The LAST Mid-Day Recap of 2017 from $583 to $335k

 

What’s up everyone? We did it. 2017 is in the books. Today is the last trading day of the year. It’s my 236th day of 2017. What a year it has been. We’re gonna get into the midday market recap. I’m finishing today with another $4,114. But before we do, I just wanted to thank you guys. Every single one of you, you’re on YouTube, you’re on Facebook. You guys are a part of the Extended Warrior Trading family and you’ve watched me during this journey starting a year ago, January 1 with $583 and one goal. The goal was to turn it into $100,000. That was my goal for 2017.

I thought that was realistic because in 2016, I made $222,000 but I was trading a regular size account the full year. So I thought for 2017, it might take me two, three, four months to build up to $25,000 and, you know, setting the goal of $100,000 for the year was good. Maybe a little conservative but good. And I hit $100,000 on March 8. So I came in nine months early and I’ve just been building the account for the rest of the year.

I crossed over a quarter of a million dollars. Then I crossed over $300,000 and I’m finishing here with $335,000 in profits. What a year. Now, it wasn’t all big green days. It wasn’t all fun. I had some red days. I had some days that I was feeling deflated, I was feeling frustrated. But I still came on and did my midday market recap. I didn’t miss a single day. And that’s because I wanted this to be a transparent journey. I wanted you to be able to really see what it was like, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything. And I want to thank you guys for giving me the thumbs up, the likes and all the comments, even on those bad days. Because I really think, you know …

At first I didn’t want to do it but it really made me accountable to my trades. It forced me to really analyze what I did wrong, the mistakes I made. And I think because of that, I’ve actually become a better trader. So I want to thank you guys for helping make me a better trader. And so as I finished this year, obviously it’s been an incredible year. So you might be wondering, what’s on the horizon for 2018? How do I top it?

Well, 2018 I’m going to keep growing this account. My goal is to turn it into a million dollars. And when I do, I’ll have proven that becoming a millionaire trading, taking $583 and turning it into a million dollars doesn’t require a background in finance. Doesn’t require a big bank account to start with. All it requires is a set of rules and a strategy for how you’re going to trade the market. And the discipline to follow the rules.

Now there are times where I’ve broken the rules and I’ve had to do my punishment, which is run five miles or ride my bike 15 miles. So we all break rules from time to time. But we have to have the discipline to know that we broke the rule and to get ourselves back in line. And I want to thank you guys for helping keep me focused this year.

So for 2018, I will also be trading in an IRA account. So I put in $5,500 of my profits from 2017 into an IRA and in January I’ll put another $5,500 into an IRA. So I’ll have about $10-$11,000 in the IRA that I’ll start trading in January. So that’ll be kind of interesting because that account is a smaller account and I am limited under the PDT rule. And I’ll trade it side by side with my regular account and those two accounts will grow and the combined profits at the end of 2018 will be whatever they are. And I think in 2019 that’ll probably be when I crossover that big line in the sand, the million dollars.

And I’m so excited to do it. So anyways, we’ll get into the midday market recap. I just wanted to thank you guys for being part of this journey and for a great year. And encourage you that if you want to become a master of the markets, you want to become a trader, Warrior Trading is the place to be. We’d love to have you join the Warrior Trading family. Get into the chat room and start 2018 off on the right note. It’s a new year, new you so let’s get after it.

All right, so with all that said, let’s get into the midday market recap and talk about today’s trades.

Ladies and gentlemen, here he comes. The man, the myth, the legend, who takes $583 and turns it into $335,000 in one year, all while wearing his pajamas. He’s been called the most handsome man in the universe. Let’s give it up, everybody, for Mr. Ross Cameron.

Thank you guys, thank you. Please, very generous introduction. Everyone sit down, sit down. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know, please, stop clapping. I know this has been an incredible year. Thank you. Everyone can sit down. Again, thank you all so much. Let’s get on with it. Today’s midday market recap. So this has been, obviously, an incredible year. We’re finishing here. This is the last day of 2017. My 236th trading day. And I am just so grateful. It’s been absolutely incredible. Really, just I wouldn’t have guessed that this would be my best year of my trading career and it would start from $583. But that’s exactly what happened.

