Trading Review: 04-26-2018

Gross PnL: -$2657.

Net PnL: -$2862. $74 in borrows.

Real frustrating day, and the frustration definitely got to me. Had been noting that my stress levels were rising, so somewhat of a culmination of that.
Unfortunately that usual trick of putting a couple of negative days in a row together. But good break, and should be back into it.
Monday trade a little smaller, just to ease into it. Need to lock in a few positive days, rebuild the psych capital.

Trading Review: 04-25-2018

Gross PnL: -$1347.

Net PnL: -$1474. $70 in borrows.

Weird day, littered with small mistakes. But no big ones; and more importantly no breaks in discipline.

Mistakes:
(1) The CHEK bounce that I was playing for, actually played out to perfection. Unfortunately when it broke the premarket highs I tried to adjust; which resulted in buying a little higher.
(2) The wee squeeze pop that CHEK there was no reason to get long on dips at that point. Again was just getting faked in.
(3) TSLA got long at highs, and short at lows once each.

Apart from that a pretty solid day trading.

Trading Review: 04-24-2018

Gross PnL: +$1159.

Net PnL: +$910. $210 in borrows.

Made one big mistake today that nearly cost me. Shorted a boatload of HEAR at the lows, for some stupid reason. The epitome of what usually gets me into trouble. So naturally pretty annoyed about this - completely avoidable, and would have been a solid trade if I hadn't fucked it up. Think to some extent it was frustration from not having borrows recently.
As I detailed in the post recently about things that get me into trouble: (1) Shorting at the lows; (2) Going full size immediately. Fixing either of these probably would have made the world of difference in the trade.

Anyway took the day easy while I waited for HEAR to resolve itself (either by big stop, or recovery). It would have been an amazing day, there was some insane distribution that I read correctly, but that's all good. Focus is always on managing drawdowns and managing my psychology first.
Anyway towards the end of the day was starting to get a bit extended on the market, and even more so on some of the beaten names. Now on trend days you have to be careful fading, so I played it very cautiously. Then there was a spot where the beaten down names held the lows, while the market had a relatively substantial flush lower - that was the spot to pull the trigger and nailed it.
Very solid trading, and great patience/execution.
They obviously continued, but given the day I had wise to take it and run - again, all about managing psychology.

Trading Review: 04-23-2018

Gross PnL: -$521.

Net PnL: -~$621.

Man really annoyed about this day. There were a couple of crucial mistakes towards end of day that completed destroyed a good mornings trading.

So started off the morning with some solid execution on some reasonable trade ideas. Out of the roughly 3-4 ideas, only one of them worked properly, and that was one that I only ever got a starter position on.
Then came the scalp off the halt gap down on VLRX, which was an opportunity I saw to push size a little; so did a solid job of trading that. At this point, up about $1000; for really only one really good trade idea.

Started going downhill after that. Took the short HAS trade for a fade, which initially was fine. When it failed to reject I simply didn't have the right mindset. There was plenty of opportunity to completely size down to a feeler on a dip (partial fills weren't helping on this either) - it is literally in my "anti-playbook" to aggressively fade a cleanly trending stock on news on day 1. So at peak I drewdown about $1000 on this (so I was BE on the day). At this point I knew I was trading badly, it is interesting to know that I would have been better off just canning the day here.
So CHEK popped up, and although it was clean; the volume pattern wasn't ideal - and I probably traded it a bit too aggressively. There was a seller sending it lower (and was relatively convinced he was fake) - turned out to be the case, but it tested me. Anyway way too aggressive given I needed to give it room to vwap. Good exits, realising I was in a pickle though and not holding on for breakeven of better.
So after all this (where I wasn't trading amazingly well); I was breakeven on the day. Donated another $500 to the market via a stupid NFLX trade.

Just so incredible how important it is to be in right mindset, a lot of avoidable mistakes that compounded somewhat. Not end of world, but shows how things can go.

Trading Review: 04-20-2018

Gross PnL: +$517.

Net PnL: +$503.

Not much on today, and no borrows.

Some cool stats:
- 1 negative day this month, out of 12 trading days.
- Losing day was -$547, while had two winning days over $2000, and two over $1000.

