The Road to Consistency

[trader99]

10/14/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
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Realized gains:
$284.95
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Taxable Acct: IB
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Realized gains:
NQ: $286
MNQ: $23
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$309

Non-Taxable Acct: IB
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Realized gains:
NQ: $251
NG: $25
==============
$276

Overall, an OK day. I saw SES but was too afraid to jump into that crazy stock. Of course, it went up over 300% intraday! ROFL. Maybe in the future I can put a a small amount and let it ride. Same with BIMI.

Anyhow, on a positive development, I traded bigger size today. 7000 shares a clip. But it was pure scalping so we are talking pennies moves. Which is fine. Just testing out the waters and see how it feels to trade size. Thanks to TradeZero I'm more comfortable moving size. Next skill to develop is to trade with size and HOLD for the bigger moves. That's where the real money is being made.

Now, just staying positive each day and incremental improvements.

 

[Overnight]

...
Today would have been a killer if I was all in NG and UGAZ(on TradeZero)!;..
I learned my lesson with UGAZ. On Tuesay I was in huge. Then it pulled back a little. Then yesterday morning I got out my entire massive UGAZ position in the morning bounce. Then it crashed in the afternoon. That was a good narrow escape. In my old days I would just hold and hold. It's a daytrading instrument.

While today was good, it could have easily been $5K+ had I got back in UGAZ lows this morning. Gotta work toward that goal!...

NO!

This is where you are falling down, methinks. We have told you to avoid GC at all costs, but you are chugging ahead anyway. It is now working out for you, that if fine. But it is THIS that will destroy you...

..."While today was good, it could have easily been $5K+ had I got back in UGAZ lows this morning. Gotta work toward that goal!..."

Sure thing man; shoulda' coulda' woulda'.

Don't DO that to yourself!

If you continue to do that on every trade, you will start the inevitable death spiral of "what if I just had more contracts on those trades?" You will self-destruct. What if I kept my stops a bit wider? What if I entered a bit earlier? Etc etc ad nauseum.

Dude, every day can be a 100K day for me, if I apply maximum contracts on my day-trade margin. Shoulda' coulda' woulda'?

I think NOT!

I went back to day-trading today, after some ugly swinging over the past few months. I didn't read the holiday action well, and wound up ~-35 bux after commish. If I had tried to revenge trade or whatever, etc, it probably would have gone worse. I followed my rule of "If you cannot read the day, don't keep reading into it. It just isn't there."

I have to jot a note in my mental book of trading...Columbus Day is a shitty day to trade, when the market ranges 20 points, after weeks of ranging 100 points, lol!

Tomorrow is another day.

And you, trader99, finished the day with green. Sleep well on that thought.

 

[trader99]

10/15/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
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Realized gains:
$841.63
==============

Taxable Acct: Robinhood
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Realized gains:
~ $3000
==============

Right out of the gate, got in a couple of good stocks. Got shaken out of one too early. Should have held. Then the other stock exit was a clerical error though still profitable. I'm still new to Tradezero and its order entry.

Unlike IB, TZ presets the number of remaining shares for you. I guess that's a nice feature. but I was trying to get out piecemeal(i.e. sell on the way up). Apparently, you have to go into order entry and manually OVERRIDE the default remaining of shares by entering the number of shares you want to sell.

So when I click sell by accident, it sold ALL of my remaining shares. Of course it rallied more after that. So I probably left another $400 on the table because of entry error. Without that it could have finally push my TradeZero daily P&L over a $1K.

Robinhood ,which is the account that's left for dead, is coming back to some semblance of life today. You can read it on my other thread. My Robinhood is basically down 90% due to stupid trading errors and when I didn't know what I was doing several years ago.

With what little I had left I put all in options based on a daily/weekly chart pattern. Put on the trade yesterday then flipped it this morning and made over $3K today could have been $6K had I held it longer. This is an overnight not a daytrade. I keep separate mental accounting for daytrades vs swing/position trades. While it's a nice amount, I'm not too excited since there's a long long long way to get to even! But who knows maybe with a few more big trades I can recover faster. I would be ecstatic if I get back even by the end of the year. It has been "dead" for the last few years.

