I'm back in, tomorrow

So, at the bell I dumped SQQQ, and as a massive NASDAQ selloff got going in the first few minutes, I sold off TQQQ as well. Zero stocks in trading portfolio now. And it's gonna stay that way at least until I have two day trades available, preferably three. Then I will not buy unless I can get out of every position. This, until after the coming (probable) big crash or the market settles down a lot. Too much excitement right now, frantic activity. Too many guys staying home from work and nothing to do but trade. Too much hysteria. And on top of it all, no logical reason for the market to be up so high and continuing to rise.

So, I lost about a hundred bucks since yesterday getting stuck in reversal situation. Still, I'm over $8100. 8 days ago I was at $7100. Funding was $8k total. I am feeling pretty good about taking a break for a few days. Normally I would put everything into QQQ or whatever, or a bag of blue chips, and forget about it until ready to trade again, but if the market does a 1929 thing, I could see even a "safe" stock drop 20% on me.

Yeah, if I had just held, I would have made out okay, but I don't think this is a time to hold anything without an exit plan.

NO trading today. Monday I want to try some things with my paper trading account. My home business has been much neglected lately and I need to get some product ready to ship.
 
TSLA just looked too good over the weekend and I resolved to load the boat at the morning dip on Monday. The morning dip really wasn't a thing today. Nobody wanted to just take their profits like in recent mornings. Anyway so I go in with my account at $8108 and bought 9 shares at $1717. I figured to probably sell at least 5 shares at some point before the closing bell and maybe all, or maybe hold 4 shares overnight if the trend was solid up to the close. Pretty quick my profit on the position went up to $450-ish and I should have sold there but greed kept me in. I could just TASTE THE FLAVOR OF VICTORY in a $1000 win. So what does TSLA do? Trends down with (relatively) low volume like it is maybe consolidating before a big push, so I stayed in and stayed in. Trust the trend, says I, as my profit melts like chocolate in the sun. But finally it just got too close to my break-even and I sold all shares for a $110 profit. Used up my one available day trade to make chimp change. Sure, the smart money would have probably been on trusting the bigger trend and staying in. But as inflated as this stock is, and as hard as I had to work to get this account up from a low of $7100 to above my $8k buy-in, I was NOT going to walk away a loser. So I bailed, yeah. Well, I should never regret making a profit, I guess. And now I stand at $8218. At this rate it is going to be a while before I get out from under this PDT crap but Mrs. Monster says not no but hell no I am not putting more $ into the trading account. In the interest of letting her THINK she is in charge, I am playing along, just to humor her, of course, in the interest of domestic tranquility.

So since 26 June I am up 15.7%. That works out to about 1.474% average per day compounded over 10 trading days. In a perfect world I could maintain this win rate and be over $25k in another 77 trading days. Won't happen, of course, but at least I am doing my part. So with this small account, on my next trading day, I need to make $121.13 to stay on track. I can do this. Doesn't look so hard when you look at it that way.

Just had a look at TQQQ. Went up about 3% and then down 2%. So TSLA was running with the NASDAQ and maybe the bubble will grow a little more in the next few days. Not sure if I will have a day trade available tomorrow or not so I will figure on not trading.

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Holey Cow! The NASDAQ went like a rocket today! From 0400 to now, TQQQ is +11%! I probably should have traded it today but the plan was to stay out until I have three day trades saved up and so I did. Anyway Alpaca doesn't let me trade outside of RTH. So I reactivated my old IB account and transferred some money in there just to get re-established. Next I will transfer all but $1k out of the Alpaca account and into the IB account.
 
I held STKL, TQQQ, and AMD over the weekend. I would have made a lot more profit off TQQQ but I stayed up until the premarket open to see how the gap went. Mrs Monster worked an all nighter and she was supposed to wake me just before the opening bell and she didn't because she didn't have time to make my cappuccino. So I missed the peak and stopped out at $110.73, still a profit. AMD I should have sold at 0945 but I was asleep. Still, I stopped out at a nice profit. Bought a silver mine. EXK. Stopped out for a $2 loss, now I am out of day trades on this account. Still holding STKL which seems to be consolidating for another push after a 10% gain from Friday afternoon.

Aaaaaannnnnddd.... it just stopped out. Was a reversal, not a consolidation. Okay so I finished Friday at $8033 and now I am all cash at $8099.56 but I was kinda conservative over the weekend. Only $2330 in play. Starting to scale back on the weekend and overnight risk.

I need to finish setting up my TWS today on my old trading computer, and start moving funds into the IB account. Having pre and post market trading privileges will reduce my overnight risk a lot. But anyway that's a wrap for now. This afternoon I will scan for a good overnighter to put a few hundred $ into. If I load the boat it is gonna be something with a really good potential, and reasonable risk. Tomorrow I might make my first IB trade since October. I only got $2k in there right now, just enough to open the account and get my data. Still plenty of dough in my main checking account and Mrs. Monster isn't going to kick a fuss if I fund up from there. I got two pension checks to deposit so let's see... after paying my credit card down to zero I barely have enough to put $25k in the IB account and still have a token $1k in the Alpaca account. My gut is holding me back. That checking account is where all my boat expenses come out of. Meh. I will wait a while. If I trade up to $10k (well, $12k now since I am funded to $10k total on two accounts) my actions will meet a lot less silent disapproval from Mrs. Monster. You see, she had problems once, being hooked up with a compulsive gambler, and she has figured out my secret, that trading is gambling LOL! But she has acknowledged that at least I am a pretty good gambler and I no longer throw good money in after bad.

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Alright... so after a series of small losses and several days I didn't trade, I am still down $90 from my high on the 8th. I really have made crappy progress trading up, last couple of weeks. Tomorrow or the next day I will start trading the IB account and sidestep away from Alpaca's limitations such as limited trading hours, lack of trailing stops or bracket orders (I can do bracket orders with Python and the API but not through TradingView charts.) And a few other minor things. Alpaca is really cool for having such a nice easy API to work with and for interfacing with TradingView charts (GREAT charting site!) but IB made me money as long as I did my part.

I don't want to whine about a profit, but I was really hoping for a lot more than that. But okay, I will take it I guess.
 
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