Trading diary

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...

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...

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...

We got volatility back eh? holymoly. I was so angry yesterday that i didnt post anything. But today im back. Plus500 I had forgotten about a GTC limit order in IWT that got triggered yesterday and was down a bit. So over night ive set a stop really close so that if it goes any higher, it would kick it out. Turns out the market is crazy right now and it turned into a nice winner which im not planning on taking off just yet. Im looking on shorting more VXX again soon. Hopefully this wasnt just another 1 day spike. Doesnt feel like a 1 day spike. I also traded some oil over night. Working much better, now that i have some kind of system with stops and limit orders instead of always going in with a market order. Turned out to be a small winner, but it was good practice in working with stops and moving them up. They do have a trailing stop feature on plus500 i want to try that one next time. ToS Slightly down, but not much. Mainly due to weed stocks and my short VXX position but that one i ...

There seems to be some cracks appearing in /NQ. Its about time! Tastyworks Made a nice profit today as my two QQQ positions finally found the green again. About 50% of todays profit in this account is because of the Q's. CCL also helped. This put spread was way too big when i put it on but at least it seems to be working out. I have put on quite a few positions today. A Iron Condor in COST with slightly long delta and a few verticals in MCD and other underlyings. In some trades with very short term outlook i actually bought puts outright which i know is against the Tastytrade rules but i feel like i want to see if this can work for short swing trades. I had to realize however that ive used up almost all my buying power. Tomorrow ill have to look at taking some winners off the plate. Plus500 CFDs Went long gold yesterday but it ended up dropping back a little bit. Small position, small loss so far but im staying in it. Hopefully Gold will rally a bit when the indexes start crumbling...

Plus500 I held some Gold and Silver over the weekend and yesterday shortly after the open they both spiked lower sharply for no reason whatsoever. Apparently had something to do with liquidity. I have lost quite a bit of money in this account now and ive decided that im going to try to get back to what was my initial investment and then get the money out of here and put it either into Tastyworks or start live day trading small as i seem to be much better at that. Tastyworks Today was a great day in TW. QQQ down, Oil and SPY up and the shorts in UNP and CCL are paying off as well. I tried selling a iron condor in COST today but didnt get filled, so tomorrow im going to give that another shot just to try and take advantage of the high IV Rank. I really hope the Nasdaq is coming down a bit more as this is currently my biggest position. Thinkorswim IYR is giving the gains back again, should have taken it off. Ah well, cant loose too much here. Soon i will have enough capital freed up to mo...

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...

Today i finally realized that this weird market is my fault! Clearly it must be! It must be because the market is clearly going out of its way to do the exact opposite of what it trade. Even on a day where the broad market is turning down, /NQ rallies 50 points, which means i took quite a bit of a downturn in my Tastyworks account. Anyway, here we go. Plus500 CFDs AUD/USD finally seems to turn around and make my position profitable after going against me quite a bit. Wheat is stalling/taking a breather but at this point, all i hope for is to get out even. Tastyworks My RUT calendar is working out nicely however the ADBE earnings play fell flat so far, even though it dropped nicely after its initial highs, so maybe we will see another step down tomorrow. I put on another earnings play in ORCL. A small butterfly with very little risk but it looks like this one is not working out either as it seems to have rallied hard post earnings. Other positions are fine, CORN is bothering me but othe...

It didnt look good last night when i went to bed. But turned out to be not too bad of a day. Plus500 CFDs I had bought wheat yesterday and of course it started dropping and dropping but im trying to be more patient with the trade and stomach the volatility for a longer term upside. I got out of gold for a profit and bought back silver for a small loss after it had recovered a bit from a bigger loss. I had entered a few stocks like FTR or AFL but they all went against me and stopped out. Im also noticing that in this account, the premium for holding stock positions is extremely high and im not going to do this anymore. Tastyworks I had sold a RUT calendar yesterday that went against me but recovered nicely in todays downturn. Lets hope for another down day tomorrow. Also for QQQs sake. Both the IC and the short call spread were happy today as they made back some gains. CORN is continuing to underperform and its painful to remind myself that this is a long term position. I put on a earni...

