What’s up, everyone? All right, so here we are, finishing Thursday morning up $2,000. Finally, a nice green day. This has been really a great start to the month. A little bit of a slow start on Tuesday, 300 bucks. 300 bucks yesterday, so 600, plus 2,000 today. That’s $2,600. That’s good progress.

 

Granted, we’re certainly not in a hot market where I’m doing $5,000, $8,000 a day, but green is good. In the past what I would likely have done is push too hard, been too aggressive, and these could’ve been three red days. Green is certainly better than red, and I’m happy with that. We’ll break it all down in today’s midday recap and if you have any questions, as always, put them below and I’ll come back through and answer them later this afternoon. All right, I’ll see you guys in the morning.

All right, everyone. We’re going to do our midday market recap, go over the trades from this morning. Today I’m finishing up $2,167.73, which is awesome, so hitting the daily goal. What’s even more exciting is that I’m crossing over the 70% mark in this $1 million challenge. I’ve crossed over this level once before and then dipped back under it, but still going to celebrate crossing it because it feels good. I’m at $700,000 in profits in my small account, but I started with $583 on January 1st, 2017. So 70% of the way to the $1 million mark. This is no doubt a marathon. It’s taken 19 months or so, or 20 months to get here, and it’s still probably going to take me another … Well, we’ll see. Probably four to six months to make another $300,000 and get across that level.

But one of the things like anything else is that day trading is a marathon. This is a very specific type of challenge that I’m doing, but even if I wasn’t doing this, it’s always kind of a marathon because you want to keep your head in the game. You got to keep your head above water, survive til you thrive, all of that type of stuff, and there are going to be weeks that are really tough. We’re going to have downs and we’re going to be frustrated, and then you’re going to have ups and you’re going to have amazing weeks. That’s part of the life of this job, all those ups and downs.

You can even them out depending on your share size and your risk tolerance and things like that. Some of us that are really aggressive will have $50,000 green days, maybe $100,000 green days and $50,000 red days, $100,000 red days. I mean, there are traders that go to the extreme with share size, trading with 40, 50,000 shares. No doubt they’re going to be experiencing the emotional extremes as well. I’m kind of a little bit more moderate compared to some of those traders, I suppose, but today’s a day where I’m finishing up 2,000 bucks and right now I would say it’s still a day I’d be pretty happy about. It’s a green day.

I’m going to write it down here. It’s the 165th trading day of the year for me, plus $2,167.73. That’s good. Now, of course, a month ago, the first week of August or second week of August I was doing $3,000, $2,000 every single day. I mean, it was back to back to back. So having made only 300 on Tuesday and 300 on Wednesday, I’m kind of behind my goal. But the thing that you have to remember is not to get too hyper focused on these short-term goals like your daily profit target or your weekly profit target, because the reality is you’re going to have weeks where the very best you can do is break even. The very best you can do is keep your head above water and not go into the red. Then you’re going to have weeks where the best you can do is going to be like $75,000 or $100,000 when you’re at the level that I’m at. Am I a little bit behind this week? Sure, but I can’t force it. I got to trade the market I’m in, not the market I want to be in.

Only two stocks I traded today, which is good, commissions will be a little bit lower, first one was BOXL. That was kind of a surprise. I didn’t think that it was really going to be worth trading. I’ll show you our gap scanner here today. Every day starts the same, going over the stocks that are gapping up pre-market. These are the ones that are most likely to make the big move once the bell rings. ARWR was our leading gap. We’re up 30%. Again, just because the stock’s up 30% doesn’t mean it can’t continue to squeeze. Right now it’s up 56%. So the bell rang and it squeezed up another 20%.

For me, though, it’s outside my price range. This doesn’t work well for me with a scalping strategy of getting in, taking quick profits. It doesn’t work really well with breakouts. It’s more of a trend-based type of strategy, and I don’t really have the patience to trade these. I just don’t usually do well on them. I saw some of you guys traded it, and that’s awesome. I’m happy to see that some of you guys got a piece of it and you apply the lessons that you learn about trading bull flags, moving average pullbacks, and things like that to this. But for me, it’s just not really my wheelhouse. Anyways, no trades on that one despite it being clearly a good mover.