But progress is good! I'll heed @Overnight advice and not do the coulda, woulda, shoulda game.

It's about constant improvement! I constantly look for ways to improve. Not necessarily beating myself up.

Surprisingly, NO futures trades on IB today! Wow! That's a first. The reason I said I didn't like stocks before because of the spreads etc. Now I found a group of stocks with narrow spreads and HUGE liquidity! In that way it's kinda of like liquid futures instruments. I could throw around 8000+ shares no problem. I could probably throw around 20K shares(not there yet) and it could get filled without crazy spreads or slippage.

Gotta attend to non-trading activities now. no need to stare at the screen all day. Got other stuff to work on.

 

[trader99]

NO!

This is where you are falling down, methinks. We have told you to avoid GC at all costs, but you are chugging ahead anyway. It is now working out for you, that if fine. But it is THIS that will destroy you...

..."While today was good, it could have easily been $5K+ had I got back in UGAZ lows this morning. Gotta work toward that goal!..."

Sure thing man; shoulda' coulda' woulda'.

Don't DO that to yourself!

If you continue to do that on every trade, you will start the inevitable death spiral of "what if I just had more contracts on those trades?" You will self-destruct. What if I kept my stops a bit wider? What if I entered a bit earlier? Etc etc ad nauseum.

GC has been bad for me. Recently I made back some. But now I'm on the stocks gravy train. I'll jump back in GC when the time is right.

Dude, every day can be a 100K day for me, if I apply maximum contracts on my day-trade margin. Shoulda' coulda' woulda'?

I think NOT!

Wow! I didn't know you were swinging such size. I don't think I could do 100K every day. If I had balls and got in SES and BIMI yesterday then yes. But those were crazy stock moves I'm not comfortable jumping in lest jumping in with size.

I went back to day-trading today, after some ugly swinging over the past few months. I didn't read the holiday action well, and wound up ~-35 bux after commish. If I had tried to revenge trade or whatever, etc, it probably would have gone worse. I followed my rule of "If you cannot read the day, don't keep reading into it. It just isn't there."

Swing trading isn't as easy as it looks. Unless you have a big account and can sit through some volatility, I think it's hard. I've swing trade successfully in the past. But I like the immediate feedback and ringing the cashier of daytrading.

I have to jot a note in my mental book of trading...Columbus Day is a shitty day to trade, when the market ranges 20 points, after weeks of ranging 100 points, lol!

Tomorrow is another day.

And you, trader99, finished the day with green. Sleep well on that thought.

Yes, I'm glad I'm green yesterday and today. If a market/instrument you are trading has narrow range, why don't you try to trade something else with wider range?

 

[trader99]

Oh geez! The one day I was busy trading stocks and options and missed out on HUGE RALLY in NQ and other futures. Darnit! I know. I know. Shouldn't say that @Overnight. But true.

Probably too many things to monitor.

 

[trader99]

10/15/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
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Realized gains:
$172.82
==============

Today was superbusy with non-trading activities. Running around all day long. Whew. Just traded a little bit. Grateful that it's still a green day. Not much. But better than nothing or a negative day. Learning to be grateful.

 

[trader99]

10/15/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
=============
Realized gains:
$172.82
==============

Today was superbusy with non-trading activities. Running around all day long. Whew. Just traded a little bit. Grateful that it's still a green day. Not much. But better than nothing or a negative day. Learning to be grateful.

This was supposed to for 10/16/19. Typo! lol

 

[trader99]

10/17/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
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Realized gains:
$1146.48
==============

Good trading.

Lesson Learned: Don't let a winner become a loser. I got out a lot of shares and held on some for the longer term trend ride. Then it REVERSED. WTF? I should have gotten out of everything. Then it went down more I averaged down. It was scary holding it but from the chart pattern there was long term support there. My patience paid off got out everything at a nice profit.

