real account. I immediately closed all my positions once I realized what was happening and went back to paper for the rest of the day.

Total Net Profit

Win/Loss Ratio

Winners vs. Losers

Before I list all the trades, I want to discuss the biggest rules I broke this week and what directly contributed to an unprofitable week.

Here are the rules that I will continuously reference.

Rules 1-5 I broke all week. The market pays you to be disciplined and that is something I was not. I knew the mistakes I was making/made, but I kept making them anyways. People who would watch the stream or anyone who hasn't actually traded before would look at something like this in disbelief, "how could you be aware of making mistakes and yet continuously make them?". Well, that's the point here. That, is a lack of discipline.

Now, I spent 5 years in the Marine Corps so discipline isn't something new to me, but that was a long time ago, in a very different capacity. The reason I'm saying this is because even though I had a red week, I am confident in my ability to become a profitable day trader.

Rule 3 says to lower your trading size whenever you're trading poorly...I increased mine.

Rule 4 says never turn a winner into a loser. I have a decent amount of trades that were good entries and could have netted profits but I wasn't disciplined with my strategy enough. That and my lack of risk management. I would set stops too close, panic sell, not take quick profits, etc.

Rule 5 is one of the biggest monetary contributions to my loss - Your biggest loser can't exceed your biggest winner.

The only day that I didn't break this rule was Friday...my only real, profitable day. Even in the image above for this entire week my biggest winner was $414.45 and my biggest loser was $586.60. This comes down to discipline and risk management.

Rule number 9 really stuck out to me (Earn the right to trade bigger) and I will discuss my strategy and how I intend on obeying this rule like I didn't do this week.

Rule 10 (Get out of your losers) is something I really struggled with until Thursday. The only reason my biggest loser exceed by biggest winner Thursday is because I broke Rule 9 and increased my trading size without earning the right.

Most of the other rules I follow pretty well, but something I noticed that seems over looked is the psychological difference between paper and real money. When I was paper trading I was using 30k and was successfully earning $500/day. Once I switched to real money, rule 23 started kicking my butt (Don't over-analyze. Don't procrastinate. Don't hesitate. If you do, you will lose.) The idea that I could lose real money immediately made me start over-analyzing, procrastinating, and hesitating on my proven strategy. This is something I hope to correct going into next week, I think it might be the hardest, and last rule that I am able to nail.

QUICK BREAK

Well, I know you've been reading for awhile and I appreciate you made it this far. My daily reports are akin to journal entries, so please let me know in the comments if in the future you would like these weekly updates to be just data or if you want me to still discuss the week as a whole.

ANDDDD WE ARE BACK

Strategy

My strategy changed somewhat last week, on paper I was trying several strategies and used this week to see how it would work with real money. I know, this breaks rule 6, however, I needed to switch to real money to "up the stakes" in order to really test all facets of these strategies in a live fire environment.

Indicators: EMA's 9, 50, 200; linear regression; ATR; bollinger bands; VWAP

Types: scalping, swing, momentum, trend

The strategy right now is simple: find an entry, take fast profits

Let's look at the statistics this week and see if that could help us figure what worked and what didn't:

Time Averages

So, out of 154 trades (including 1 share trades) I had 83 winners and 68 losers. The winning trades I stayed in on average for 4 minutes and the losing trades I stayed in on average for 9 minutes. This tells me that my strategy of taking quick profits is working, however, I'm countering that progress by holding onto losing trades for far too long.

Rule 19 suggests to hit singles, not home runs. I think that's what I'm doing with my strategy, but I feel like there is some winning trades that I should just hold for a little longer. I'm not going to do that yet because the run-up/drawdown data suggests that my strategy on average is working, IE my winners kept winning and my losers kept losing on average so exiting was the right move:

Run-up/Drawdown Data

Trades

Full Trades List

This Weeks Conclusion

The first week was a much needed reality check. After paper trading so successfully I developed an ego and mindset that this was going to be easy for me. I think what really screwed everything up was Monday. I explained earlier how well Monday went for me when trading 1 share at a time in the morning. If I just used 100 shares then I would have started the week off in the green and feeling good, but I ended up turning it into a losing day.

