I'm back in, tomorrow

So at the closing bell I ended a couple hundred up. Meh. I would not have been surprised or disappointed to end the day down by the same amount. In it for the longer term. But hey that's a percent, and any 1% day is okay when you weren't expecting anything much. I definitely jumped in too early but it shouldn't go down much and this little bit of a win is a bit of cushion against that. I actually would have done better today by sticking with Plan A, loading the boat with TQQQ. Woulda made 2%+ and honestly I was expecting TQQQ to be pretty shaky today, going in to the regularly scheduled dip.

I still got an awful lot of buying power I am not using so I might also take a few day trades here and there. Meanwhile I will be working on my Python and I already did a nice little tweak to my cash & daytrades app. I will be adding functionality to it as well as adding auto-refresh so I don't need the refresh button anymore. After I add the bells and whistles I envision I am going to write a few totally out there scanners to suit me. From picking stocks it is a simple matter to writing a trading bot. I have a few very simple strats that would work really well with the computer doing the trading instead of me, I think. And Mrs Monster who is now a bona fide data scientist as well as project manager and data project owner, is starting to show some interest and with her help I know I can totally totally optimize the data scraping, formatting/parsing, sorting, and retrieving part. Thinking one database that any of my scanners or bots can hook up to, so I am not constantly retrieving data online. I want to only download relevant data, that has never been downloaded yet.

But meanwhile it is time to cook supper for me and Mrs Monster. I do all the cooking here at Monster Manor. That was our arrangement when I retired and she didn't. If I had only known the sad truth, that I would have to work twice as hard after retiring. I never get days off anymore. Well maybe I will have a nice glass of beer first. Okay.
 
I wasn't expecting anything in the post market, but I got a small boost anyway. My $9k IB account gained $184 and Alpaca account that I have been trading all along gained $276 for a total gain of $460 on $20200 roughly give or take a buck giving me a profit of 2.28%. I really wasn't looking to be so far in the green today, or even in the green at all, so this trade is giving me a nice warm fuzzy feeling so far. But we just gettin started. Ima drive this thaing till the wheels fall off.

Interestingly enough, the IB account stands at $9203 so $19 more there than there is supposed to be. That's an awful lot of interest it seems to me. I guess that's okay tho.

Supper came out pretty good so two big wins this evening. Chicken and bacon stir fry. Delish. And a glass of my homebrew all-grain ale.
 
15 minutes before the bell and I am now up well over $500 on the big TSLA swing. I hope those Robinhooders will keep piling on for a few more weeks.

Ding ding ding! The first couple minutes spiked my profit up to $700-ish and that would have been a great time to take the money and run but I am feeling good about this as a week+ long swing. I am gonna see dips that normally would make me hit the silk but I am only bailing if it looks like a full bore reversal. Today I might set a stop at my break-even if I get up over $1k. My stops traditionally have been overly aggressive and I really need to give this thing some wiggle room.

Fourth 5min candle of the day was a green monster that trampled the Bollinger under it's giant clawed feet. Then a kabillion punters all sold at $2100 exactly and more chased it down. Sokay. It's gonna tap it again and break on through to the other side.

Screenshot from 2020-08-26 09-52-35.png


And now it's going! Above $2100 and next stop, $3k if I have my way about it. Gonna put out some stops now so I can live a normal life at least in small bursts of normalcy.

I'm still too greedy. I am putting out stops locking in half my profit, adjusted to take advantage of whole number support where approopriate.

It is such a pain to go back and forth between my TradingView web interface for my Alpaca account, and TWS, that I am going to sort of ignore TWS when posting progress reports sometimes. But I have 6 shares in Alpaca and 4 shares in IB so whatever profit I have in Alpaca, I have about 2/3 that in IB. Okay, posting this now, setting my stops, and cooking breakfast for me and my hardworking Mrs Monster.
 
