Trading Review: 03-28-2018

Gross PnL: +$595.

Net PnL: +$519. $30 in borrows.

Not the greatest day again. Drewdown a lot on SHPG when there was no need to - it was a pretty easy trade really.

LFIN long was by far the best trade of the day - as it was really only profitable because I traded around the position; and was patient for entries. TSLA as well.

Feel very good going forward though, dug through and picked out 5 things I do that I need to avoid - and honestly.. It should be easy if I do those 5 things.

Things That Get Me Into Trouble

In line with recent under-performance, and terrible risk metrics. Wanted to outline some trading behaviors that get me into a little bit of trouble; and will be to avoid going forward. In general these behaviors are when I deviate from my style/methodology of trading.

(1) Shorting at the lows, or buying at the highs.

• Sometimes I want to take a breakout/breakdown trade. In this case the stop would usually be tight and if the breakout fails the stop triggers. Where/Why this gets me into trouble is that although I know how to distinguish between good breakouts and bad ones, I tend to become emotional when the move confirms my bias and get faked in.
• Sometimes it is required to get a reasonable position size on. If I ever do it, risk must be to vwap; and subsequently at least smaller than 1/3 of desired position (prepared to add around vwap/support).
• Covering risk quickly can help as well.

(2) Trading premarket.

• Stops are more difficult in premarket. A few factors go into this. Liquidity (obviously), but also that I like to stop when I'm proven wrong (rather than by price) - and usually it is hard for premarket action to prove an idea wrong.
• Sometimes it can be unavoidable. Again, I'm happy with 1/3 size; covering risk quickly.
• Same again, as premarket begins to confirm trade idea I can get emotional.

(3) Going full size immediately.

• Big part of my edge is trading around my position. This reduces my ability to do this. Also can tend to me going above full size.
• Also something I have a little difficulty with is nailing the top/bottom, thus using a close hard stop (which is what a full position size requires) isn't a strength of mine.

(4) Flipping a position immediately.

• Often times price action will cause me to be proven wrong on a particular idea, and in turn it will validate the opposing bias. This does not mean that I need to be in it immediately; but rather pick my prices, and trade around the position like usual.
• In this case the emotion comes from taking the loss (correctly, and sometimes bigger than ideal); and wanting to make it back.

(5) Not covering risk early.

• Not a huge one, and I don't struggle with it too much. But one of my big edges is position management, and trading around a position. By not taking a little profit, I am reducing my ability to scalp around a core; and reducing my flexibility if a trade goes against me.

Trading Review: 03-27-2018

Gross PnL: -$1727.

Net PnL: -$1829. $58 in borrows.

Such a fucking dumbass day. All down to a few simple things.

Started off the day quite nicely, went a fraction bigger on ASTC (but was a great setup, and pieced it in slowly).
Lost a little more than should have on RHT long, but was fine. This is where the problems started though. After losing on the first long it showed me that it didn't want to have a substantial bounce (bias for the day confirmed as down). However, I tape read a micro-bottom perfectly and went way too big on it - so that was a bigger loss than it should have been as well.
Then tilted, shorted the bottom - stopped out where I should have been piecing in a shorting. Completely retarded.

Trading Review: 03-26-2018

Gross PnL: +$1732.

Net PnL: +$1613. $13 in borrows.

Crazy day! There were a few mistakes, most minor (and one relatively big mistake). But overall an extremely good day; where the price action was difficult. But the volatility was there to capitalise.

Dream situation today was that the market would gap down; get long, add to winner. Hold for all day up move - would have been a 5k+ day even in my current crippled state. So the gap up in the market really screwed that up, and made it a lot more difficult.

I had a go at getting long, after the gap seemed to stabilise; and was down roughly $700 over a couple of pretty solidly executed trades. Was a bit annoyed that I had lost $700 - as I really can't afford to lose that. But was extremely happy with some of the stops I had taken, in particular FB, but also AAPL. Overall execution was very solid, and the $700 was just a function of the range that I was trading.
Did a great job of flipping bias to short side; in particular the breaking news play on SHOP - which I haven't executed one of those correctly for yonks.
Was slow to flip back from short bias to long bias; BUT did manage to catch the upside on SHOP in a relatively big way.

Big mistake of the day was trying to anticipate the vwap reclaim on SHOP. As per usual, with anticipation came a difficultly in placing stop (either wide or tight); and I added too much size (to the point where I was down what I was up on the day). Scratched it all off when it gave the opportunity; so quite happy with recognising the problem I was in. But obviously not happy with getting into it in the first place - terrible stuff.

Trading Review: 03-22-2018

Gross PnL: -$2281.

Net PnL: -$2374. $34 in borrows.

No idea why I was so aggressive on EARS. It wasn't an amazing setup, and the market situation was that sub-par types weren't working.

Tough day with literally nothing working. Probably in part where the error came from. But thank fuck I took the stops - look at those moves.

From here on out, need to be super careful. I am out of account topups, without getting complicated where it's coming from. So super clean plays, small size; and most importantly take time. Lose a few hundred in first few minutes of day, take a walk; reset and trade the rest of the day.

Trading Review: 03-19-2018

Gross PnL: -$440.

Net PnL: -$524.