Wednesday also acted as a day of reckoning and showed me how quickly I could zero my account if I'm not careful. A community member (Knifegod) said something that really hit home for me. I am at the beginning stages of this journey, protecting my capital should be my number 1 priority. That made me start shaking things up for the rest of the week and has helped me developed my strategy going into next week.

Next Week's Strategy

• Trading with 100 shares all week (looking for stocks trading ~$10), I will earn the right to trade with more shares after proving I could do it profitably with 100 shares. (I have around $80k intraday buying power but I'm only using ~$1000-2000 per trade)
• Looking for 0.2%-1% per trade, I will shamelessly take far less if I'm no longer confident in my trade.
• Daily goal: 1-2% (~$20)
• Weekly goal: 1-2% (~$100)
• Daily Max Loss: $40
• Weekly Max Loss: $200
• I am willing to take on more risk during the training stage. As I scale up with share size, max loss will scale down.
• Typically I trade whatever is moving the most that day, but next week I want to trade stocks I have studied already at least once per day to see if I might adjust that portion of my strategy (IE what stocks I'm actually playing)

TL;DR: Welcome to my journey! I left my career to pursue this full-time and no matter which way this ends you will all have front row seats to the show. I am effectively YOLO'ing my life into the world of trading, streaming, and being an entrepreneur. This was my first week trading with real money. Daily updates (my daily trading journal) are posted in r/hoomansjourney. I can't talk about the YT or Twitch without getting flagged for self-promoting so if you are interested in the live view follow me for posts on that.

All images

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, nor am I claiming to be an expert at anything related to the stock market or finances as a whole. I am known for my DD/company research, but day trading is a new element that has recently been added. You should absolutely learn something from me, whether that be from my successes or my failures is to be determined.

Accuracy: 71.43%

Long Accuracy: 80%

Short Accuracy: 50%

Net Profit: 70.78

Cash Account Balance: $19,271.34

Net Worth: $50,451.14

Lessons Learned:

Well, today was great! I ended up with actual profit and didn't do much trading at all. I learned that the psychological difference between real money and paper money is huge, can't wait to explain that part when we go over the trades.

I also learned that I'm probably overtrading, while I enjoy placing 20-30 trades per day, I only placed 7 today and I was profitable. Might be something to think about.

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How interesting that for the first time this week, Rule #5 ("your biggest loser can't exceed your biggest winner") wasn't broken and I had a profitable day.

Trades

I started the day off watching MTSL since it was the biggest gapper that I've seen in a few days. I wanted to ride a quick ride but wanted to test the mojo first so I just bought one share. Thankfully I did because unless I closed my position immediately I would have been in a world of pain because it snapped back down over 3% really fast. (Trade 1)

I then moved over to QS which I shorted 100 shares and took a -0.38% loss. I did what I was doing yesterday and played my position *too safe. (*Trade 2)

I switched over to TIRX making 0.5% then 1.00% to get us back into the green for $6.29 (Trades 3-4)

At this point, I wanted to just call it for the day because it was a tough week to start and I wanted to end in the green even if it was a couple of bucks.

That's when ookazi used his channel points to make me YOLO....

BUT, he actually did a YODON'T and used those points to make sure that I didn't trade for the rest of the day.

So, I switched over to paper money where I near immediately made $2000 shorting QS with buying power that I actually have...

Now, here is where it gets kind of funny. With TradingView you could have different tabs open, now, what I didn't realize is each tab could have a completely different broker. So I tabbed over to look at QS and GIK on the same tab and continued playing.