So I started here January 1, about a year ago, with a very small account. The goal was to turn it into $100,000 and I thought it would take me the entire year to do that. And obviously, I crossed over $100,000 on March 8 and since then have just been steadily making progress. So I’m finishing here with $335,000 in profits. In fact, it’s $335,472.18, which is crazy. And that’s just from the account that started with $583. I’ve got another $30,000 on top of that. So $370,000 in total profits this year.

And that also doesn’t include the money that I’ve made in the market in long term investments that is the profits that I put away at the beginning of the year. In April, I took $70,000 out, put it into the S&P 500 and well you guys can see what the S&P 500 has done in the last nine months. It’s been absolutely awesome. So I’m not even counting that because that was not really even … I just put it away and let it work. But that’s another $8,000 or $9,000. So I’m just super pumped. This has been a really awesome year.

So why don’t we get into it. Today is our last midday market recap. We’re gonna do this again through all of 2018, nothing different here. We’re just gonna keep doing the midday market recap every single day and you guys will be able to watch over my shoulder. I made a special intro to today’s midday market recap that’s gonna be on YouTube so you guys will be able to see that. And it talks a little bit about what we’re doing in 2018. So a couple of changes to my account, but for the most part it’s business as usual and just continuing to build this account up as much as I can.

So let’s look at the P&L today, finishing the year with another $4,000 day. Here we go, $4,114.62, just stacking up those profits. In fact, this has been my best month of my trading career, finishing with $84,369.12. Not quite six figures, but a good month, nonetheless. And only two red days this month. So I lost $13,000 on my worst day this month and $3,500 on the second red day. So about $16,000 in loses versus whatever, I guess, versus $100,000 in gains. So it puts me at $84,000 on the month.

So, you know, this has just been a great month. But what’s interesting is last month, I had two days where I made like $70,000 and then the rest of the gains were kind of scattered throughout the month. This month has been different. December has been really consistent. I had three $14,000 days, so that contributes half of my gains. And then the other $45,000 is just slow and steady. Days like this. This week, I’m up almost $10,000. I only traded three days. So really you can’t complain about that at all.

You can see today, the P&L, biggest winner was VTVT. So we’ll look at that trade. This one was a continuation setup. So we’re watching this based on the break of yesterday’s high. So yesterday it was really strong. And you can see how it did these really nice, clean pull backs. It popped up, pulled back, popped up, pulled back. And so I was watching it pre-market for a possible continuation. The bell rang, it started to squeeze up, I jumped in at $6, which was a little on the high side. You can see right here, I got in at $6, it squeezed up to a high at $6.72. That was enough for me to capture $2,800 in profit. So, $2,800, not bad at all.

Second name on the board today is GCAP. GCAP was also continuation from a big move yesterday. This one was not as clean. I got in it on a red to green move, as you can see here. The bell rang, it dipped down. It then popped back up. I got in at $12.80, was it $12,80? Yeah. $12.79, 2,500 shares. And I sold at $13.09, $13.24. High of day on this was $13.26. So two cents off the high day was not bad at all. So that was a really nice one in GCAP. Little outside my price range, which is why I went smaller on the share size. And I think that was the right decision.

And then the last trade was KOSS. This one popped up on the scanners. It squeezed into a circuit breaker halt. I didn’t get in before the halt. That would have been at about $2.07. The volume was just a little too light. But I got in after the halt. So it dropped down and then it popped up. So I got a little scalp on it and ended up selling. My best exit on this was at 93. So I was in at $2.32, sold at $2.93 but didn’t really capture a lot of profit on it. So $500 is really not bad.

But yeah, that’s about it for me. I was done by 10:42. So about an hour of trading today. Definitely didn’t push my luck and just stayed focused looking for A quality setups and not wanting to overstay my welcome here on the last day of the year. I kind of knew yesterday, I was like, I’d really like to be able to have this be my best month of the year. That means I need to make another like $1,200. And I thought, I don’t want to get too fixated on making $1,200 because then I might do something like get too aggressive and make a mistake. So I just said I’ll come in and if you trade, you trade. If you don’t, no big deal. So I just took a couple of trades and I was able to do pretty well on it.