Sounds pretty good on the face of it, and some really solid work underlying that; and big progress made. But the losing day, should really have been -3k (there was some revenge trading going on); and there was a +500 day where I probably shouldn't have added to a loser on HMNY. So doesn't take long to see where I need to work.

Trading Review: 04-19-2018

Gross PnL: +$635.

Net PnL: +$514. $55 in borrows.

Really rough day, with plenty of volatility in my pnl. Up $500, down $800, grinded back to +$500. Additionally lost short INCY, then lost long INCY, then was perfectly happy to take the trade to short it - very solid psychologically. Very happy with how I maintained my solid psychology. Although there were a few losses bigger than ideal (mistakes); was very solid in terms of always having an exit plan.
I believe today's success is a result of having built up mental capital over the last few weeks. By generating solid consistency the past few days, and appropriately sizing my bigger trades (to a size I can comfortably handle) I built up huge mental capital.
Worth mentioning here, that I'm not defining success by a profitable day. Just that I traded solidly all day, in the face of extremely annoying chop.

Trading Review: 04-18-2018

Gross PnL: +$2266.

Net PnL: +$2099. $120 in borrows.


Another nice day, these gains are adding up and sent through a sizeable withdrawal today. Missed the setup to size into CANN and DCAR despite being spot on, so hammer IZEA when it came up. Made a deliberate effort to stick around a bit longer but was exhausted and still ending up going to bed. Had the right bias, so would have made a little bit more, but it's all good.

Am getting a little bit scared by my absurd win-rate recently. It's not that I'm complaining, just that it's healthy to take a few losers regularly. My win-rate has probably been bolstered by the fact that I'm being a little more picky than usual, and have finally worked out how to incorporate pump-man into my niche.

Need to make sure I am being vigilant with my stop-outs. I am not worried that I'll take an enormous loss (3k+), but certainly think there is a danger that I get stubborn and rack an unnecessary loss into the 1-3k range (aka HMNY the other day, where I should have stopped on re-entered).

Note on IZEA today: Had to spam the borrows button to get it, didn't get it at first. Is nice to get borrows on a play like this (as I haven't recently), and need to make sure I'm on the game getting them immediately.

Trading Review: 04-17-2018

Gross PnL: +$1019.

Net PnL: +$769. $186 in borrows.

Pretty solid day. Unfortunately bugger all borrows across the board. There were some sick setups that I would have crushed (10k+ potential day).

No fills on CANN short, unfortunately it didn't muck around when the open came in - usually they will pause on a big gap down for a few minutes. No such luck, but all good.

HMNY probably mistake of the day. Should have cut it off instead of fighting it further. That being said, I chose a plan and stuck to it. Best thing I did was cover down to flat where I would want to get long, to avoid fighting it further.
If I had continued trading on the day, this would have made HMNY a big winner on the day because I could re-establish my short as a new position at the correct spot.

NFLX over pm high, and subsequently onto new ATH was one of the sickest high beta trades I have seen in a while. I really should have taken it, but called it a day early.

Trading Review: 04-16-2018

Gross PnL: +$583.

Net PnL: +$471. $89 in borrows.

Grinder type day. Had some good trade ideas, but kind of opted not to execute on them once I was up enough. Trying to take it slowly and let the small wins add up, at least until I've made a dent in my upcoming tax bill.

Both trades simple trades against chat pump. KONE never got high enough obviously, and risky anyway given lack of volume (hence why I only filled 1/10th).

Trading Review: 04-11-2018

Gross PnL: +$812.

Net PnL: +$677. $106 in borrows.

Another weird day of playing cautiously. Kind of funny to see the 100% accuracy today - although I wouldn't consider that the long FAST and SPOT trades worked.
Very frustrating day. There were two high conviction trades that I wanted to short the shit out of, and each one would have netted $1500+. Unfortunately no borrows.
Other frustrating thing for today was the trades I was lining up moved too quick (cause they literally were engineered moves). CNET I borrowed 2000 shares for, and only filled 400 (200 of which was a chase). CALI same thing.