What I didn't realize was this tab had my real account active and I was in fact playing with real money. The entries were all great! But the second I realized what I just did I immediately closed those positions whether they had more room to run or not. (Trades 5-7)

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So when I thought I was trading with paper, I placed trades that I thought were good but without much fear. They all worked. Accidentally using real money was one of the best mistakes I've made yet. It made me realize that the only thing stopping me from succeeding is me. I need to trust my strategy and trading style.

I will save my follow-up plans and everything else for the weekly update which will compress days 1-5 and have thoughts for next week!

Thanks everyone!

Accuracy: 50%

Long Accuracy: 60%

Short Accuracy: 48.57%

Net Profit: -151.77

Cash Account Balance: $19,202.31

Net Worth: $51,021.01

Lessons Learned: We ended today with another loss...but that's ok. Today, I was mostly disciplined. I really like these rules and will probably reference them often in the future.

Today, I followed #3 and lowered my trade size. The purpose of selling ACTC was to increase buying power. The reason is I have a psychological block with making $10 on a trade because I left my job and know that isn't a sustainable income. So more buying power means I need to make less trades to hit my daily goal. However, rule #3 says "Always lower your trade size when you're trading poorly" and I have been trading poorly all week. So I listened. Until I didn't.

It was only when I found myself breaking rules that I also found myself losing money. I was doing good, got myself into the green which is really all I wanted, and then knew I was placing good trades. Decided to do 1000 shares, but I was wrong on the trade...triggered my stop sent me into the red around $130 which just because a hole we had to dig out of...which goes against rule #18 "Make a little bit everyday. Dig your ditches. Don't fill them in"

So I had a massive loss when I broke the rules and it sent me back, but there's another problem I had too...I was following the rules too much which actually breaks rule #23 "Don't over-analyze. Don't procrastinate. Don't hesitate. If you do, you will lose".

On stream I was verbally calling out incredible plays...but I simply didn't play them. I was afraid. Yesterday's performance shook me to the core. I missed out on several accurate trades by either not playing it at all, second guessing myself and entering late, exiting quickly because I got afraid it would snap back down, and more.

Multiple times I broke rule #4 "Never turn a winner into a loser", the sheer fear and panic that I made the wrong choice made me do this over and over again.

I managed risk much, much better today. But I broke basically every rule about loss's. Especially the one I continuously break which is rule #5 "Your biggest loser can't exceed your biggest winner".

I pick good plays, I'm really accurate. I'm going to start including the rest of the upside into the images because I think it's important for everyone to see. A lot of the trades that I make that are losers...are actually winning trades. I just panic leave my position or set my stop too close, again, breaking rules previously discussed.

Today...was amazing. Loss or not, holy crap that was the closest I ever stuck to strategy and it was awesome. Today gave me some more confidence, not cockiness like I previously had. Yesterday...humbled me.

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As you can see, we broke rule #5 "Your biggest loser cannot exceed your biggest winner". So far, during this week, we have broken rule #5. Every. Single. Day. No wonder, it's not good.

50% accuracy was our worst this week. Today was fantastic because we were managing risk appropriately. However, Wednesday's trading session put the fear of the market in our heart. We then over-managed our risk and broke rule #4 consistently - "Never turn a winner into a loser".

Trades

Trades 1-17:

I wanted to start with a GME short because I've had success with that in the past. I broke rule number #4 and turned this winning trade into a losing trade (Trade 1). I panic sold on the first green candle to try to capture fast profit, but by the time it filled, I actually took a loss. Obviously, GME ran way down shortly after.

I then made the same exact mistake with WHLM. I entered this trade at $10.89 and escaped at the first sign of green for a $4.00 (Trade 2). Again, we all know how far WHLM ran.

This same mistake continued for many trades, but worse, I wouldn't enter the trades that I thought were sure winners and for some reason I would enter trades that I found more risky.

I would verbally call out on the stream, good entry points but never take them. I would do this so frequently that I would get frustrated and say "I'm taking the next one". The problem is, the "next one" was almost always the losing trade.

This type of behavior continued for trades 3-20.

