Day 38 of the $100k Challenge +$2,397.40 | Ep. #41

Daily Recap

All right, guys. Time for a midday market recap. Here we are at the end of February. We’re ending what has now been the best month I’ve ever had of trading. Last month was the best month I’ve ever had and I made $40,000, like $42,000. Now here we are in February, and I’m finishing the month in my small account up $60,000. At the very beginning of the month, I was also trading in my older account and made $9,000 there. $69,000 for the month of February in my two accounts. I’m finishing here today with $2,397, which is not bad. The last couple days have felt a little sluggish. Thursday, I lost $500. Friday, I lost $4,000. Monday, yesterday, I made $1,800. Today, I’m up $2,300. It feels a little sluggish, since on my big green days this month I’ve been averaging $5,000 to $8,000. I haven’t had a big green day since last Wednesday.

In fact, even as of today, I’m still down about $500 versus that two day losing streak that started on Thursday. A little bit of a step back and kind of grinding my way back up, almost double topping at my previous high, which was $77,000 in the small account. This the account that I started January 1st with $583. Those of you watching in the chat, you can see my PNL right there. Those of you watching over on Facebook, you can see it up on my live screen.

Today, I traded six names and my ECN fees reflect all those trades. $358 in ECN fees. $70 in commissions. Average share size today was over 8,000 shares, with my biggest position being 18,000 and my smallest one being, I think, 2,600. Definitely taking some bigger size. When you take that kind of size, you kind of expect to have a bigger green day than what I had today. I just have felt like the trades I’ve been taking haven’t quite worked out the way I wanted them to. In fact, I held one trade today down about four and a half thousand dollars. It ended up coming back up, and I lost only $500 on it, but I just got in. I got in too high. All of a sudden, it dropped 25 cents. Then, I felt like, I might as well just hold through the pullback because the pattern still looks decent. It’s still a good daily chart.

That’s the problem when you get in really high. Even though it had pulled back 50 cents on 10,000 shares, it still looked good. It’s like it didn’t really give me an exit indicator other than the fact that I was well below my max loss. Obviously, I held. Ended up coming back, making new highs. I minimized the loss down to just $500, which was fine, but you never like having to hold a stock going against you that far. That is the reason why you really need to get the best entry.

When you get a good entry, you don’t need to hold through the pullback because you bought at the bottom of the pullback. Even though I said that would be my plan this week, I just got a little overly aggressive on MBOT and I think it’s because it was a former runner. I looked at it and I was like, “This is one I can jump on and it should probably be a home run set up. It looks really good.” I ended up mistiming that a little bit.

Yesterday, we had that big move on HTGM. I want to write a blog post. HTGM. The one that got away. I really felt like, I was watching it at $1.70 and I felt like it … I was like, “I don’t know. It looks good, but I feel like I should wait for a five minute set up. I should wait for something that’s more obvious.” I’ll scroll back on my chart here to show you. Next thing you know, it’s at $3. If I had bought 10,000 or 20,000 shares of that, I would have had an $8,000 to $10,000 day yesterday, but I decided to wait. Next thing you know, it runs without me. That can trigger that frustration, that little bit of a fear of missing out. You can see how it was consolidating under 171.

We were watching it here. I had it on watch and I just said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it has a lot of volume. You’ve the 200 moving average. I’ll just wait.” Next thing you know, it’s at 260. I think, because yesterday I had the one that got away, today I was like, “No. Not going to let that happen.” I was a little more aggressive with jumping into setups faster. Then, the result is that I ended up getting a lot of small winners because I was buying stocks that were a little bit more extended. They were already up high. I was waiting on the first one minute pullback, which was fine. Those were good entries, but on the five minute, they were still extended. Pop up. Didn’t hold. Faded back down. Got out. Break even. That happened on several trades. PULM. JAGX. IPDN. BNSO. All four of those were the same way, where I got in looking for a big move. They popped up and I had to stop out as they came back down because they didn’t hold those levels.