So VTVT, I started with 5,000, actually 7,500 shares. That was bigger than I realized. And then I sold half at 24, added back at $6.26 and $6.32. Sold at 29 and 27, basically break even but then got back in at 50, sold at 63, 58. Added at 70 and sold at 84 and 82. So again, trading in and around the position, getting in, getting out, getting in, getting out, which is pretty much par for the course for me. So 35 trades today. You can see my shares, 47,000 shares, removed liquidity, 23,000 adding. So that’s not too bad. I guess added more on VTVT, which is nice. So I get a little rebate on that on my commissions.

So anyways, you know, again, this has been a crazy year. There were points in the middle of the year where I was sort of feeling a little bit bummed out. Things were really slow for me around the middle and I can show you guys my reports here. These aren’t updated. These are only updated through the 22nd so I have to go in and export all my recent trades. But if we look at this calendar year, you can see, this is what my P&L was like through the year. So we started really strong. Well, January … Actually, that’s weird. I guess, why is that? Let’s see. One, let’s see, 17 and then yeah through today. That’s interesting. Oh, you know what? I guess that’s because I traded in my regular account in January also. So this was a small month and then we really surged up in February, pulled back a little in March, dipped down and then came out of September, October strong. November, strong and here in December I’ll be way up here.

So I see no reason that this won’t continue into January and February. We may see a little bit of a lull through the summer. But what’s interesting is if we look at my 2016 trading year, what you’ll see is that my summer was really strong. I was green every single month but the strength was really in the summer. Three really great months here, June, July, August. November and December were also good. And it’s just, I don’t know why that happened to be the case in 16 and then in 17 the summer was so slow. But I guess just the luck of the draw. So I like to look at these metrics to kind of get a sense of where I’m at and I’ll look at the detail here. You can sort of see, big picture is accuracy, 68%. That’s over 889 trades this year. If we go all the way back to 16, you’ll see accuracy 67, 68%. I mean, I am just right on that point, 68, 67%. Some months are higher than others.

Profit/loss ratio, about one to one over the last two years. Starting just this year, profit/loss ratio one to one but the winners are a little bit bigger. The losers are a little bit bigger as well. One of the things that we talk about, of course, in the class, is we talk about risk management and the importance for every beginner trader, you set your foundation on understanding the risk that you take on every trade. And so we take risk when we have potential for reward. And so I measure profit/loss ratio as my average winners versus my average losers. So here I’m about one to one. And so what do we know about one to one? If you’re one to one, you have to be right 50% of the time to break even. And so for me being right 68% of the time is what makes me profitable. Now, I could also potentially be trading with a profit/loss ratio of average winning trade $1,000, average losers only $500. And then I if was right 33% of the time, I would be breaking even. If I was right 50% of the time, I’d be profitable.

So it kind of shows you how when you tighten up your losses and you can have a positive profit/loss ratio, it can help you set the bar low to make it easier for you to be a profitable trader. But for me I just had a little bit of a hard time keeping losses tighter. Part of that is because of my strategy. My average trade is 13 minutes. We look all the way back to 16 here, it’s 11 minutes per trade. So these are pretty short trades. And there are times when I get in and the trade gets away from me and boom I’m down $1,000 or $2,000 or whatever it is. And you guys have been here every step of the way for 2017. Everyday we’ve done our midday recap and there have been some really difficult days where I was really frustrated, my third consecutive red day or my third consecutive red week. And we just kept doing it, kept doing the recaps and I think you guys, the feedback I’ve gotten from everyone is that you’ve really enjoyed seeing them and even the red days have been valuable and you’ve been able to learn a lot from them.

