Day 37 of the $100k Challenge +1.8k | Ep. #40

Transcription of Today’s Best Trades

All right, guys, we’ll do a midday market recap here. Lunch time. Day 37. Overall today was a pretty choppy day, and I just didn’t see the level of follow through that I was looking for on most of my trades. I’m finishing the day up $1,491 and I gave back about $1,400 of profit. I was up like $2,900 earlier in the day but I lost $1,000 on HTGM, and then lost really on commissions the remaining $300, plus or minus. Just kind of a tricky day. Most of the spots where I was expecting to see good follow through, we just didn’t see it. I kept all of my stocks tight, small losses, one big winner, and several small wins or small losses. I had five back to back losses on HTGM. None of them more than … the biggest one was $400, the smallest one was $75, but just frustrating to see a stock up 156% but so difficult to trade.

For those of you streaming on Facebook, you can see my PNL right here, $1,491.07. I started the morning with $72,826. This is down a little bit off my high of the month, which was $77,000. It puts me … I guess I’ll open tomorrow around $74,000 whatever, and I’m up about $66,000 on the month of February and $108,000 on the year. It’s been a really good year. We’re only two months in and it’s already up over $100,000. That’s fantastic. The small account challenge is doing great. Start with $583, I’m in the 70s now, but still have my sights set on hitting 100 grand. $100,000 is my target. It’s something that I hope I’ll be able to get to by the end of March, that would pretty much require me to make about $25,000 in March, which given the $40,000 in January, and the $66,000 here in February, that shouldn’t be a stretch. We’ll just kind of see what the opportunities look like. Thursday was not very good. Friday was not very good and today was not very good.

We’ve sort of seen three back to back days where the market’s been a little bit choppy. One of the things that I wanted to do this week was to trade primarily five minute set ups because the quality is better. But, having said that, on HTGM by the time we got this five minute set up here, I thought it hadn’t pulled back enough given how extended it was and I was annoyed that I had missed the move from 170, which I was watching at 170, but I said, “Well, it’s not a clean five minute set up so I’m not gonna take it.” I wait on that five minute set up, and instead I end up missing the whole move. Hang on one second, I’m just gonna go ahead and ban this guy from the chatroom. So you are out of the room. Sorry buddy. That happens. It’s part of the deal with having 2,000 traders in the room, not everyone wants to follow the rules. So he’s out of there. I’m sure Mike will keep an eye on the chat.

In any case, missed a good set up here, 167, 170. I just thought it would be better to wait for a five minute pull back and in this case you kind of realize that the one minute set ups work, you just have to make sure that there’s enough volume and even in this place, there wasn’t a lot of volume. I waited, next thing you know, it squeezes up to 270. The day I decide to wait on a good set up and wait for the five minute set up, the one minutes are running. [inaudible 00:04:31] irritating. I tried to trade through this pull back here, all of the sudden we got this one squeeze and this one candle, some short covering from 280 up to 347. Tried to scalp in this area, didn’t get good follow through. Overall, just kind of not an easy one to trade. We see that sometimes, we see stocks that go from literally $2 to $8, or $8 to $16 like DRYS did on that one day, but it’s not in a way that’s clean. It’s not in a way that’s easy to trade and as a result, we’re not able to capitalize on the move.

The good thing is that we have enough good opportunities each day that those will make up for the ones that are tricky. So just have to try to fight that fear of missing out and not get too aggressive on it. That was HTGM, IDXG, this was my first trade right out of the gate. I got into this one for a break of $3, for the gap and go set up we squeezed up a high of $3.25, which was awesome but we obviously weren’t able to hold that level. There was some heavy sellers out there at $.25. I sold in this candle here where we spiked up to $.25, and then as we came back down that’s when I was selling. IDXG, not bad, but didn’t hold the way I wanted it to. JAGX, it took a stab on this one. We didn’t see good follow through on this one either, got in it for $1.40, popped up to $.44, got out at $1.39. I lost a cent. One penny on 5,000 shares. Small loss on that one. NOVN, this one I took a five minute set up on, I waited for the five minute chart to form, and got in at $5.40, we got to move up at $5.75 and then all the way up to almost to $6, $5.94. That was decent.