Second one was ABAC. This was on the gap scanner, this one I traded. I’ll go over this one second. Pre-market had a high of 2.40, and I really wasn’t sure it was going to do anything. Didn’t have a lot of volume. I was like, “I don’t know.” Next one down, NBEV, New Age Beverage. This we were kind of watching out of the gates for a possible red to green move and that just never really happened. It just kept kind of going red. It did a short, one-minute bounce here, but that was it. So no trades on that.

INFI, volume’s too light. MYSZ, a little too cheap for me. Float’s too high on this one, not enough volume, price is too high, float’s too high. This one, NAKD, we were interested in but we saw the headline was a merger agreement and those don’t always give good breakouts, so nothing on NAKD. Too expensive. Volume’s too light, volume’s too light, float’s too high, price is too high, price is too low, below a dollar, price is too high. BOSC we were watching as a maybe, but it ended up, it was gapping pre-market and then it opened flat. So it did end up being actually a gapper, so nothing there. BOSC, so no trades. 50 cents too cheap, 14 too expensive, 46 too expensive.

So we keep going down the scans, and eventually at the bottom of the scan we did have BOXL. Where is it? Maybe I got to run this scan again at like 9:28 or something. It was on the scan just before the bell. Let’s see if this pops up. There it is. BOXL there, and I pulled it up. Someone said, “Hey, take a look at BOXL.” I was like, “Ah, I don’t know. I’m not that into it. The daily chart’s not great. I don’t think it’s going to do much.”

But then the bell rings, and suddenly it spikes right up to $4. So on this one I was like, “You know what? It’s showing me that it’s got strength.” It just squeezed up whatever that is, 30 cents. So I jumped right in it at $4 for a scalp over 4. That’s that go-to setup of break of the half dollar or whole dollar. So I’m in at 3.99 and 4.01, and I try to flip out and sell a quarter at 4.03, take a little profit. I get partial fills, and then it drops down. Then I was like, “Uh oh. This doesn’t look great.” So at that point, I was still holding like 2700 shares or something like that, and it dips down here all the way to 3.70 and I’m down like 30 cents. I was down about 800 bucks.

It’s kind of like, well, that’s disappointing and that’s exactly what I said yesterday that the problem right now is that, one, since all of these trades I’m risking 500 to 1,000 bucks, that when I made 300 yesterday and 300 the day before, yeah, that’s great but one loser could’ve wiped out all those profits. And I did have some small losses, but one trade that does this could wipe out those two days.

So it drops down here and I’m like, “Well, give me a second for the first one-minute candle to make a new high.” That’s my go-to on these. I watch and I give it a second. First one-minute candle makes a new high right here and it pops up to a high of 4.15. So I go down 900 and then it pops up and I get out the rest of it right here, and I made $135. Now, for me that is acceptable risk management knowing that the first one-minute pullback usually does get bought up and it usually does create that type of move.

Now, of course, on this one it was on the high of day momentum scanner. That’s how I ended up seeing it popping up. Because it was on this scanner, tons of other traders are using these same types of scans, so that’s what made me think, “Okay, people that didn’t buy the first spike would likely buy the first pullback because this is a stock that’s a former runner, history of making big news and there’s a headline today.” That’s what sort of gave me the confidence. If this didn’t have news, if this wasn’t on the scanner, I might’ve felt like I shouldn’t even try it, I should just stop out as it’s going down.

Certainly if it had gone red on the day down here I would’ve had to bail. I was about to bail, and I sold some at 3.85. I tried to sell on the ask, kind of a drop down. It popped up, I tried to sell on the ask, I filled 200 shares and then I couldn’t fill any more so I canceled it. I put an order to sell at 97, didn’t get filled, and then I threw out the order at 4.04 and boom. I got filled as it squeezed up right here on this candle. So I was like, “You know what, that’s good.” And even then I was like, “Mmm. I’m selling here at 4.04 and it goes up at 4.15. Maybe I could’ve held.”

But here’s the thing. If you’re in a trade and you end up being down 30 cents, if you can get out break even that’s a blessing. Take the break even trade. It’s no longer worth trying to focus on this being a big winner, because the fact that it was down 30 cents is pretty much already made it. So the likelihood that it’ll be a big winner is very low. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t potentially happen, but it’s really pretty low. So for that, I was just like, “Yeah, I’m not into it.”

Chris, the broker that I’m using is Lightspeed. They accept international traders. Pretty much they accept anyone except Canadians and people that are in those whatever, OFAC sanctioned countries. Yeah, so I use Lightspeed. I’ve been trading there for a long time, really happy with the speed of the orders. I mean, they are so fast. It is awesome. Hey, Jared. Welcome. Yeah, so anyways, BOXL, and of course it does a false breakout. Not surprising, but I was just kind of happy to be out of that without a big loss. So that was a close call.