So we’ll keep doing that in 2018 since I know you guys enjoy it. And the goal is to turn this account into a million dollars. So from $583 to a million dollars. It’ll certainly take all of next year. I don’t expect to make $700,000 or $680,000 next year. So I don’t expect to cross a million dollars in 2018. I’m kind of thinking it’ll happen in 2019 but you never know. I mean, gosh, I keep having $80,000 months, maybe it could. But I just expect that at some point, we will have a slow down. Things will get choppy and we’ll have to make due with only $200 or $300 a day. And it may be for a month or two months or even four months. And then things will pick back up and that’s when it’s time to put the pedal to the medal.

My hope is that a year from now or six months from now when we see a stock like LFIN, that I might be feeling better suited to trade it. And this is an opportunity that I let slip by because I didn’t feel comfortable trading it, both with the price range and with the spreads. But clearly, a trade like that can make or break your month or your year. So I just always want to try to continue to become a better trader. And when I look at my score on the profit trifecta, which we talk about with students, the thing that I really look at for me as being an issue is my profit/loss ratio. I wish that I had a better profit/loss ratio. You can see right here, I’m actually being only at one to one. I’m way down here. And that’s the area where, when you look, I’m 65, 68%, that’s good. Consistency is on point. So the area I really need to focus on is trying to boost up the profit/loss ratio.

So how do I do it? Well there’s two ways. One, get bigger winners. Well, that’s easier said than done. So number two is tighten up the losses. And that’s what I have to get better at. I’ve had several losses this year that were just too big. Where I just stared, deer in the headlights. And I’ve got to get better at that. So that, to me, is probably the difference between having a $300,000 year and having a half a million dollar year. But at the same time, it does come back to the strength in market. And we’ve had incredible strength in the markets through everything that’s going on with the crypto mania. So that may well continue in 2018 and we’ll just be able to keep riding this wave.

But, you know, for anyone who has had a little bit of a setback, I’m sure some of you guys are finishing this year in the red. I know what it’s like to finish a year in the red. It’s not fun. You feel like, I put in my time, I was here every single day and I’m not getting it, what’s going on? And inevitably, it’s probably that your losses are bigger than your winners. And your accuracy might be on the low side. But I’ll tell you, having gone through this journey of teaching myself how to trade and now getting to the other side, it just comes down to discipline, studying, watching the charts, analyzing your trades, printing out the A quality setups, having them all over the place so when you start to see one forming in real time, you know that, okay I’m gonna be a buyer here.

And then the discipline to take the losses when it’s not working. But I hope that you guys don’t feel discouraged by seeing this, but feel inspired. Because the reality is this is the potential of the market. And this isn’t just me. We can take a quick peak at the December challenge. We’ve had some students this year finishing in just really, really great shape. John, he’s over $300,000 this year as well. Mike, $30,000 on the month. I mean, these are some really big numbers. Tyler, you can see here, he’s $12,000 and you’ll notice that he is logged into the chatroom as our new junior moderator. So he’ll be with us through 2018 at a junior moderator. He focuses mostly on swing trades. So you can keep on eye on what he’s trading. $12,000 all from swing trades. I mean, trading part time. That’s not bad at all.

A couple of other traders that did really well, Nate and John. John’s in the inner circle. Both of these guys are ear marked as potential junior moderators coming into 2018. You know, we’ll keep an eye on how they trade. And Dean’s had a little bit of a tough month. He as actually, at the first half of the month, in really, really good shape. He was up like $15,000. And then he had the snowball day. Broke all the rules. Chased a falling knife, and we’ve all been there. And you know, you just have to make your way out of it. And the thing is, he probably, on this second day, was trading a little impulsively because of the loss on this first day.

N so you really have to learn how to have that sense of where am I at with my emotions this morning? And I do that every morning. I sit down and I say, okay did I sleep well? Did I eat well? Do I have a couple of stocks that I like this morning? That’s my pre-trading routine. Just like when you’re golfing or you’re in baseball and you pre-swing and you’re getting yourself loosened up, you’re getting ready. That’s the same thing we do trading, except it’s sort of a mental process. Did I sleep well, eat well? Do I have a couple stocks I like? What’s the market like today? Are we in a good market or are we in a bad market?

