Trading diary

Meh day. Tired because its Friday yadda yadda. Made the exact mistakes that Nate made me aware of last week. In and out and in and out. Burning commissions. Luckily its a green day, but i have to become more consistent. TTPH I entered on what i thought would be a bear flag. But it ended up going back to test VWAP. The problem was that i didnt set my risk properly and just thought id play off VWAP. So when it perked over quite a bit i got scared and got out. Thought i did a good thing by cutting the loss. Turns out i didnt, so on the next bear flag i got back in. This time it ended up dropping down hard and i made back the loss from the first trade and then some. There is a fine line between honoring your stops and being too jumpy. What i should have done is go in only half the size and risk off the high of day. AMD I also entered this one. The entry was fine, but for the wrong reasons. Nate alerted it in chat, and since i meant to go long myself, i just jumped in as well. Wit...

  A great day today. Nate suggested that i trade lower value stocks to capture a larger range. He also thinks im too antsy and that i exit too quickly, which i definitely agree with. On the other hand, im trying to capture profits as quickly as possible, so i do have to be a bit antsy. But letting something run while i have time is definitely something i have to do more, so here we go. SRPT was first. Regarding price, this was already a bit high for me after Nates advice, but i liked the movement, so i stepped in. I put a fishing oder out there at 42.60 for 300 shares. It took a while and was fizzling around just a bit higher, so i hit the Ask to get in with 300 shares and shortly after it dropped down further and picked up the other 300 shares as well. Thought was buying this bull flag and riding the momentum up to see if it wants to go green for the day. When it struggled wih the 43 mark i sold half the position just in case it drops back down but it ended up going higher...

Red day today. I felt ok but as i was entering i realized that i didnt have a stop in mind so i didnt consider the risk im taking. Other than that i dont feel like i did much stuff the wrong way. First entered MSFT short Ended up chopping back and forth, so i exited only to start thinking that last time i exited at a similar point where it was about to break VWAP, so i entered short again. It broke but bounced back up right away, so i now i had enough and exited. Later on i realized that i had got the size wrong and suddenly i was long 100 shares. So i got stressed out and accidentially sold too many shares, so i had to buy back those 100 shares again. Stupid, unprofessional and noob material. THAT i really have to cut out. Next, i traded GE Thought it would just take a breather. I guess you could call that chasing but i think Nate would refer to this as one of the good chasers. When it broke back under vwap i exited. Next was LOW This looked like a nice ABCD pattern setup...

Better late than never here is the review of the trading from Monday. I have been practicing scanning on my own and i seem to be quite good at it. However, i didnt end up trading any of the stocks i scanned for as i only look for symbols worth $20 and lower since that works better with my account. I ended up going with Nates watchlist though. I had NVDA up on the starter screen again and it ended up being the only ticker i traded. I still seem to be trading nervously. In hindsight it wouldve been smart to wait for the g/r break. At least i could have taken off half of the position. Timing is definitely still the factor. I also made a mistake when i tried to close the position for the first time and sold a second lot of 100 shares. Luckily it ticked down and i closed immediately as i had planned in the first place. Anyways, its another nice green day. That RLOG position can be ignored as i made a mistake in the last session when i was experimenting with stuff after finishi...

I feel like im starting to get the hang of certain things. Or lets say, my confidence is definitely rising. Tastyworks I bought Calls in CGI (for some reason it didnt let me buy shares) as it had popped up on my day trade scan and the setup looked exactly what i had been looking at for break out swing trades, low stochastics, higher high, high volume and a nice gap to fill. It worked out nicely. I think ill actually sell half of them tomorrow as we seem to come up on resistance. Other than that it was a flat day. MCD is pulling my P/L down and im desperately waiting for a down day. I had a short put spread in NUGT from last week which i got to take off for 50% profit today, so im just grinding. Still down since i started trading with TW but thats about 50% due to unfortunate earnings plays. Thinkorswim Great day in here. Weed stocks moved higher. I have to go check if there has been news or something. The last 3-4 days have seen much more volume and volatility. I also bought 100 sh...