But I was able to hold because I took partial profits earlier as a buffer. Had I not take any profits then the pullback/reversal would have been too painful and sold at the bottom.

Gotta attend to non-trading activities now.

Happy trading!

 

[trader99]

10/18/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
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Realized gains:
$687.20
Unrealized gains:
-$520
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Taxable Acct: Robinhood
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Realized gains:
~ $1700
==============

Right out of the gate I saw a potential a runner. Then I gGot in 4K shares on Tradezero and 2K shares on Robinhood. Again, due to order entry error I got out too quickly because TZ defaults to your entire size after each execution. It ran for 2 points which is $8K profit left on the table. Fck! I hate my order entry errors!!

On Robinhood, I held long for over a 1pt ride becauuse RH is mainly for daytrade and swing trade.

I scalped CGC for a couple hundred bucks. Nothing big deal. Then I got in large with ACB but then it pulled back. Still holding on unrealized loss. While it's only a 6 cents open loss I have quite a number of shares outstanding. Let's see how it goes on Monday.

Lesson Learned: For a runner or potential runner don't try to get out too quickly. It ran for 2 points. I know @Overnight will tell me not to sweat this. But I can't helped it. Maybe I would have held for the full 2pts run. But I would have held at least for 1 pt run because that's what I did with my Robinhood account. Had I held the full 4K shares inmy Tradezero it would have been at least $4K. That would be a nice day. Now it's just so so. Gotta work on this and constantly pushing to improve.


Even for low priced stocks it can still go down more. Every once in a while countertrend trading reared its ugly head. THis time it's for a small maintainable. If it gets any worst then I'll just cut it.

Happy weekend ETers!

 

[trader99]

10/21/2019:
Taxable Acct: Trade Zero
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Realized gains:
$928
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Taxable Acct: Merrill Edge
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Realized gains:
$978.87
==============

This is the first time I traded on my BofA Merrill Edge account. Talk about retail platform. Shit, this is as retail as it gets! ROFL. Slow. No easy way to even know my position. Have to click through menu items, etc. I guess it's for investors. The local branch manager who set up this account for me 9 months ago or whatever was telling me how a privilege it is for BofA Preferred customers have $0 commissions on equities and ETFs trades. I just smiled.

With the announcement everyone and their brother now offers $0 commission(IB, TD Ameritrade, ETrade, Schwab), that "special" offer for Preferred customers don't seem so special anymore. To their credit and to be fair, they have been offering $0 commissions to their Preferred customers since 2006.

This morning I heard the announcement that they will offer $0 for equities, ETFS, and OPTIONS. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/b...line-stock-etf-and-options-trading-2019-10-21

It's $0 commission on options but still .65/contract. Same as Ameritrade. So TradeZero is still better with $0 commission and $0/contract for options.

I'm slowly learning to up my size. Traded 15K shares a clip. But I realize I should average in rather do all at once. I got it then it moved a little then came back down. Oops. Luckily I held through and got out a profit. Since these a low priced stocks the adverse move was only a few pennies but on size one can still feel the heat. hehe.

My next size up is 20K to 30K shares a clip or averaged in. Try to flip it for 10-20 cents moves and it's a decent day.

Lessons Learned:
============
Lesson #1:
This is a different style than I've traded before but it feels very natural and works better than my earlier styles. Brett Steenbarger said traders should try different styles to see what fits best for them. I've traded one particular way for years on end with very negative to mixed results.

Now, I switched style and this comes very natural and so does the profits! The new style/strategy is to find stocks with high liquidity(large volumes), narrow bid-ask spread and move size for pennies.

Lesson #2:
I should stick with daytrading. I'm getting pretty good at it. I still have some positions in Robinhood and IB IRA that are longer term swing. And they are down slightly. I need to learn the patience to hold through that. Those types of trades I'm not look for pennies move. I'm holding decent size for the bigger swing. let's see how that plays out. But I at times I feel very uncomfortable with sitting through these swings. Maybe I can trade the swings with smaller size and willing to sit through larger point moves.