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...

...will be punished. Immediately. CFDs After all the successful trades in the last week, i looked at Wheat and Sugar yesterday and saw that Wheat had broken some significant resistance to the upside and sugar did the same to the downside. So i thought id get involved. Especially Sugar looked really good. I went long /ZW and shorted /SB. They were bouncing around quite a bit from green to red and back. I thought about taking them off with small profits, but one thing i felt i did wrong in previous trades was pulling out early. So i decided to leave them on over night, which was a mistake. Especially Wheat punished me hard. I still have them on and i will see how they go today, but im pretty sure i will be locking in quite a bit of a loss here unfortunately. I think the problem were neither mechanics or plans. The problem is just that those instruments are crazy leveraged so that i just cant stomach the fluctuations when they go against me. But i guess thats what i will have to live with...

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...

Good start into the week! CFD - Plus500 I shorted a bit of /NQ last night and it dropped nicely. I feel like a lot of trades im doing are chasing trades when someting is moving a lot. I think the reason why they seem to work out is because the size/margin in Plus500 is so high that i can scalp the smallest of moves for a profit. After that i also went short Silver and GBP/USD which are both green today and i bought COP on a alert by the trading safely guys. That one is working out nicely as well. ToS Weed stocks moved up while Corn took a hit. Overall the P/L are green for today but im glad im not putting on more positions in here. Tastyworks Corn lost here as well of course but since thats a very long term trade im not too afraid about it yet. I put on a put calendar in IWM and a short call spread in QQQ just to get my beta weighted Delta back to neutral. The account is down a bit but i feel confident that by managing Deltas, Theta and Vega properly ill be able to beco...

I didnt post yesterday because despite it being a green day it wasnt spectacular and i didnt put on any new trades or anything like that. But today i finally got to put on my first trades with Tastyworks. Im so happy that this is finally working! I was a day one waitlist people but because im in NZ i had to wait until now to get going. I put on a SPY calendar for $230. Front month is 43DTE so im going quite far out with it but i kind of think that the market will go just a liittle bit further up before it comes down and volatility will speed up a bit, so that seems to be a nice setup. I had also tried to buy a few CORN calls which didnt get filled unfortunately. Ill give it another try tomorrow. I like the ABCD pattern thats forming there and from what i read the fundamentals look really good for a nice rise. ToS The weed stocks for once were flat and the options positions actually gave me a bit of a gain. CORN is working out well, X is working out well, TTD is volatile as F*...

ToS Weed stocks took another hit today and yesterday. That hurt. Other positions arent going that well either at the moment. Its good that ive stopped putting on positions. I have to decide what to do with the weed stocks. In one way i want to buy more since its pretty safe to say that Canada is going to legalize weed. In another way i just want to be rid of the position and move on. ToS papertrading I requested real time data for this account and im preparing the softwares layout so as soon as i manage to get out of bed on time ill be able to start day trading practice. As for the account itself. Its taken a bit of a down turn as well in the recent up move, but i think im short enough in other positions that in todays tiny down move some of this might have come back at least a little bit. Plus500 CFDs My last short VXX position lost as well in the last few days since /VX was on the rise. its been so much on the rise actually that i added another 100 short shares of VXX ...

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...

ToS account turned down ever so slightly again today, i have to say though, the last two days were way more painful. I am pretty short now, having added shorts in JPM, XLF and IYR. Im also eyeing the semiconductor sector, based on some pointers Shaun Downey gave us. On the other side im hoping for CORN to go up in the next few weeks/months. I bought a few October 20 Calls, trying a anti Tastytrade ish traditional strategy for a change. Shaun Downey has sent out a nice report on corn last night and how it looks to be the worst year in the last decade, so that hopefully works out. I have also bought back the short call from the big call spread in TTD and it seems to have paid off. Lets hope that one keeps running a little more. Overall im not too happy with my ToS account. Its going down more than going up and i will stop putting on positions for now so i can transfer over a good chunk of money to Tastyworks as soon as possible. In the CFD account i have closed out two more sho...

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...