For me, this morning, I came in and I was kind of like, you know I’m a little tired this morning. It’s the end of the week. I’m just not sure. Last night, the middle of the night, our alarm system goes off in the house. So the whole alarm system goes off and it’s two in the morning, or whatever it is. I jump out of the bed and I’m like what’s going on? Is someone breaking into the house? What’s happening? I’m running to my panic room, telling my wife to save herself. And as I shuffle past the little alarm on the wall, I see that it says low temperature. It was like negative 20 last night with the windchill. So one of the alarms went off so I had to go downstairs, turn up the heat in that room and just was an ordeal.

The alarm company calls and I don’t fall back asleep for like an hour and a half. I just laid there in bed. So you know, when I came in this morning, I was like, you know I’m a little tired. I’m not quite on my game. I sit down and I lose my internet connection. My internet connection goes off, I don’t even really get to prepare my pre-market watch list until 9:26. It’s four minutes to the open and I don’t even really have a watch list.

So that was how I started my day today and that’s why I was like, I’m gonna be a little bit more conservative. The first trade I took on GCAP was four minutes into the day. It was smaller size. I didn’t go super aggressive and you know, VTVT, this one was seven minutes into the day. I kind of knew what was going on there. We’d seen it yesterday. So, you know, I ended up putting together a pretty good day. But you have to check in with yourself because when you start the day just not quite focused, not feeling right, it can really roll over into the way you trade.

So good lessons there for Dean. I know he’s getting it. He understands what he did wrong there. Hopefully he’ll really get into gear in January and be in good shape. But we’re all in different phases of the learning curve where some of us are still going through having three or four weeks of great trading and then having that snowball day where you give back all your progress. So you know, two steps forward, three steps back. Two steps forward, three steps back. And so the goal right now, for Dean, I would say, because I was in that position not that long ago, I would say let’s see how many days I can put between me and my next snowball day.

Because you know it’s probably gonna happen, so let’s just try to put as many days between me and that day as possible. And so I’d say okay well maybe I made $30,000 between my last really big red day. And so all right, that’s good. The red day might have been $5,000 down, which is disappointing, but that’s progress. And then just keep trying to space those days out more and more until you’re no longer even really aware of it because it’s been so long since you had a big red day.

So you know, but I do that with my own trading. And you guys have seen through the year, I’ve had days where in two days I lost 15, $30,000 and now I’m in the hole and I’ve got to dig my way back out, right? So that’s just part of the deal. But anyways, so let’s see. Oh I’ll finish on my P&L here. So $4,114.62. So there we go, in the green. Finishing the month in great shape.

So that’s about it for me. I’ll probably do some type of full 2017 in review next year, once I have my broker statements. Of course, they’re all going to be uploaded onto the website, you guys can look at them if you’d like. You know, this is a journey that transparency was really important to me on. So every broker statement has been uploaded and I didn’t want any question that this wasn’t real money. From $583 to $335,000. So when I get a call from I don’t know, 21st Century Fox to make the movie, they’re going to want to see those broker statements. And I’m gonna have them there ready to go. Anyways, you guys can look at those if you want. But I’ll upload the new one early January.

I mean, Matt Damon would probably be the best … I don’t know, it’s definitely gonna be a fight. Leonardo DiCaprio, they’re all going to be fighting for this part and I’ll just … We’ll choose the best actor. The one that’s the most handsome at the time, probably. And has the best beard.

So anyways, that’s about it for me today. This has been a great year, great month. And you know we’re gonna get right back at it first thing on Tuesday morning. So got a new calendar already ready. It’s over here somewhere. So we’ll start January, hopefully see some good opportunities beginning of the year. New year, new you. We’ll start to build up the cushion, get some profits. And for any of you guys who’ve been on the fence about getting into the Warrior Pro classes or learning more, I’d love to have you guys join. We’re going to start a new round of classes in January, it’s gonna be a lot of fun and it’ll be a great opportunity for you guys to make 2018 your year to master the markets.

All right, so anyways, that’s it for me. And I will see you all first thing on Tuesday morning next year. All right, I’ll see you guys later. Bye.

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