Improvement: 09-29-2016

Yeah not really happy with improvement from prior day. Although I kept to required sizes... Didn't really cut losses before they got out of control.

Think the big take away here (aside from having fixed stop-loss in when entering a trade) is the restrain the add to around 1/2. By with-holding getting to half size can trigger most size near where I want it.
This will take a little bit of patience and avoiding fomo (trying to crush a move).

Trading Review: 09-29-2016

Gross PnL: +$1005

Net PnL: +$806.

Preparation: 8/10
Patience: 6/10
Risk-Reward: 6/10
Discipline: 5/10
Flexibility: 7/10
Greed: 8/10
Over-trading: 7/10

Psych score I gave myself at 10:30 was 8/10 with the notes: Missed a few but happy to have a grinder type day.
Feel like this was perhaps slightly generous because I didn't feel any more disciplined than normal.

Pretty grinder day. Missed a pretty big opportunity on RGSE from being too cautious. Think I probably could have revisited it, but good not to try and push things too much.

Not much to say about the trades overall, except for NXPI where I was down a decent amount at the peak - entry was too early (in terms of time after news), then I added a 2nd 3rd too early. Not really happy with that trade could have been a decent winner.

Improvement: 09-28-2016

Nearly had a blowup today.

I have been taking some pretty big size trades, and justifying it by being really picky on the setups that I do it on. Big lesson for today is that can't get away with that - taking slightly over max size trades is fine when it's pre-emptive, but it's a dangerous game to play... And leads to long term failure due to one moment of lapse of judgement.

So now max size is fixed; and I can go 2x max size on niche setups.

Trading Review: 09-28-2016

Gross PnL: +$5006.

Net PnL: +$4367.

Preparation: 6/10
Patience: 5/10
Risk-Reward: 1/10
Discipline: 1/10
Flexibility: 3/10
Greed: 2/10
Over-trading: 2/10

1/10 psych rating. With comments: Actually feel okay, very humbled (but not tilted) by not taking stop. But have to respect that I was down $15k earlier so unlikely to trade very well going forward.

So basically today turned out to be a day that I was worried about - when I thought about forcing this week to be taken easy. At the peak I was down about $15000 on RGSE as a result of not taking a stop when I was down roughly $5000.
I believe I got something quite valuable from this experience though. The fact that I didn't take the stop is irrelevant, and I will have moments of stubbornness again throughout my trading career (as much as I'd like to think I won't). Therefore the biggest contributor to blowup potential (aside from stubbornness) is position size. I have always thought that when I had big size on, I would be able to control risk via stops but this isn't always the case.
This is obvious; but two things point to it being the best way to ensure no more account decimating blow-ups are ever taken:
(1) News occurs midday, if ever in a position that's way too big there is an instant blow-up.
(2) Relying on only stops to control risk is risky - one lapse of judgement; say because something moved within 1-2 minutes and "I'll give it time to see what happens". This is what happened today. Having more size also contributes to this problem (harder to hit out a 10k loss than a 3k one).

Other thing that is pretty important to realise is that I already trade quite big size for my account without trying to go above that. Going forward am thinking this should be increased proportionately. Will still do the 2x max size for niche setups - but again that's small compared to today. As last Friday as an example (+$12k), with my current sizes that would have been a $4k-$6k day - which is already plenty. Then as my account increases it would become more.

Another note: Size today was pre-emptive, so it wasn't a spontaneous decision at the moment. Again, simply can't rely on avoiding blowups solely by hitting stop-losses. This is the big takeaway from today.

Improvement: 09-27-2016

Goal for today was to with-hold the "full size" entry. Didn't quite get that right, UVXY was a notable example where with a slightly better final add (in terms of size and price) would have resulted in a decent trade. That being said, don't think the trade work very well anyway - so maybe a good result.

Worth talking about a different improvement I want to make. This week I have wanted to size things down, and keep things controlled. Today illustrates why. I got a lucky cover on RGSE when I finally realised I was being stubborn - but it could have been a decent loss as a result of being too aggressive on size, and on length of time holding (it is a day 1 float rotation that's holding).
Basically I am looking for too many opportunities to be overly aggressive. Big size is okay if mapped out with a complete plan and a super strong bias (this shouldn't happen very often).

Trading Review: 09-27-2016

Gross PnL: +$1991.

Net PnL: +$1444.

