Trading diary

Back after a month of travel and teaching in Switzerland and off to a nice start. Only have half an hour today, so only made one trade. TEVA was the chosen stock There were a few stocks in play but this one seemed the most clear to me. I saw how bullish the guys at Investors Underground were on it and it did already have a large gap up, so i played it long as well. Seem to have a nice feel for the bottom and scooped up 200 shares. Very small! I wanted to get the mechanics right, and ended up closing it just minutes later for a average but nice win of 23.5cents per share. I am really trying to get the mechanics in and become as emotionless as possible, so this was a good one. My exits were clear as well. The 17.80 area seemed to be quite a bit of resistance so i jumped out when it seemed to stall on the second test and when it stalled again with lots of green prints going through without the stock moving up, i closed out the second half as well. In hindsight i couldve h...

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...

Plus500 CFDs Last night i took off a huge looser in wheat which basically eviscerated all the gains from the last months. Stupid. I vowed to stay more mechanical and not hold anything over night thats a looser. So at the beginning of the evening i shorted Soybeans right before their last spike up before this beautiful drop. But... i had lost a small amount by the time i went to bed, so i got out. missed out on a huge move there. If i had just waited until after i read a few pages in bed, i wouldve probably left the trade on or at least set a stop to the recent high... but no, i got out for a loss and missed out on this huge move. Once again i had a good entry but missed because i couldnt stomach the fluctuations and because i didnt do everything i could. Frustrating. Tastyworks ORCL earnings play fell flat "bigly" :) Luckily i play those really small. Also nice to see a small market selloff into the close which saved my RUT calendar and turned my QQQ positions from losers int...

Had a great Friday. Gold went down nicely and with the drop in equities, all of the other accounts did well too. Was quite happy. Then today came along and while im not super red today, it felt meh. Plus500 CFDs Put on a few positions last night, short Gold and Silver and took off some of the energy shorts as i think Oil might want to bounce here. Also shorted AFL which went against me over night. First it looked like Gold/Silver might make up for the loss, but its lunchtime now and Silver is bouncing and Gold came back up a bit as well. Im going to keep holding though as they both have broken key resistances and i see a bit more downside. Tastyworks I added a skewed iron condor in QQQ, taking advantage of the high implied volatility especially compared to the SPY and DIA. Also added a short put spread in XOP. Im pretty short in here now and i think i want to add some long delta in form of a short call spread in VIX or something like that, just to hedge a bit of the risk as overall i s...

Another good day with "overnight" trades. Plus500 CFDs The Silver and GBPUSD positions both developed really well over night and i left them on during the day. While the pound pulled back a bit, Silver kept dropping and i made a really nice profit on it. When it started rebounding in the evening i took both off. COP also developed nicely today and is just tagging the 200 moving average now. But ive also set a hard stop in case it drops when im asleep. Depending on how it develops tomorrow ill decide whether ill take profits or not. I also went long FTR small today, that thing needs time to develop, lets see how it goes. ToS Options Weed stocks accounted for a small loss today. There are a lot of bad long term positions coming off today, so i hope the portfolio will look a bit better after. Im long FTR in here as well and hope itll help along with the Corn options. Ill have to decide what to do with a long June call in X. Its positive but will loose more and more ex...

I made a mistake in my CFD account yesterday during the day (NZ day). I wanted to short Gold as the chart really looked good and i thought its due for a step down, looking at the longer term charts. So i set up the trade on Plus500 and pressed the button. Right away i realized i had forgotten to put in my custom position size and had just left in the Plus500 standard size. So instead of my usual 20 ounces of Gold, i had shorted 200 ounces. I couldnt take it off right away because the spread that Plus500 makes its money with had put my position $70 in the red. (Thats also the reason why i only want to stay with CFDs as long as i have to be able to have a account big enough to pass the PDT rule. Anyways, i was at work and i had stuff to do so i monitored it only sporadically, which is another mistake, but it was going my way and was up about $150 after just a few minutes. So i kept it on and watched it go to $350 before i had to focus on work and left it unmonitored for about 2h. Next ti...

Took another downturn in my ToS account today. Weed stocks accounted for about 2/3 of it. I also had bought a $5 wide call vertical in TTD after it had come up in the IU swing trading chat. I looked at the chart and the 60min looked like a perfect ABCD pattern. I think TTD is not liquid enough to sell spreads but i guess i was too greedy and possibly also ignored some of the Tastytrade setup rules because of that. In any way, despite TTD rising nicely, the spread accounted for almost all of the rest of the loss today. In general, my ToS account has been turning down recently, but i hope i can transfer a lot of money over to TW (tastyworks) soon so i can finally build a lasting account and hopefully soon get over $25k to get a bit more freedom with naked options as well as getting rid of the pattern day trading rule. Not much news in the CFD account. All positions lost a little bit because VXX had a up day. Patience here. I didnt add any other positions yet. With VIX dabbling around 10 ...

I overslept today. I forgot to set my alarm which i had turned off on my vacation last week. Luckily i dont have too many positions on. In my CFD account i only have three short VXX positions at -100 "shares" each. They are all green between $90-115 each. I usually want to get around $150 out of these so hopefully ill get there by the end of the week. I didnt put any new positions on because VXX moved lower. If it has a up day, thats when ill start scaling in again. In my Thinkorswim account i lost a bit today. That is pretty normal fluctuation since i bought a substantial amount of Canadian weed stocks. I own shares of Organigram and Aphria inc. They are quite volatile. Im thinking about keeping them until i own them for over a year and then reassess if i want to keep them or sell them. Reason for the 1 year mark is because thats when the tax in case i would sell switches from short term to long term capital gains tax which is much lower. I started watching Inves...

This is a personal diary to hold myself accountable in my trading journey. I want to be able to recap what i did well and what i didnt do so well and i want to do it for the public to see. What i will be posting about is: - Options trades on Thinkorswim - Options paper swing trades on Thinkorswim - CFD trades on Plus500 - Practice paper day trading on Thinkorswim I have quite a few plans for the future. I plan on keeping the CFD stuff going only until i have enough capital to trade actual stocks. CFDs are actually not what i want to trade because its basically betting on stuff instead of trading it. The only good thing is that they give me way more leverage than other methods so i hope to grow the account to around $50'000 and then move it all over. I also just opened a account with Tastyworks which i will use as my main trading platform. It will take a bit of time though to close out all my positions in my Thinkorswim account and move that money over. I also think i want to keep T...