 What a crazy 10min! I felt tired and unfocused today, so i had already told myself that this might be a bad day but damn did it go well. I stayed focused and really thought about my trades. Once i get trading i want to set my initial max loss that i want to endure at $200-300 per trade. At the open i had ORLY and NVDA on the main screen and some other symbols on the second screen. ORLY didnt develop well, so i swapped ANY over as it seemed to drop nicely and i seem to be good at either buying rebounds or selling the initial pops. First i entered NVDA short after 4 green candles and close to the whole 163 mark. I had my risk at 163 and sold it at 162.85. $0.15 risk, short only 100 shares. I only shorted 100 shares because 162 is really expensive for my account size and i am trying to keep it realistic, even if i have more buying power in the paper trading account. Luckily it went straight down and when it bounced back with quite some force i exited with a nice win...

Another annoying day. Tastyworks I bought a call in SGG to take part in a rally in sugar. That one worked out perfectly and saved the day in this account along with COST which is finally rebounding a bit. Im really hoping for a bit more of a bounce in there as that Iron Condor is a big one and it expires next week. Biggest loosers were MCD and CORN. Im still short oil and long gold, so lets hope that works out eventually. Plus500 After an alert from Trading Safely i shorted USD/CAD which would have worked out fine if i hadnt had my stop set too tight. It seems that i just dont have the capital to trade anything other than VXX for the moment, so ill just keep on shorting that until im back up. This is going to be a long and painful road. Thinkorswim Weed stocks took a nosedive back down again but not as much as the gain from yesterday. Im suspecting though that tomorrow theyll keep falling. Since ive decided to keep my ToS account i am also going to keep those two stocks around at least...

After travelling to the US im finally back in NZ and hoping things lighten up a bit. Plus500 In the most recent spike up i shorted 100 shares of VXX which will come off soon as they have reached their profit target. I tried going long oil yesterday but didnt get far and got stopped out. Im much more disciplined with stops now, so i hope that will lead to success :) Tastyworks Didnt take a look at it this morning but im pretty sure it was a down day with all the rallying going on. Im short equities, just sliiiiiiighly long bonds, long gold and neutral Oil. After the big leg down in COST im trying to salvage that iron condor that looked so good and hopefully get out for a scratch. Other than that there hasnt been too much action. Thinkorswim Weed stocks spiked up today and gave me  a beautiful winning day in this account. I hope they keep going a bit longer so i can maybe take parts off. CORN took a hit WEAT took a hit, but i hope they keep going up. ToS papertrade While in the state...

Even though not all accounts have been green today, im quite happy with the way things are going. Tastyworks Red today because of some single positions but in general im happy because the QQQ trades are working out very nicely. Was able to take off a vertical for a nice profit and a Iron Condor is very close to be taken off as well. Also took off a small XOP vertical. Now looking to get short oil stocks in some way short term. Thinkorswim Green today because of WHEAT calls and weed stocks being good to me today. The wire out to Tastyworks has been confirmed, so this account will become less important soon. Plus500 No action today. Its crazy how the indexes are not corellated at all today so id think that at some point this might converge again, meaning SPY, DIA and IWM will probably have to follow QQQ down a bit. Im waiting for that move as volatilitiy will rise with it and ill get a opportunity to short VXX nicely. ToS papertrade Day trading went well. Had a small loss in NKE, mainly ...

Saturday was a great day for my real money accounts. Not so much for the day trading practice. Plus500 After all the losses recently i decided to make this purely my volatility account. So whenever VXX spikes ill short it in here because of the leverage. Other than that i wont be trading in here anymore. The spreads are just too wide and its hard to make profits like this. Ill shift my futures trading to Tastyworks where ill be trading the respective ETFs first until i have enough capital for the actual futures. Tastyworks Great day. QQQ didnt bounce back much today and premium decayed nicely. I started trading some commodity ETFs like CORN and WEAT and im happy that im doing this in here. Lets see how this goes. Thinkorswim For once the options overpowered the weed stocks and turned a small loss into a small gain. Nice. I have also put through the transfer request to shift half the accounts money over to Tastyworks. I will keep this account open though with a very small amount of mone...