Preparation: 7/10
Patience: 6/10
Risk-Reward: 6/10
Discipline: 6/10
Flexibility: 7/10
Greed: 4/10
Over-trading: 7/10

4/10 for psych score at 10:30. Low score because I saw some glimpses of opportunity and feel too aggressive.
I think doing this score paid off a little bit today, because it helped to realising that I was wrong on RGSE - and helped increase level of caution - which then resulted in me finishing off the day early. If I hadn't it could have easily turned out nasty!

INVT was the trade of the day I think. Correctly read that I need to start into the position into the up move. Then looked for a way to add while still being a little cautious. Real grinder type trade, no way of sizing into it completely, but also a clean setup for pretty much free money.

UVXY trade completely didn't work. Lucky to get out of it for roughly even. If I had stopped out at the bottom would have been roughly $400-$600 loss. Simply put, I made the final scale to full size too early. I could have done with making the middle add slightly smaller (therefore leaving room for final add to be larger). Could have also had a better price for the final add - UVXY was at premarket lows, but SPY wasn't.

Big miss on ARRY today. I was concerned about being too biased given how thick it trades and that it's a real company. I looked at the history of the stock after a big up day and saw that it was a range day/slight up day after that - so became too focused on that idea. Instead of recognising when it was down-trending and simply joining it.

Finally RGSE. Escaped cleanly, could have been very nasty. Was looking at someone else who traded it and it got them emotional, and they ended up trading very poorly (link below). This makes me feel better about the way I traded it because I had a bit of stubbornness creeping in, but eventually made the right call. The question is, would I have cut my losses correctly if it had made a new high with me still in a decent position size. I would like to think that I would have - but perhaps been a bit slow to do it. Overall, very happy though.
Put far too much size on RGSE. It was a great opportunity, but goal for this week has been to downscale a little and keep the psychological consistency. So while I think tomorrow there will be an amazing opportunity on RGSE (if it gaps up), I will trade it with 6000 shares max.
Side note: As I called it a day, I kept thinking to myself "okay I covered RGSE which is the correct decision, now why aren't I going long". This thought process turned out to be correct, but I didn't want to continue in my sub-optimal psych state.
http://bull-zone.com/0927-recap-on-rgse/

Flipping UVXY short would have been a great trade. But can't nail them all. Was too biased on it being a ranged day, and besides I was somewhat pre-occupied by RGSE.

Improvement: 09-26-2016

Did a pretty good job yesterday. Some marginal improvements could have been made (slightly better entries etc) but overall very good.

Today want to focus on withholding the "add to full size entry" for the perfect price. Got it mostly right today, but would have helped with ZYNE a little bit, which I took a little drawdown on.

Trading Review: 09-26-2016

Gross PnL: +$844.

Net PnL: +$690.

Preparation: 7/10
Patience: 7/10
Risk-Reward: 5/10
Discipline: 6/10
Flexibility: 6/10
Greed: 6/10
Over-trading: 7/10

Gave myself a 5/10 psych rating at 10:30 with notes: Have had to fight illiquid nasty stocks with no super strong bias. Draining for not much reward. Want to watch stubbornness levels.
After I gave myself this rating I decided to call it a day, given that I had hit my rough goal for the day. Kept an eye on things, but nothing super convincing. Think this was a good call because it wasn't a day to over-trade.

Overall a pretty good day, can't complain too much. Wasn't a huge amount of opportunity available, so feel pretty good about under-trading the day. Probably could have traded the volatility products, there was decent opportunity there.

ZYNE ended up giving me the washout cover that I wanted but happy enough to have cut stubbornness early.

Probably best trade of the day was ARRY, covering up because I realised I didn't want to fight it. Although it looks like a clean long in the end, I don't think it was a clean long until after I had decided to finish trading for the day.

Weekly Review 09-25-2016

Net PnL: +$21777.

Monster week. A real game changer. 5/5 profitable day, one bad day that didn't deserve to be profitable.
Also a few days that didn't have niche setups but managed to trade some big earners - so that's pretty cool.

After nailing a big week, will be very important to slow things down. Remind myself that consistency is the most important thing. I deliberately did really big size on SAEX on Friday. Probably won't do quite as much size on similar setups this week (still big size, but not enormous). Will do this purely because I need to tone it back and ensure I don't get carried away personally. E.G. I did 10,000 shares on SAEX, this week I will do equivalent of 4000 shares.

This week I really felt that refining my methodology helped at lot. It kept me on track on some of the good days, and had I implemented it correctly; it would have helped me substantially on the bad day.