An Accidental 18k Share Position

The only one that held was BASI and this is one that I wasn’t even expecting to be the biggest winner. It was kind of like, yes, we had it on watch yesterday. It made this big move. Then, it sold off yesterday afternoon. It came all the way back down from 190 down to 150. I felt like it was just going to be too tricky. Of course, the market opens and ends up surging up. I got in this one at 188, actually 185. I got in right on this candle here. You can see, for those of you watching the chart. Right there. I got in on that candle as we popped up through 85.

What was interesting is that I don’t know if I lost my connection for a split second or what happened. I pressed the buy button. I had it cued up for 5,000 shares. I pressed it twice and nothing happened. I thought maybe my order didn’t go through. I pressed it two more times. Then, all of a sudden I had 18,000 shares and an order out at 185 to buy more. I canceled that order and I was just like, “Whoa.” I wasn’t expecting to take 18,000 shares of this one.

I was really surprised. Now I’ve got a big position. It pops up to 95. I don’t sell it. I’m just holding it. It drops down to a low of 77, so I got into the red. Pops back up and I say, “You know what? Just give this a second. Let it consolidate. It looks good for the move over $2. I’ve got a 188 average.” It pops up here to $2 and it pops up to $2.04, and I start selling on the ask. Ended up making $2,000 on that one, but I wasn’t planning on being that aggressive. I was only planning on $10,000, not $18,000. A little bit of a mistake there, but it ended up working out in my favor, which is a little bit rare. I guess it makes up for the trade I had last week, where I bought that stock pre-market and lost $700 before the bell had even rung, the opening bell.

BASI ended up being a fairly active stock today, from $1.60 up to, I guess high a day is $2.40 right now. Some pretty good range on that. Some good opportunities, at least early. This one also felt a little choppy. Wasn’t the cleanest one ever. Couple false breakouts around the $2.20 level before it finally faded. That was BASI. At the same time that I took that trade, I was holding MBOT, which I jumped into. That’s MBOT. I jumped into this one too high. Just generally, too high. I saw it spike up here to hit my scanner at $6.65. This candle pulled back, so I was like, “Okay. I’ll get in over $6.65.” It pops up and I’m using my hotkey to get in. This is the risk with the hotkey. They ended up getting filled at … I probably pressed the hotkey at $6.70 instead of $6.65. Got filled with five cent offset at $6.75, filled 10,000 shares at the top. We squeezed up to a high of $6.90. Then, we dropped all the way down to $6.12. It’s horrible. I mean, really just very frustrating to see that kind of thing happen.

I guess I was actually down $6,000 on this, but it pops back up, which is good. I thought it would because it was a strong daily chart. When you look at the daily chart, this was the reason I took the trade. First candle to make a new high. It’s a good setup. When you have a conviction in the daily chart, it does help you ride through a bit of a pullback, because you recognize that this is a really good … This is a good setup. Yes. It’s pulling back right now. Obviously, this isn’t ideal, but the setup is good. I think buyers will come back into it. Let’s give it a second. That’s what I did. I just gave it a second. I basically knew either this would be a pretty bad loss and it would just be very frustrating, or the set up would work. It did, and it came all the way back up to $6.86.

Overall, I’m glad that I was able to minimize the loss, but I wish that I had not taken this one minute micro pullback. This is a micro pullback. We talk about this in class. Class six of the day trading course, the micro pullbacks here. You get that pop. A little pullback. The breakthrough. This is a place that I do get into trades on a fairly regular basis and I can make some good money. This one just wasn’t the one. It was too extended. I probably was buying the shares. Someone was selling who had gotten it down here at $6. They probably sold here. Comes back up. Was able to recover. I took a second trade on it for this five minutes candle to make a new high right in here, with an entry at $6.70. On $6.70 we popped up to a high of $6.97, but we couldn’t get over the whole dollar. It pulled back and I stopped out of that on this candle here. I think I actually made $200 on it, but not a big trade.

I guess now, it’s been consolidating and popping back up. It shows you again, when you have a strong daily chart, that can really give you more conviction in the intraday chart, or taking an intraday set up, or even taking a setup that’s a little bit extended. For whatever reason though, this was not a clean one. Even though I’ve told myself to be more mindful about share size on one minute setups, and 10,000 is my max. On this one, I got right in at my max and maybe that was too heavy. It was too heavy. I should’ve waited for a good pullback. Kind of a narrowly avoided big loss there.

