Keeping it simple! +$1,058.09 in 45min = The Daily Goal!

All right guys, time for our midday market recap. Right now since I’m traveling, I’ve got my travel setup. I’m pretty much staying focused on trading the first hour and not going into the second hour. Now, we saw some really good setups, and we had some really good momentum. I would probably stick around but right now, this week happens to have been a little on the slow side, so first hour is when we’ve had the most opportunities.

On Monday I lost 1200 bucks, Tuesday I made 1720, $1720. Today, Wednesday I’m up $1058. Decent morning, daily goal is good, $1000 is good. Today is the 137th trading day of the year and I’m up … Let’s see, somewhere around $171000 on the year. Let’s see. Yeah, somewhere around there. 171,133 is what I have here but I’ll have to cross that against my latest broker statement and make sure it includes all the fees, stuff like that, ECN fees.

Anyways, today I kept it simple, I only took two trades. I would have been happy to trade more than that but there just … There wasn’t a lot to trade. Even in the first five minutes I didn’t take a single trade. Aby time we’re five minutes into the day and I haven’t taken a trade yet, it’s usually an indicator that it’s going to be a slow day. Because typically being a trader who trades the gap and go strategy, trading the stocks that have gaped up overnight, I’m taking trade in the first couple of minutes of the bell ring. It is unusual for me to not trade in the first five minutes.

Since today there was nothing that looked good in the first five minutes, it immediately made me think, “Okay, well, today just might be a day where we don’t see a lot of opportunity and where I’m going to have to scale back a little bit.” This is my PNL for today. You guys can see here. Two trades, $535 on CDNA and $522 on TANH. There’s the daily goal. Near these were home run trades, neither of them were huge winners but two relatively low-risk, easy trades and I did pretty well on them. 10000 shares on TANH, about five cents of profit. 5000 shares on CDNA, 10 cents of profit.

In total, I only pulled about 15 cents of profit out of the market today which definitely isn’t the biggest. I mean, it’s not particularly a big day in terms of profit. In terms of percentage, I made 6.5% on CDNA and 1.5% ON TANH, so total of 7%. Yesterday, I also made just under 7%. Let’s see, yesterday was 6.9% and then on Monday I lost 8%. Monday was a little bit of a pull back, the last two days have been in the green, and in total, last week I pulled out 24% from the market. In terms of the gains of all of those trades combined.

Now, when I say I made 6% or 7% on those trades, my account is not up 7% today because I didn’t put 100% of my account into these trades. If I had, then I would be up 6%, but I didn’t. I traded with smaller size, biggest position today, about 30, $5000 which was on TANH. Then my second trade was only 7700, so I didn’t really use much of my buying power. I didn’t use any margin today, I just traded with my cash balance, which is fine.

Let’s go over the trades. First trade was on TANH. Well, we an go over the watch list, just kind of a recap of the stocks I was watching pre-market. We had ETRM, this was on watch for a gap and go set up, it was gaping up, looked interesting. I said, “You know, I’m watching it in this channel right now, and I want to see it break to the upside of the channel.” Right before the bell rang, it broke to the downside of the channel and then started consolidating lower. No trades on that, it didn’t give a setup, nothing to do with it. It just didn’t look good, so I didn’t touch it.

TTPH. Also on the gap scanner. This one I said I was not sure about because there was one problem with it. Who can identify the one problem with this setup? The problem is that the move started after hours yesterday. When a move starts after hours, I always feel like by the time we’re looking at the pre-market chart, the train has left the station, we’ve already missed the opportunity on it. The move started at 4:00 PM yesterday.

On this on, the best opportunity was probably at 4:00 PM yesterday or 4:30. It then gaped up higher and pre-market it was up to 990, but by the time the market opened it was back down to 850. It had pulled back down. Because of that I didn’t have the long bias on it because it simply didn’t looked good. It just wasn’t setting up for a long trade, it was too weak. No trades on TTPH.

We also had TIA on watch for possible continuation on the daily chart. Yesterday’s high was 313, I was watching over that level. That level never triggered, no trades on it. Those are really the three I was watching and none of those ended up giving me a trade. That’s sometimes the case that my watch list just ends up being kind of dot, there’s nothing on there. You can see on the gap scanner we had ETRM popping up, and then we had TANH popping up at 320. When that popped up at 320 I looked at the daily chart and I was like, “Oh, this is a daily breakout. It’s a bull flag that’s breaking to the upside. It’s starting to squeeze up.”

Pre-market highs on this one were 339, it was gaping up a little bit and so you can see here, popped up to 330, it pulled back. What I did on this one is I got in right here 330. Now, as soon as it hit my high of day scanner, as soon as it hit the scanner, I looked at it, I identified this is a good … This is a stock I’ve traded in the past and I took a starter position. I took a starter position because I knew this is a stock that has been a former runner, I’ve traded in the past and done well on, but I also knew it was risky. I took a starter at 322 and then I waited for it to pop up, it popped up to 330, and then I said, “Okay, I’ll wait for the pull back and this is where I’m going to add full size.”

This is one of those trades that when it first came up on the scanner, the volume was really light. I wanted to see if more volume would come in, which is why I started with a starter position and just kind of gave it a second. Volume came in, and so that’s when I went in full size at 330. 330, went in full size, we pop up to a high of 338 and then you can see this bearish engulfing candle. A bearish engulfing candle is when that red candle is bigger than the previous green candle, so it completely engulfs it. Now, this is not a good thing and so here I sold through 335 and 330, holding the rest. We dropped down to 322, we pop back up to a high of 333, we consolidate.