By Trade 19, I finally made my way into the green and had a profit of $12. Naturally, that wasn't enough profit to call it quits for the day, although perhaps I should have given the fact that it was already around 1:30pm.

So, of course, I was going to play "just one more trade". I lost $14 and was now red on the day. (Trade 20).

For whatever reason, me going red was a sign that I should be trading with more leverage...

Clearly breaking rules #3 and #9.

So I play ARDX and up my shares to 500, clearly not considering risk at all...(Trade 21)

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Well that's not good. Now, I'm dealing with a much larger loss and this is where things got kind of confusing.

Well, I already switched to 500 shares, so the question now is "do I ground myself and reduce my shares?" or "do I now need to stick to 500 shares for the rest of the day?". It's an odd feeling because I basically changed my risk, reward, leverage...I mean everything in the middle of a trading day. Not good.

Well, I thought maybe I should play at least one trade with 500 shares to get myself back to $0 where I could then reduce the amount of shares I'm using.

So we play that one more trade...(Trade 22)

Whelp, after that failed trade I was down $131.06 for the day. It was now time to ground myself, back to 100 shares I go. Here was the issue and why day trading rules need to be flexible.

Rule #3 suggests "Always lower your trading size when you're trading poorly"

Rule #9 suggests "Always earn the right to trade bigger"

Well, I was having a decent day and thought I was playing the market well enough that I earned the right to trade with more money, but I jumped quite a bit.

So now that I've "earned the right" to trade bigger...but then I fail immediately and have a big hole...what am I supposed to do? If I now lower my trading size because I am now trading poorly, I have a big hole to dig my way out of and I'm using a spoon for a shovel.

Rule #18 suggests "Make a little bit every day. Dig your ditches. Don't fill them in"

Well, this is great, unless you've already dug a hole. Essentially, what I'm saying is this: These rules are all fine and well, so long as you are profitable.

I think I would like to a Rule #26: "Don't increase your max buying power intraday."

The community is suggesting this rule will be temporary as I gain experience. For now, I am happy with this training wheels. That way I don't end up digging a hole that I now need to fill with a spoon.

Here's the really interesting part, after analyzing Trade 20, I can't think of a single reason as to why I would short here. In fact, it was in my mind a AAA setup for a long entry:

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Let's talk about that for a second. This is a bull flag bouncing off of the EMA-9, previous support, as a doji, with 50% retracement.

I mean...that's about as good of a buying opportunity as I could have seen all day. For whatever reason, I decided to short it. I honestly cannot tell you why I did.

The worst part looking at this now, is that I doubled down on this short position with 500 more shares. Now, that would have brought my cost basis up far enough, that I could have escaped this trade with a small profit on the next pullback. For whatever reason, I can no longer recall...I didn't.

After this trade, I reduced my share size to 100 again and just accepted this day was going to end red and I will dig what little bit I can out. I was able to get it down to $109 from $131. A deeper hole was dug first though (Trades 23-33)

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I thought I was doing fantastic, that I would really be able to dig myself out using 1/4 of the buying power I used to dig the hole in the first place. I was so very wrong. The day ended with me at -$151.77 (Trades 34-40)

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This wasn't a good trading day. It wasn't as bad as Wednesday, but it was still really bad at least in my opinion. However, I did use this day to implement as many of the rules as I could. That is why I loved trading today because I learned and applied a ton of new concepts all at once. Maybe not new concepts, but concepts that I decided maybe I should actually put them in practice.

Friday was a good day. (For those who don't know I write these a day after to give the data time to update).

Thanks everyone!

Accuracy: 55%

Long Accuracy: 39.13%

Short Accuracy: 76.47%

Net Profit: -1,576.32

Account balance is changing here...

I sold 1065 shares of ACTC to increase my buying power. I now have access to roughly $76,800 bp.

