Gross PnL: +$137.
Net PnL: +$84.
Obviously a bit of a commission burner day, but am happy to end up positive. Have been rating my trades out of 10 based on a few measures. So here are the ratings for today:
(1) Preparation: 7/10
(2) Patience: 7/10
(3) Risk-Reward: 6/10
(4) Discipline: 5/10
(5) Flexibility: 4/10
(6) Greed: 5/10
(7) Over-trading: 7/10
If I was to sum up the day - in particular what went wrong. I was marginally unprepared on LPTN for what happened - I know exactly how those plays work, so could have reviewed them before trading it.
Their was a marginal fault in discipline not having a clear stop-out plan for LPTN, which again comes back to preparation. In instances where a stock moves quickly and has an illiquid nature (as low floats do) to it; it is very important to be over the top prepared. My excuse here is that I can't have the stop-loss order in the market-place, while I have a limit order for closing my position. It is clear that I need to find a work-around for this, because in the case of LPTN it moved too quickly for me to manually do it.
Over-trading: It could be argued that I was over-trading by over-the-top scalping around my core position on LPTN. However, if I hadn't done that I wouldn't have had much locked in profit for when the squeeze came. Indeed if I had continued to scalp around my core position, and been more ready to cover on a dip (for a slight loss), I probably would have turned the entire trade into an amazing well. Then if I had covered weakness and looked for reshort opportunities I would have nailed them, switching from trade2hold move to move2move trading.
Flexibility: I initially came into the day thinking that LPTN had the potential to be a big winner, as a trade2hold until end of day close at the lows. I was far too slow to go from trying to nail the home run (which was probably the right approach), to just a trade that was standard. This meant that I missed the opportunity the stock provided for additional trades, and it also tied up my buying power all day - resulting in me missing other solid trades.
Greed: In line with the flexibility I think I was probably a little greedy wanting the big trade when it was no longer present.
LPTN - Have talked enough about the nuances of the trade. Each arrow is 1/2 a position size. With the exception of the cover right before the big rally (around vwap) where I only got a tiny fill. This sort of illustrates how I wasn't fully ready to hit out the trade because I was too picky with my order. One comment I notice looking at the charts again. By not covering into weakness, and being absolutely ready to cover into weakness, by the time the breakdowns came I was exhausted from riding the short position up and down.
EPZM - I am super happy with everything about this trade. Patience for entry was perfect (waited for 10.94, instead of 10.89) which made the risk-reward just that much better. The idea was also good - it was only ever intended to be scalp against the level. Got a bit of a pull but not quite enough. Really good stop-out as well - didn't hesitate, just took it.
If there was one flaw, it was that I didn't flip long into the pull after $11.00 break on the retest. However, that wasn't anything to do with this stock - I had my buying power tied up with LPTN all day as a result of other flaws.
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