Not a real bad day back. Something was really clear today, my lack of self control to not take the last RKDA trade needs to be fixed - it's essentially that emotional(?) trade type that's holding me back.

Had a great morning, was up roughly $800 off some really solid trades on these three names. Then decided that was a lot for first day back, and took rest of day off but stayed at computer watching. So I didn't take multiple trades that set up, in particular a few which ended up having monster trends and would have been 3-5R+.
Then RKDA had an offering at $33, and I began to work in (impatiently) on pops. Thing is, the size of the loss on that trade is somewhat expected (and I was always thinking about how to work it out, so am happy enough the loss management I wanted to implement (once in the trade). It's that the trade was poor in the first place which is the problem. Why did I want to take that one so badly (a bad trade at that), and was happy to avoid all the prior ones. Basically a lack of self control, when I see "action".

Trading Review: 03-12-2018 - 03-14-2018

Well fair to say a fair chunk happened in this review. Essentially caught myself getting carried away with size and was sloppy/reckless with entries and stops. Decided to take a few days off to sort it out (and make sure I was coming back smaller size). Held a winner.
Day of big loss, got up 8am; put in realistic covers, went back to sleep. 2 minutes later release news, massive short squeeze and margin call.

Unlucky, but it is what it is. Was sloppy and I know it. Ironic of course that I probably would have crushed it if I was trading it.

Trading Review: 03-09-2018

Gross PnL: -$2151.

Net PnL: -$3310. $320 in borrows, note the massive commissions as well.

First time in a long time I have been completed tilted. Recognising it earlier (and acting upon it, not always easy) would have saved me a tonne. So what happened?

To start the day I took a pretty chunky loss on short PIXY (-3000). But I was extremely happy that I took the loss (despite it being big, and bigger than I had meant), so I took a few moments to recollect myself and gave myself $500 more to trade with.
There was one moment when I ended up oversized while I was trading it back, but I immediately corrected this. So overall it was great trading, and I was extremely happy that I had re-entered the "flow zone". At this stage I had traded back all of the loss, and was roughly flat on the day.
Then came along TNTR, which was a great setup. I did a tad too much size; crushing each respective scalp move. After capturing the first three waves I was up roughly just under 2k, so a pretty sick comeback.
Like I say, I had been doing a fraction too much size on TNTR; so I believe this is where the tilt originated from. After capturing the first three waves I noted that my edge had probably diminished as it became less clear. For whatever reason I then took the next trade with double the original size. This led to a crazy moment of about 8-10 trades over half an hour of hitting the market with that double size, where I hit it; took the loss, rinse and repeat - pure emotional trading. There was a few moments when I wondered wtf I was doing, but was held in the tilt stage by the fact that I had just been up $2k on TNTR, and was now down.
Weird stuff...

Trading Review: 03-08-2018

Gross PnL: +$4075.

Net PnL: +$3655. $353 in borrows.

Literally paid through the roof for borrows, but it was well worth it. Unusual for me to have a tonne of primary quality ideas off the bat; and I was forced to focus on what I deemed to be the better ones. Then shift into trading them all as the open came to a close. Would have been nice to catch the downside on CI/ESRX from the open. But am very happy with how I honed in where I needed to.

Definitely could have caught the next leg on CI/ESRX but was a big day and wanted to close it up. Really nice trading around a core on both of them though, it definitely helped maximise profits and protect risk a little bit prior to the breakdowns.

Pump chatroom subscription paid off today. He bought right below my stop-loss on PIXY and couldn't lift it, so I pulled my stop and added to my position - turned out to be the exact peak. Literally the chatroom potentially paid for itself right there (although never actually hit my hard stop anyway).
PIXY was a tad of a wakeup call. A setup like that is prone to squeezes, so I ended up full size slightly earlier than I should have (prior to the add into chatroom buys).

NETE nearly got squeezed out at the highs, the selling was obvious, but it stayed above pm high for a little bit. Pretty solid trading, recognising when it didn't make sense to continue holding the short position (risk-reward wise) resulted in a cover at the lows.

The question with NETE, if I hadn't got the lucky cover what would have happened. My rules dictate that I don't fade moves late in the day, so I like to think I would have stopped at vwap (or even slightly lower around $7.60) - that's definitely the correct move. I hope I would have had the discipline to do that, after watching around $700-$1000 of my profit disappear.

W - lucky cover at the low after recognising that it wasn't a good enough setup to use my mental capital on, while stuff like ESRX/CI was in play. But good trade overall.

Trading Review: 03-06-2018

Gross PnL: +$928.

Net PnL: +$796. $92 in borrows.

AMDA was actually pretty nice cause I missed the entire morning move, but instead of chasing it - I traded my way into it. Am very happy with my trading here as I never chased (which is something I might have done in the past).

BZUN - was actually one of trades I wasn't happy with. It's not my style to buy where I did; and there was plenty of opportunity to work into the trend later.

NFLX - Amazing cover, when it didn't break the low. An absolutely amazing read, and respect of dominant trend.

WTW - Similar as NFLX, where it should have started working it didn't; thus hit my time-stop.

GLYC - Did a great job of trading around position. Unfortunately wasn't paying attention when stop triggered, which isn't really good enough. But at least I still hit it!