As we drop back down here I stopped out of the rest at 328 and 325. In total, with 10000 shares I made $522, which is okay but I really thought I had a lot more potential than that. When you take 10000 shares, your risk is usually like 1000 bucks, 10 cents. To risk 1000, the profit target has to be 2000. Now, I thought this had the potential if it got over 340 to hit 350. Over 350, the half dollar, 355, 360, but that didn’t end up happening on this one today. I took the small win on I. Even though it didn’t really justify the level of risk, a small win is better than a small loss. Risk, half size for me would be 2500 shares, that’s my starter position. 5000 is kind of half size, full size is 10000 to 15000, maybe as high as 20000 depending on the setup, the strength that we’re seeing in the market.

I think my biggest position this month was 22000 shares or 25000, so yeah. 25000 was my biggest position and I made 4800 bucks on that trade. All right, so let’s see. TANH, again, this didn’t end up being a fantastic trade. I was hoping it would show more strength than it did. Had a nice pop here but then dropped right back down, consolidation, it just couldn’t hold the level. Of course by the time this candle on the one minute was forming, we had now formed a five-minute doji candle, which is not something I really like to see. A little  disappointing there.

Next one was CDNA. Even after that trade there I was like, “Okay, well, I might just be done for the day because I’m up 500 bucks. I don’t know, it just feels like that wasn’t a very good trade, I took a good mount of risk, I didn’t get the return that I wanted, and we’re not seeing very good fall through in the market so maybe I’ll just throw in the towel and be happy with 500 bucks.” Then CDNA popped up. On CDNA I did the same type of thing. I saw it popping up and I jumped in at 154. Now, in this one as I jumped in at 154 right through here, this was based on a small, little, one-minute pull back.

A small, little, one-minute pull back, I got in with 5000 shares. On this one I was prepared to double to 10000, I just never got that opportunity. From 54 we popped up to 55, 60, 65, 70, and all the way up to 75. Through there I was up 800 bucks or something like that on the ask and I was like, “Okay, I need to start taking some profit. This isn’t one to add one.” It started to drop down here and I stopped out at 65 for 10 cents profit. 10 cents for 5000 shares, it’s $535 and that … Those two trades combined put me up over 1000 bucks today. Kind of a slow day, kept it simple, two trades. Commissions are light today, which is good, and accuracy is 100%, which is fantastic. That’s a nice, little boost in accuracy here.

Yesterday, accuracy was green and I think three out of five trades. The day before was green and only one out of four. Accuracy this week has dipped down a little bit. It’s actually at just 53%. Yeah, 53%. Accuracy is low but as long as you’ve got good profit-loss ratios you can do fairly well, and this week I do. My average loss this week is only seven cents. Keeping those stops pretty tight and that’s really the goal. All right, so again, you know, not a lot to talk about. Today was a pretty slow day, fairly straightforward, just a couple of trades. Coming into Thursday and Friday, it will be important for me to keep the risk tight, not allow myself to have a big drawdown towards the end of the week.

End of the week usually is not not my best time to trade. We’ve got three more days left in the month of July, Thursday, Friday, and then next Monday. Right now I’m just under 10000 on the month, which makes it a little bit of a slow month but that’s mostly thanks to one trade where I lost seven grand. If I hadn’t taken that trade I’d be up 17000 on the month and that would be much more respectable. 10000 is still decent and I’m fine with that. It’s okay, I’ll take the $10000 and hopefully we have some decent follow through in August, and I can prevent myself from getting overly aggressive on the wrong trades and taking a big loss. Then get ourselves into September, October, November, December, and hopefully a really strong fourth quarter. That would be ideal.

This year started off really strong with $130000 in the first quarter. Second quarter was very slow, third quarter has been slow, so we’ll see if things start to rally and we get a little bit more momentum. Last year, my best three-month period was June, July and August, and the rest of the year was slow. The market is cyclical, it’s not really seasonal, it’s not about the time of year specifically. It’s just we have hot cycles, and we have cold cycles. When we have a hot cycle we’ve got to do everything possible to capitalize on it, so we can really generate as much profit as we can. Knowing that that’s going to have to tie this over during the inevitable slow period that will come at one point or another.

You could ask any trader in the world, regardless of your strategy there’s going to be hot periods and there’s going to be slow periods. That’s probably true with almost anything in life, any type of job you have. You’ve got busy seasons, slower seasons, and things like that. Right now, I’m hoping that we come into a little bit of a busier season but at the same time, $10000 a month is not bad. I know that this month could have better if I had been more disciplined especially on that one losing day. That also goes to show how one day can really impact your entire month, or your entire quarter, or even your entire year.

You have to think about, every time you come into trade that you’re at peak performance, that you’re focused, that you’re ready to take this seriously, that you’re going to be disciplined. If you start to get complacent the market will remind you that the market is always stronger. You can’t get stubborn, you can’t get emotional, you got to stick to the plan. Right now, trading on the road, my focus is trade the first hour. Do the best I can in that first hour, and then do my midday recap, and switch gears and call it a day. Today was a good day, $1000, daily goal. Even though Monday was a losing day, I only lost 1200 bucks, which for me is totally okay. Because that only gave back one day of profit. That’s fine.

Knowing that even if I had one losing day a week where I was down 1200 bucks, that would be totally fine with me. It’s having those one, big, big, loss days that I really want to avoid. All right, so anyway, that’s the game plan for today. Oh, I had 5000 shares on CDNA. 5000 shares and 10 cents profit. TANH was 10000 shares with five cents profit. All right, so those of you that watch this on YouTube or on Facebook, we’d love for you guys to put comments below. I’ll come back through and answer them later this afternoon. Okay, so with that I hope you guys enjoy the afternoon and I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning. Okay, thanks guys.

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