$2100 seems to be holding as a support. I moved my stops up to $2097. It had pinged the $2100 line from the upside twice now, and held. If it pushes on down below my stop level it is probably going down considerably, deep enough to pick it back up again at the bottom reversal. That locks in about $950 profit for me. Yeah $1000 sounds a lot better but my stops would be dangerously high. Worst case scanario is the price just tickles my stop into giving it up, and dances back up and I have to chase it to buy it back. I want my stops to activate when the stock is going to blow past them and bite the carpet so I can take my time buying back cheaper than I sold. $2097 is a bit risky but I am pretty sure after lunch it's going up and the resistance at $2120 is gonna give it up like a tipsy boat bunny. Probably looking at a nice green flagpole after the breakout.
 
High point today I was up to $23399 but finished at $23259. Had one big afternoon dip that I should have either ignored, or acknowledged the obvious reversal signal leading into it and bailed immediately. As it was, I had moved my stop up and resolved to not move it back down. So I stop out on both accounts, and then I buy back in too early. So I cost myself about $100 there. No biggie, right? Well then the stock starts getting very weak in the post market and here I am. So I still only need to make another $1741 for $25k, along with another $1k to leave in the Alpaca account and $1k cushion. Then I am back day trading for real again. Two days of TSLA action should do it nicely for me. That's 7.5% so should be pretty easy in two days of this. Knock on wood.

I decided to put the spare change to work. Bought 5 shares TQQQ in each account to reduce idle cash. Tomorrow I may use my margin to buy up some more TSLA if it is really moving and I can catch it in a dip.

Did some more Python, with the Alpaca API. Starting to get a handle on this. My little widget that was reporting to me my cash level and my number of daytrades used, now tells me daytrades available, cash, buying power, equity, yesterday's close equity, cash difference and percentage difference. Mrs Monster, who does a bit of Python for work and has several of Udacity's nano degrees in Python and data science, was actually impressed by the GUI because all her work has been terminal stuff. Next I want to start working on a scanner to scan for one particular thing. Before I do that I need to write an app to harvest and store some data.

Laura is kicking up a breeze outside and I expect my boat is floating about 4 feet above the finger pier right now but I slacked the lines and she should be just fine. Tomorrow I hope to get a little work done there, and I will just take one of my laptops with me to keep an eye on my stocks. Getting the forward cabin habitable and some wiring done, is the plan. Me and Mrs Monster have been fine being around each other 24/7 while she works from home but it wouldn't hurt to have a night apart once a week. I have a nice little trading nook all planned out up forward and a place to keep a monitor so I can keep an eye on things while I am back in the main cabin or salon, if you must be pretentious. No kegerator on the boat so I have to drink bottled beer. Oh, the humanity! Oh, and no superautomatic espresso machine. Well I guess I can't sleep on the boat after all. I don't mind making my own cappuccino but I want it at the push of a button or two. I also don't know how I am gonna get a recliner down in the boat unless I maybe disassemble the skylight. It won't fit through the companionway that's for sure and the forehatch I can barely get through. I guess I just need a bigger boat or something. Maybe once I trade up to $100k I might look for something a bit bigger.
 
Screenshot from 2020-08-27 16-00-04.png

After holding 10 shares TSLA overnight I was a fair bit to the upside at the opening bell. About 1030 I bought another 6 shares on margin. Looked good and I was gonna just ride out the afternoon dip but I had no inkling it would be so deep. If I had a clue I would have DEFINITELY sold off the excess shares, maybe even the entire position in both accounts. I also have 4 shares in my IB account. So yeah I was actually up over $25k combined equity before the dip. Stock went down $130/share, x 16 shares is over $2k drawdown and I could have done well enough without THAT. So I held on and expected a full retrace of the dip, maybe even breaking $2300/share, and the short term trend started out looking a lot better than that, even, but no cigar. After 1500 I started watching for a good place to sell my 6 excess shares, got shut of them, now I hold 6 shares in Alpaca and 4 shares in IB. At the bell my total equity was about $24335 and as I write this, it is drifting gently upward, at $24392. So I got to make $608 to hit PDT threshhold from the two accounts combined. For practical purposes I actually need to make at least $2k more for a little bit to stay in the Alpaca account, the rest to IB with a $1k cushion.