Something I introduced this week was a "psychological check" at 10:30am. So I have set an alarm for 10:30, and every day I will rate myself psychologically at that time of day. This also coincides with the time of day that I need to adjust my trading style slightly - so it's a nice mix.
The idea is that this check will help me on those 1/10 days when I need to be pointed in the right direction, or need to take a break.

Trading Review: 09-23-2016

Gross PnL: +$12560

Net PnL: +$11724. $704 on borrows fees, so pretty expensive day!

Preparation: 9/10
Patience: 8/10
Risk-Reward: 8/10
Discipline: 8/10
Flexibility: 8/10
Greed: 7/10
Over-trading: 8/10

10:30 psychological check: 7/10. Stocks haven't given me any trouble, but am trading with size so a little bit on edge.

Pretty crazy day. Came in with a solid plan after visualising how the day would go and nailed it. Traded perfectly all morning until AAPL came along and then I impulsively jumped into it with more than max size. A disappointing break of discipline after such a good morning - still gave high scores though because I think I literally couldn't have traded the morning better.

Plan was to trade up to 6000 shares of SAEX, and then once I had $2k locked in I would up that to 10000 shares. This was well done, and one of the best things I did was being patient for the entry when I was trying to add to the position - this was arguably one of the crucial points of the day because carrying a bad average would have ruined the trade.
I probably could have covered more into each low of the day move. Would have been nice to recycle more of the position, but it's fine.

Funny thing about SAEX. Was thinking about how the stock set up in the end. I had wanted a gap up, parabolic then short for the all day fade. However, it ended up setting up in a similar, but lower risk manner. The gap up - leading to premarket fade, and then failure into premarket high is a much lower risk (and probably a higher probability fade) trade.

I thought SAEX would close around $8.50 but ended up covering all into $8.80. Incredible how accurate some of my calls for closing prices have been recently. It closed at $8.46 and ended up putting in a low at $8.3x.

A shame to have missed some nice trades on CLVS and SRPT but I was laser focused on SAEX all day.

Improvement: 09-22-2016

After a sloppy day have the most to learn. Lucky to come away with a positive day, could have easily gone the other extreme.

Started off the day with a great mindset. As time went on it slowly slipped away over time because nothing was really working. Eventually I guess you would say my "pysch" capitulated into stubbornness. Best thing to do would have been to identified when I started to go a little over the edge (around 10:30 when I should have been offloading positions into favourable pops, and willing to take losses, without being stopped out).

10:30 is a pretty important time of the day for me, because it is when I switch into "trend determined by vwap" mode. To note this time of day I think it is a good idea to take a record of how my psychological capital is feeling at this time of day. If low, then close out positions at favourable prices and take a wee 10 minute break. If fine, then it's okay.

This likely won't have an impact on 90-98% of days. But the days when it helps, will make quite a big difference, potentially would have saved me a few grand today - and therefore put me in better position when trading SAEX later on in the day.

Trading Review: 09-22-2016

Gross PnL: +$595.

Net PnL: +$449.

Preparation: 6/10
Patience: 5/10
Risk-Reward: 5/10
Discipline: 5/10
Flexibility: 3/10
Greed: 3/10
Over-trading: 5/10

Pretty bad day. Definitely didn't deserve to make any money. Was lucky SAEX came along as a decent opportunity, and even then my "process" of trading it wasn't that good.

Was an enormous amount of stubbornness today. Out of the open I only really had 3 trades that I held onto for a while and all three of them didn't work (AVXL, EVBG, and REN). So I spent the morning fighting them somewhat (which is fine), but failed to recognise when they were holding trend post 10:30. I had ample time to get out of them at reasonable prices once it became time to stop fighting and flip out of things into vwap pushes and didn't.
(1) REN could have been gotten out of at breakeven (which was a little bit below vwap, which was weirdly low) quite easily.
(2) AVXL could have been gotten out of at vwap, but I was stubborn/greedy and wanted a flush through vwap to my break-even price. This would have been approximately a $200-$1000 loss (depending on where I opted to in a non-greedy manner).
(3) Finally EVBG was the one where I probably just end up taking an exit where I did, or perhaps slightly earlier if I was more onto it.
If I look at the trades leading up to the stubbornness, I'm actually pretty happy with the executions (except going over max size on AVXL). Risk was decently controlled, orders were staggered etc. It really just comes down to not recognising when I need to switch into damage control instead of sticking with idea. Basically I didn't follow my methodology.
A thought I have relating to this, is every day at 10:30 take a measure of my psychological capital. Has it been a rough morning? Stress-free morning? Am I agitated from missing something? etc etc.