After that, I was like, “You know what, $135? Maybe I should just call it a day. I don’t know, I’m not feeling it.” NBEV had dropped. That one wasn’t clean, the scanners weren’t that great. Then I see ABAC. I see ABAC, it pops up and hits the scanners, and I look at it and I’m like, “Okay, well, this was on our watch list pre-market.” So I already had the level two up and I already had an order ready at $2.50 because the pre-market high was 2.40 or 2.38, which is right around the half dollar. I was mindful of the 200 moving average at 38, but at that point we were breaking over it. So I was like, “This thing really does look … It looks good.”

So on this, ABAC, I’ve got the level two up, I’ve got my order at 50, and I press the buy button right there. I’m like, “Yep, I’m jumping in.” I get filled at 45. It squeezes up to 50 and 60, and that’s when I was like, “Okay, now I’m adjusting my expectations.” At first, I thought … I didn’t jump in this right away with 10,000 shares. I took my first 3,000-share position because I was like, “Well, it looks interesting but I just had a really close call. I don’t want to have a second one, so let’s just kind of ease into this and see if it’s going to work.”

So I take my starter and it pops up like 30 cents. So now I’m like, “Okay, option one is sell half and take the $600 profit. Option two is this stock is lighting up the scanner.” I mean, it’s hitting once, twice, three times, four times, five times, six, seven, eight, nine times. It’s up 68% today. The relative volume in the last five minutes is crazy high. Relative volume today is crazy high. This thing is taking off. This is what traders look for. We look for this because this volatility is an opportunity. As I saw it squeezing up, at this point I was like, “You know what, if it moved 30 cents that quickly, this thing has a chance of hitting $3. And if it hits 3 and it breaks 3, we’ve got a chance of hitting a circuit breaker halt, number one, and number two, there’s a chance that it could get up to 3.50 or maybe even more.” That’s where I started to really think this had a lot of potential.

Sharon and Josh, the way I was able to trade with the $583, I opened an account in the Bahamas. Now, there’s a couple different brokers that are in the Bahamas that our students use. I no longer need to use them because now my account is above the minimums to day trade in the U.S., but I started with a $500 … Well, $500 was the minimum so I put in $583. So 583 bucks, $83 above the cushion, charged it to my credit card, boom, and started trading.

On that one, on the broker that I had, there were not at the time a lot of restrictions. I was able to just pretty much start trading. I could day trade almost whatever I wanted, and I had six times leverage, which was awesome. With 500 in, 5 times 6 is 3,000, so I had about $3,000 of buying power on my first day. On my first day, I bought 1,000 shares of a $3 stock and when I made 15 cents that was 150 bucks of profit. I sold the whole thing. So then on day two, I had like $700 in the account. 7 times 6, now I’ve got $4,000 in buying power. I saw another $3 stock pop up on the scans. I jumped into it this time with like 1,200 shares, or 1,500 shares, whatever it was. It goes up 10 cents, and I make 150 bucks and I sell it.

Day three I’ve got $850, 8 times 5, the buying power’s increasing, I take another 1,500 shares and I jump in, get my 15 cents profit, I make $180. By the end of that first week, my account was already up over $1,000 and I had $6,000 now of buying power. Going into week two, I kept trading, making about, I think not even 500. Maybe $120 a day, and then as my account grew I was able to take bigger positions and things really took off. I can show you my reports just real quick.

I go to reports view, I’ll just look at the first month of January last year. Oops. 2017. 2, 17. All right. We’ll filter this. These were my profits for the first couple weeks. It was $125, $187, $150, $154, $153, $258. Nice. $283. So here, the buying power was a little bit higher, I could take bigger size, and then boom. 1,700 bucks. A trade kind of like today. It just took off. Next day, 800 bucks. Now I’ve got more buying power. I can take bigger positions. Next day, 2,300 bucks. A couple of smaller days. $1,000 here, 400, 300 there, 800 there, 400 there, 1,900 there, 2,000 there, and then the big, big day, 7,500.