The thing is, there doesn't seem to be a simple way to move money directly from Alpaca to IB. I have to withdraw from Alpaca to my checking and then deposit into IB, and that is gonna take a week, during which of course that money will be off the table and out of play. So I am gonna just keep going with the TSLA swing trade with two accounts, for now. Tomorrow I am NOT riding the dip down and up again. When I see the reversal sigs I am hitting the silk, bailing out, see ya later alligator. I'll sit on the sidelines and buy back in at the first good green candle outta there. Yeah I made a lot of money today but really, I LOST $2k riding that dip. I would have had my $25k, then I would have made the same $800 after the dip and I would be at nearly $26k instead of at $24.4k and I am smarting from that even though yeah, I made some dough today. The leverage play was I believe a good plan and it definitely paid off. The Alpaca account grew twice as fast. I didn't buy on margin in the IB account because me and TWS are just starting to get reacquainted and I am not yet placing orders accurately and quickly. Everything in it is all messed up and I really need to find a way to start from scratch again with all default settings and layouts.

So I am hoping for $100 or $200 overnight, maybe more, and a good day tomorrow riding in my Tesla (stock, that is.)

So finished yesterday at $23259, and currently at $24485 so today has made me $1226 so far and TSLA is moving on up in the post market. I just need to make another $115 to be at $25k and I am feeling very upbeat about that. Now if I had played this right today I would be standing at $27k as I write this. So I am really hopeful for a $3k day tomorrow. I may put a halt to the split account trading, if I do that well, and go ahead and consolidate my trading money. Well, I might put a halt to ALL of it. The deep deep dip and the slowish recovery kind of rings my weakness alarm a bit. Maybe TSLA won't be such a juggernaut tomorrow. Maybe the next day it will throw a big red day at me and all the millenials who are donating their money to my worthy cause.

I may jump back in here after the end of post market. If not, see you all in the funny papers.
 
I was hoping for another couple hundred bucks from my 10 shares of TSLA but I wake up to the pleasant surprise that I am back up over $25k again for the combined accounts. Well, $24k anyway. I withdrew $1k to my checking, and when it clears I will put it in my IB. Left me with $20 cash in Alpaca. Once I make that transfer I will sell one share at a time and withdraw, then deposit into IB.

Sitting on a BUY LIMIT order for another 6 shares on margin when it looks good for buying this morning. I think it will be a feeding frenzy, TBH and maybe there will not even be an afternoon dip, but if there is I am not messing around. I will sell all if it dips below 9EMA and pick everything back up coming up off the bottom. Lost about $2k yesterday riding it out. That's not gonna happen again.

Time 0852. I am down a little, about $100 below my $24k. Maybe I will buy my 6 more shares at 0900 when my extended hours start LOL! Alpaca is such a jokey brokerage in some ways. No trailing stops, extended trading hours that aren't, etc etc but it has it's good points too. I will either buy at 0900 or catch the one minute opening range breakout. I think the opening bell will be pretty epic. We'll see. Okay, almost time, so back to work.

There. Bought. Now I am going to war with 16 shares. I thought there might be a spike at 0900 when the Robinhooders get let out to play but meh. Actually went down a couple bucks.

I sure wish I had jumped into this back in June. I stayed out, just taking a few day trades cause all the nattering nabobs of negativity were pointing out that it was overpriced and in a bubble while it doubled and doubled again. And you know what? I don't care if a stock is priced too high, if it keeps getting priced higher and higher, I am running with the bulls on it.

Okay, let's see what the opening bell brings.

STUPID BEARS! This isn't your picnic! I should have waited and bought in the morning sell. I really ought to figure out the statistics on the morning selloff on running stocks like this. Anyway it went down to $2269 and I probably could have snagged those extra shares at around $2275 for an extra $150 profit.