That’s kind of what I wanted HTGM to do, to give me more of a clean five minute opportunity where I could really look at it, where I could analyze risk, and then take my position, but it ran without me. That’s what sometimes happens. But on this one, only $564. I didn’t take big size, the volume was so light on it. Then it took on LJPC, it took a reversal trade. This one, let’s see, was a little tricky. I had to take two stabs at it before I got my winner. My first stab was short at $34, and that was right in this candle here. I was anticipating as we dropped down to a low of $33.92, I was anticipating on that candle at $10.04 that we would break the low of the previous candle, which was $33.98, or $33.88 and then we would come back down towards $33. Didn’t happen, got stopped out. It popped back up, it goes up to a high of $35.14, and then that’s when I decide to short it again and covered on this move back down. I had one loser, one winner, only made $50 between the two, wasn’t trading with big size, just kind of testing the waters with some reversal opportunities and on that one, it just didn’t end up being the biggest winners. Pretty strong stock.

You do have to be careful fighting the momentum, trying to trade against the trend but at the same time, you have five, six, seven, eight consecutive green candles, it’s to a point where the first one that goes red should give you a good opportunity. I just got in a little early anticipating it in that on this one didn’t work, but then it did work on the second try. [inaudible 00:08:29] on that one. VRAY, this one was the stock that spiked up and was halted, some FDA news on this one. I scalped it, but lost $12. It ended up not being an easy one to trade, but again, small losses. Any day you can break $1,000 is a good day. $1,400, $1,500 for me today is decent. I would’ve liked to have a had a $3, $4,000 day but I’ll take the gains that I got.

That’s kind of where I’m finishing here on Monday. I’m happy to break my two day red streak that I had from Thursday and Friday. I’m green, that’s a nice way to start the week, hopefully we’ve got some good momentum. Tomorrow, we can finish the month strong and then go into the first couple days of March and start to build that cushion. That’s what it will be, working on building the cushion and then once I have the cushion, I can be a little more aggressive. Right now I’m up $66,000 on the month, so even the last couple of weeks I’ve been able to afford to take bigger risks knowing that even if I do lose a little, I’ve got such a big cushion on the month it’s not gonna be that big of a deal. And then of course, when those trades end up working, I have back to back $8,000 days like I did two weeks ago.

Last week, I made $5,000, the week before I made around $20,000, maybe right around 20. The week before that it was $5,000, the week before that it was $37,000. It’s like either I step up to the plate or I step up to the plate and I only get a base hit, but you know. A base hit is better than striking out. That’s kind of the goal for the day and for the week, that I can finish each week green and just continue to make steady progress. I don’t think I’ve had a red week so far this year. Even though I had a day where I lost $13,000, I don’t think I’ve had a red day. Or sorry, a red week, which is good. That would be ideal to not have one. I didn’t have any red months in 2016, hopefully I won’t this year either.

Yeah, Keith, obviously this is income so I’ll pay tax on it April of 2018. I’ll pay my income tax on the gains and that’s just part of the deal. You’re making money so … If you’re making money you do have to pay your tax but it’s just like any other business. The good news about trading is that the overhead is so minimal, a lot of other businesses you’ve got a lot of overhead, your margins shrink because you know you will still have taxes, but with trading your overhead is so minimal. It’s a good computer, internet connection, a couple of subscriptions, chat rooms, some tools, stuff like that then you’re in great shape. Yeah Jamie, that’s correct.

All right, so in any case I’m gonna post this on Facebook. You guys can feel free to comment over there and I’ll also upload to YouTube. You guys can comment, I’ll make sure I answer any questions you guys post. All right guys. Great job this morning, hopefully if you’re gonna trade through the afternoon you trade smart, don’t get too aggressive and we’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning. All right, thanks guys.