To answer your question about what makes a daily chart look good. On this one, this is the first day to make a new high after this pullback. Obviously, this day where it’s a shooting star doji candle. Shooting star candle with this lower body. This taller upper tail. Not the prettiest. Then, three candles that are red. The first candle to make a new high. Sometimes this is where shorts will cover. Anyone who is short through this move. We are up today quite a bit. I’m not quite sure what the percentage gain is, but it’s up a good amount today. No resistance nearby, really at all. 200 moving average was the only one that’s there, and that’s a ways off. Decent setup there, but not the best follow through.

That was the MBOT. None of the others are particularly noteworthy. BASI and MBOT were the two that were the most interesting today. I think, the thing for me to be mindful of is that, like I said, the last couple days, the last four days have been a little sluggish. Even though, today is a good day with $2,300. I had a couple of close calls, like MBOT and BASI, even. I’m just happy to be able to close the month on a green day. I’m hoping that as we go into March, we’ll see some better follow through. Continue to see strong setups, but to continue, also, to see those good five minute patterns play out the way we expect. The first five minute pullback. The first one minute pullback. That type of thing.

Trading Statistics

Interestingly, yesterday my accuracy was only 30%. I had five losing trades in a row as I ended the day yesterday. I still made $1,800, but only 30% accuracy. The good news there is that you don’t need to be right 100% of the time to make money. The bad news is, obviously, I wasn’t on my game. I was up $2,900 and then gave back $1,000 in those five losses.

Today, on the other hand, my accuracy is 85%. Six trades. Five winners. Actually, seven trades and six winners. I’m totally happy with that. Average gains today, about 12 cents. Average loss, only about six cents. Good profit, loss ratio. Good accuracy. These are the type of days that I need. Realistically, each of the trades that I took today could’ve done a lot more. IPDN, I was up over a dollar per share. The spreads were big and I wasn’t able to realize that type of profit on it. We’ll just stay focused on the strategy, trading momentum, trading off the high day scanner, seeing stocks hitting the high day scanner, waiting for the first pullback, that type of thing. Hopefully, I’m able to maintain good metrics in the month of March.

What I will do later this week, I’ll import all of my trades from the month of February into trader view. As soon as I get my statement, I’ll upload that to the website. That will probably be … That might not be until March 5th or 6th. I’m not sure. Right now, my stats as of yesterday were $58,000 in profit, with 67% accuracy. Average winning trade, $2,000. Average losing trade, $1,300. That’s a positive profit, loss ratio. These are big numbers, but green is good. It’s almost two to one. 43 winning trades. 21 losses. 12 consecutive winning trades. This actually shows five consecutive losing trades. Maybe I only had four yesterday, or five. I don’t know.

Total fees and commissions for the month of February, right around $4,600. That will put me on track to pay my broker over $50,000 this year in fees and ECNs and stuff like that. Those are just like the tolls. It’s what you have to do. You can’t really get around it. The issue with ECN fees is that every share you take, you have to pay the fee on. A direct access broker, like SpeedTrader, like Interactive Brokers, and like Lightspeed are going to pass on those ECN fees to you. You’ve got to pay those fees and that’s the cost of direct routing. Yes, there is a cost.

On the other hand, you could use a firm like E-trade or Ameritrade that doesn’t give you the direct access routing, or not nearly as many options, and you’ll only pay the per trade ticket. If I took, let’s say 50 trades today times $3 a trade is $150 in commission. Times $10 a trade at Ameritrade would be $500 in commission. When you add together the ECN fees and the commissions, you probably end around the same place, maybe a little less. But, you have the advantage of direct access routing, which is faster routing. I think that is a good advantage.

In any case, that’s kind of where we’re finishing here for Tuesday, for Day 38, and for the month of February. Again, later this week we’ll do a full February recap going over my stats. The biggest winner. The biggest loser. That sort of thing. All right, guys. Any questions, any comments, you can put them down in the comments below for those of you watching on YouTube or Facebook. I’ll make sure I answer them. I’ll see you all first thing tomorrow morning. All right. Thanks, guys.