The next day I got too aggressive and I gave back 5,000. It was like going up and then down. If we carry this through to the end of three, let’s see, just 3/5/2017, I bounced back from that red day. That was the red day. Two days later, I made $15,000. And in 45 days or so, I was up over 100 grand. Let’s see, I think I went over 100 grand on the 8th, I think it was. It was my dog’s birthday. Yeah, it was right around there. Maybe the 9th.

Anyways, today on ABAC, as soon as I saw it taking off like this I was like, “Okay, I’m going to get a little more aggressive.” So I take my starter at 2.45, I add 2.73, and I get a partial fill. I try to add another 3,000 shares but I only fill 1,300, it was taking off that fast. It then goes higher, I add 2.91. I’m like, “This thing is just taking off.” I put out the order. I meant to sell half, and I typoed the whole position. But I tried to take some profit at 3.06, so I had 7,300 shares at an average of 2.68.

All right, so my cost basis is right here because I’ve been adding as it goes up, and I start selling up here. High of day is 3.20. I’m selling a little bit at 96, 98, 3.01, 3.05, 3.19. One sendoff high of day. The rest at 99 and 61. This last position as it came back down, I finally stopped out. But just like that, $2,000 on that trade and finishing with $2,167 in nine minutes of trading. I was done by 9:39 in 42 seconds. So it’s sort of a short morning.

I would’ve been happy to look for … I mean, I kept looking for other trades. I just didn’t see anything else that looked good. Nothing else was really moving, so I was like, “You know, I’m just going to sit tight,” and that ended up being the right move. I kind of was watching ABAC maybe for a continuation back up through the highs the longer it was consolidating, but it just kind of started drifting lower. So a little bit bummed out.

Paul, for the most part, for me I only trade for an hour, maybe 90 minutes at most. So from 9:30 to 10:30, 11:00, and then at that point I kind of ease up. I’ll absolutely be more aggressive in a strong market. In a strong market, I would’ve tried to take 15,000 or 20,000 shares, and in a strong market, not only would I have done that, but all the other traders like me would’ve done that. That means a lot more buy-in, and that means the breakout is even bigger and this could’ve gone to 3.50, $4, who knows. And boom, it could’ve been a $15,000, $20,000 day.

The best day I’ve had in the last year was a $40,000 day. I’ll have days like that, but it’s not dependent on me and my willingness to take sides. It’s 100% dependent on the strength of the market and the opportunities that are in front of me. If I don’t see opportunities in front of me and take that type of risk, then it’s not going to happen. That’s pretty much where it’s at for me.

Yeah, sure. Traders where I did the small account, CME Group is the one that more of our students are using now. You can Google them. But yeah, let’s see, the thing is, there’s another CME Group that is not … There’s the actual CME Group, and that’s kind of confusing. But CMEG Trading, it’s Capital Markets Elite Group. That’s who a lot of our students are using right now. If I do another small account challenge I’d probably do it here, but I’m not sure if I’m going to do that just because … Well, first of all, I need to cross the $1 million mark. That’s the first step. I’m 70% of the way there, and so I’ve got to keep focused on that.

Once I cross that level, I think at that point I’m going to be trading more in my IRA, probably towards the end of the challenge. I have my IRA account here. I didn’t trade in it in July, I didn’t trade in it in August. I’m waiting for really good opportunities that I have really strong conviction in. Once I start trading in it more and I get above the PDT level, I’ve only got 21,000, then I can start really day trading and being more aggressive.

Keith, I actually deposited 700 bucks in December, and then they took out platform fees because I wasn’t using the platform in December. So on January 1st, only $583 were left in the account. They took out fees. That’s why I started with 583 bucks. I tried 700 to give myself a little cushion, but they decided to make it a little more challenging for me. But it was no problem.

Anyways, that’s it for me today. Green day, happy about that. That’s three green days for the month of September. Friday, tomorrow, I’d like to take it a little bit easy. This weekend I’m going to be flying down to Orlando for our Inner Circle Conference that’s next week that we’re hosting at Walt Disney World. So I’ll be trading from Florida all next week and I’ll be on my traveling trading setup, which is no big deal. I’m used to doing that. But I’ll probably bring down the risk a little bit because I’ll be not wanting to take a massive loss and then be in front of everyone. Anyways, that’s it for me and I will see you guys all back here first thing tomorrow morning, 9:00, 9:15 for pre-market analysis. All right, I’ll see you guys in the morning.

Oh, hey. I didn’t see you there. Well, 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 any time I go live or upload new videos. Until then, happy surfing.