Finally SAEX. I had on my morning notes that if a low float runner came along I was willing to trade it with 6000 shares. SAEX fulfills this requirement, except that the price is slightly larger, so it's probably equivalent to trading 8000-10000 shares on a $4 low float stock. The big thing is that I was wanting to "crush" it too much and make up for losses, instead of focusing on covering risk, putting myself into a position where I can short high of day stuffs etc.If I had been forced to stop out in the $10.70-$11 range it would have been a $2500-$3500 loss, making this quite a nasty day overall! Big thing comes down to that I was holding full size with an average price that I wasn't super happy with; and being to focused on getting a wash to vwap to cover. Nothing wrong with reducing size, to ensure can capture the move to vwap and not risk getting puked out.
In fact if I had done this, I would have made a lot more money on SAEX!
Did a reasonable job of doing this on the first parabolic push.
Big problem was on the push at 13:34, it immediately got sold out and I jumped in because I thought it was a fake-out. Again too aggressive and pre-emptive. Things don't just fake out in a few seconds. They take a few minutes to confirm and develop.

Trading Review: 09-21-2016

Gross PnL: +$2523.

Net PnL: +$2457.

Preparation: 7/10
Patience: 8/10
Risk-Reward: 7/10
Discipline: 7/10
Flexibility: 8/10
Greed: 7/10
Over-trading: 7/10

Traded really well today in terms of patience, discipline etc. I under-capitalised a bit to be sure... But given the past few days I'm not too worried about that. It seems that on really solid days - all I can fault is under-capitalising.

On a good run so definitely the last two days of the week I will be looking to just have small grinding type days. Unless there is a niche setup to nail. Market quite hot at the moment, so there's a decent chance of that happening.

CONN: Can't decide if it was lucky or a good thought process. I identified that the trade idea wasn't working, but thought that it was quite choppy so would get out on a dip, or stop out higher. Got the dip, but it was very lucky to get hit by the looks of it.

CLVS: Was a big miss not shorting that mid morning pop into the opening levels.

In general wasn't patient enough on 1/4 of trades not holding as trade2holds. Basically free money on EBIO holding 1/4 until close, and an improvement on CLVS if I held 1/4 as a trade2hold.

Improvement: 09-20-2016

Going through review think it's pretty obvious that I need to tone it back a little. This will take some discipline.

Just focus on increasing patience and reducing fomo just a little bit and I think it should easily make the difference. Slowing down the speed I add to trades will help a bit as well.

Trading Review: 09-20-2016

Gross PnL: +$3858

Net PnL: +$3388.

Preparation: 7/10
Patience: 6/10
Risk-Reward: 5/10
Discipline: 7/10
Flexibility: 6/10
Greed: 5/10
Over-trading: 5/10

Pretty solid day overall. Has been two good days in a row, and can feel myself getting a little ahead of myself. Need to re-affirm myself, make sure I continue to be patient for good entries, sizing in slowly, taking profits quickly etc. There were some mistakes today, while minor wouldn't want to be any worse. Would be good to have a small day, just to slow down. However, I can feel the market heating up again (for my niche setups), so don't want to limit myself too much.

Did some really good things today, and some not so good things today. If I was to sum up mistakes I would just say that I was a little too jumpy to get into things too quick.
(1) BSPM - Morning trade was executed to perfection! However the afternoon trade I pieced into it too quickly. never got the washout I wanted, but if I had scalped around position would have been able to cover some risk.
(2) CLVS was a simple short parabolic. Order size reset halfway through placing an order, so accidentally went over max size. It didn't really affect things too much cause I closed it out at breakeven (the excess size).
(3) GBSN - Just pieced into trade a little quickly. Was quite patient enough on short entries. Pop to vwap was perfect but felt forced to wait for confirmation (because just average not quite good enough).
(4) GBSN - I wanted to hold 1/2 the short position until the end of the day. Therefore I should have been prepared for a decent amount of chop on that half. It did end up closing at the lows, roughly 30-40c lower than I covered. If I had covered more into the morning washout I would have been more comfortable holding through that illiquid period.
(5) SRPT - I don't usually take breakouts. Not happy with taking the breakout. Although I did put my stop in the moment I entered.
(6) TBRA - Same as SRPT except it was a lesser disciplined trade. Not quite as clean and somewhat oversized.