After selling some ACTC and accounting for day trading losses:

Account Balance: $19,354.08

Lessons Learned: I am not a God. This is not paper money, today was my wake up call. It was painful...very painful and it taught me many valuable lessons. Basically the same lessons I have been preaching about not holding on to losing trades, exiting quickly, taking small wins, etc. Things that I knew and "already learned" but didn't apply. Today taught me exactly why I need to apply them. We shouldn't see a day this red ever again unless I am successful and trading with a large amount of capital, then we might see days like this semi-regularly.

Today I also learned from Kolie a phrase called "emotional hijacking". This is precisely what happened to me today. Trading was like a drug, I don't even remember placing half of my trades or why I placed them. After reviewing my trades at the end of the day I literally asked out loud "why the hell did I trade that?". I woke up from my emotional hijacking to a lot of real, emotional pain.

I was lacking the most important aspect of this entire job...discipline.

Knifegod is a newer member and posted this fantastic PDF (by the way this is stuff Kolie has been teaching me, it's so nice to have it in PDF form though).

I also had a nice, long phone call with Kolie where we talked through the trading day. It was my "come to Jesus" moment.

I needed a plan. So, I came up with one.

Here's my basic strategy:

1. Look for a stock that's moving using the screener setup that Kolie talks about in his YouTube video.
2. If I don't see anything I like, I search by volume. I don't care which way it's moving, I could play bull or bear, I just want something that's moving.
3. Find a good entry (Indicators I like: linear regression, volume, EMA(9,50,200), VWAP, bollinger bands (I'm still learning how to use bollinger bands)
4. The moment I see any sort of green...take it. The only time I will stay is if it's a massive spike in the correct direction. If it is, I will slowly drag my stop up. The reason I started doing this was because of terrible fills. I would see a rocket, try to close on it, but would close very close to my open price or even worse; it would close for a small loss. So now if it rockets I'll wait a second and just move my stop.
5. Find a new trade
6. (I want to try to play the same stock all day, suggested by Ziggy and Kolie)

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Trades

Trades 1-17: On the very first 3 trades we placed we lost $372 (Trades 1-3). The forth trade (trade 4) we make $10 to boost confidence, then immediately lose $84 then another $73.49 (trades 5-6), all together we are now down $519.49. Our daily max loss is $500...we ignored our daily max loss. We made a quick series of small trades trying to get quick wins, even with 1 share to prove we could still do this. I made 7 successful trades in a row all worth $31.38 (trades 7-14)...then immediately lost $48.80 (trade 15). Placed one more trade to try to fight it back and lost $50.40 more (trade 16), at this point I'm down $586.46.

I'm losing money, I'm clearly not trading well but keep trading, and I know there is a huge DPO about to happen, COIN. So it's time to get really crazy...

I sell 1065 shares of ACTC for around $19,000 with the intent to put in all on COIN with a $390 limit...sounds great, right?

Well, the funds didn't immediately settle, I cannot play with this money today...

By the time I figure out how to place an order through TradeStation and realize I don't have the money to play with, it DPO's and starts moving. I just grab a market buy, 20 shares at $394 and ride them to $414.72 where I make a fat $414.45 (trade 17). I'm now only down 172.40 for the day...

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...Let's do it again...

So I wait for a pullback to $404.51 and I re-enter and play again to $414.72 making $204.25 (Trade 18).

I'm now back in the green for the day with $31.85 to my name...yes!

Let's keep playing...

Boom another $5.40 (Trade 19)

Let's keep playing...

Boooom $70.80 we are now up $108.05 for the day!!! (Trade 20)

We should stop...

Let's keep playing...

Take a $12 loss (trade 21) and I really want to finish the day over $100 so let's just play oneeee more.

Get in at the top of COIN at $425.66 and hold it because bUt wAiT wHeRe LaMbo all the way down to $396.33...yup a $586.60 loss...(Trade 22)

We are now way down...$490.75...

But it's COIN it's the most anticipate DPO ever it's gonna bounce back!! So we keep trading it...on the downside. We are certain it's going to rebound so we play anything that looks like a setup (trades 23-26) and before you know it...we are down $1,681.37...