Now the price is back up there above $2300 and here's my morning pic.
Screenshot from 2020-08-28 09-37-02.png

So you can see it ran up nicely overnight and I think it might make $2500 or so today, which would put me in a pretty comfortable position. That would put me about $3k over the PDT threshhold, counting the money I got in limbo waiting to be acknowledged by the bank.
 
Darn. I was figuring the stock would flagpole on up to at least $2400. Was this the dip of the day, just early? Or do I still have the afternoon dip to contend with?
Screenshot from 2020-08-28 12-01-34.png
The blue line is where I need to be, to be at $25k in combined equities. $2300 is where I bought 6 shares this morning on margin so I really want to at least be up there pretty soon. I don't like leveraged losses LOL! Now, when I look at the day chart, the price is slightly overbought and ready for a bit of downward or sideways adjustment to keep fitting in the trend. But today, with the split coming up, and being a Friday, I am surprised it isn't charging upward, anyway. I was figuring on selling my margin shares by 1600 and being ready to sell off all the rest Monday morning, depending on how things look. And I REALLY want to get this thing up to PDT threshhold today.

There I go again. Falling in love with a sexy number. Maybe I should just work in percentages and forget about dollar amounts. There'll be time enough for counting...

Mental-stopped out at $2270. Now I hope it does go down about $50/share.

Bought 5 back, at $2257 and then 3 more in the IB account at $2261. Showing zero day trades available for the Alpaca account so no margin trading for me. Hey, 8 shares is a fair amount of action.

Awwww the dip wasn't finished when I bought back in. It was barely started! It shouldn't be going so deep on the last day before the split! But there it is. And with no day trades, I couldn't sell if I wanted to. I have been beaten and abused today, so far. I can't help but think some very skilled and powerful person or entity has manipulated this stock in order to pick up pre-split shares crazy cheap. This is no market correction. That should have been earlier in the week, or else next week. Well, I got shook out of the tree but I am back up in it and I am staying in over the weekend.
 
Got skunked today, no doubt about that. I went back over every move I made, and everything seemed pretty reasonable. One place where I would have maybe bailed early in the morning session, after two lower lows and three consecutive red candles, I compared it to where I actually DID bail, and it was a $2 difference. Where I bought back in looked good at the time. So what did I do wrong?

At first glance, nothing. Just got fooled by the market. Then I started looking at all the indicators that are on my chart but not made visible. I got to one that just made my jaw drop.
Screenshot from 2020-08-28 16-18-01.png

TSLA traded under the VWAP almost the whole day today.

I looked at some other stuff, various moving averages and crossovers, and meh. You can pick your parameters and make them tell whatever story you want. But VWAP is VWAP and it was trying to tell me something today but I wasn't listening. Or watching, more to the point.

Yeah it's going back up, maybe over the weekend, maybe Monday... whatevah. The thing is, I could have avoided a big loss today by bailing about 1100 or so. I started the day at $25k. I know, I am not supposed to be chasing sexy numbers, but I WAS THERE. IT WAS MINE. And I threw it away. I could have been earning my trade cushion on my brand new day trade ready account. Instead, I am still earning the account and nothing is ever certain. Could be another losing day Monday. Or Tuesday Or whatevah. The thing is, I had it and I could have kept it and VWAP would have either made me think about bailing early early, or else I would have quickly seen that the stock was headed for the dirt JUST LIKE VWAP SAID, and I might have finally listened and sold all and stayed out. I wanted to catch the FOMO price move. It wasn't there. It should have been there. It wasn't. But VWAP was there. And I even went out on margin and leveraged my initial losses this morning. VWAP was ready to tell me uh uh, don't do that, but I wasn't giving it a place on my chart, even momentarily to just check it.

Okay, well I am still within $1k of PDT threshhold. Meh. Not so bad. But I coulda been a lot better.
 
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