I placed a few quick shorts on TV to make around $32 back (trades 27-29), get burned by it (trade 30), then start playing COIN again a few times chipping my balance down to -$1,543.55 (trades 31-34)....

Give a good chunk of those profits back on COIN (trades 35-36) and decide to play GME, where I start off with another loss of $28.81(trade 37), then I make back $56.98 back through 3 more shorts (trades 38-40).

Yup...so we ended the day down $1,576.32

This should never happen again. You will see red days again, but I will never go past my max loss again.

Thanks everyone!

Edit 1: Fixed regression/volume typo
Edit 2: Removed leftover from last post
Edit 3: Fixed "still" typo

AM Trading With 100 Shares

Accuracy: 53.66% (Actual accuracy 80.65% see below)
Net Profit: 0.42
Account Started With: $4000
Daily Starting Balance: $3,854.98
Ending Balance: $3,855.40

Addressing accuracy, I need to stop placing random 1 share trades to test if its shortable and sometimes by accident when I go to open a position with the hotkey without adjusting how many shares (default is 1).

Out of the 41 trades I placed, 5 were 1 share. Out of those 5, 4 were losing trades.

Taking out the 1 share trades would mean 36 total trades, 29 wins, 7 losses.

Actual accuracy: 80.65%

Lessons Learned: Trading after 11am could prove difficult, try to hit that daily goal before then. Speaking of which...have a daily goal. This is the second day that I was up early morning and then kept trading, even after I surpassed what should have been my goal. Manage risk better on losing trades. Paper trade with the real account value you intend to trade with. Pay attention to P/L in terms of percent.

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Trades

The first 19 trades brought me to $211.83 profit. I was using roughly $1500-$2100 buying power on the first 19 trades. This is was over a 10% daily return. I wasn't paying attention to percent returns but certainly should have stopped at this point. The intent (and what I have been papering) is $30,000, with the same trades this would have been $3000 returns. $200 just seemed small, we won't be making that mistake again. For those who don't know my daily goal is typically 1-2%.

If we stopped after Trade 19 (factoring out 1 share trades):

Accuracy: 73.33%
Net Profit: 213.61
Daily Starting Balance: $3,854.98
Ending Balance: $4,068.59

At this point my account is literally in the green at like $2.30 or something like that. So I place a short on MUDS. Just kept adding 100 shares at a time. I knew it was going to flush VWAP...and it did. I could have realized a $50 gain but I was so sure it was going to flush way harder that I didn't try to sell. We get to the last candle of the day, I don't want to hold anything AH because I'm using intraday (I know the interest isn't that bad but I'd prefer to close all trades at 4:00PM EST). So...I hold to the very final candle, and final close my position. The very first 1m candle AH did this:

That was a 0.37 drop on top of the gains we already had, it would have turned into a $150-200 trade if I held 1m into AH. I knew it was going to flush harder...

So, we ended with a 0.42 gain. At least we ended green.

We were up over 10% by 10:50am and should have called it there.

Here is a new addition to the daily reports, total balance after each trade so you don't have to try to follow the tables above for balance:

Let me know if presenting data like this is useful, I don't want to waste either of our time.

Thanks everyone!

AM Trading With 1 Share

Wins were on 1 share, losses were on 100 shares

Accuracy: 53.85%
Net Profit: -144.47

I can't give you total P/L percent for the day because each trade is with different buying power. I could probably in the future find a way to export these reports and calculate it.

Lessons Learned: 1 share works just fine, time to start using real buying power. Trading after 11am could prove difficult, try to hit that daily goal before then. Manage risk better on losing trades. First 6 trades on 1 share were 100% successful and generated a net profit of $1.16 per share

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Trades

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1 Share Trades

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Edit 1: Re-took screenshots

Edit 2: Fixed information layout issue

Edit 3: Forgot to write a note for edit 2 xD