Transcription
What's up everyone? All right, so in today's episode, I'm going to break down my trades from the morning. I am sitting here in the green up $2,2269. It's a small green day and you know that's fine. It finishes the week with um four green days this week and a no trade day on uh Wednesday. So, I'll pull up my metrics here so you could see where I sit on the week. This doesn't include today's profits. um but was up $13,977.88 coming into today. So, this will put me up um a little over 16,000 here on the week. Does it fall short of my you know, $5,000 a day, $25,000 a week cold market uh you know, daily weekly goal? Yeah, it does. Um but I'm now sitting at about 95,000 here on uh or 92,000 91,000 whatever it is um on the month. um which is well above where I would be at the end of week two um you know for cold market trading because last week I had that one $52,000 green day. So that one day sort of changed everything.
Now as a beginner trader that one day is typically a red day and it does change everything. you've generally had a good month except for that one red day where you're down, you know, maybe it's these numbers aren't so big, but you know, where you're down five times whatever you make on the typical green day. And I know how frustrating that is. That phenomenon is uh what most beginner traders experience, which is that you spend, you know, 2, 3 weeks making slow, steady progress and then in one day you give it all back. Uh and and for me that's exactly what what I would do on a consistent basis. It was it seemed like uh once a month, you know, I was doing it and I couldn't even go a month without having a big red day. And those big red days far outweighed my green days on average and I would give back weeks of progress. And it was so discouraging. There's nothing worse than that. And I mean, imagine any other career. Imagine you're a, you know, you're a contractor. You're you're a, you know, a home builder and you build a home and then all of a sudden you have to you have to undo two, three weeks of work. I mean, I suppose that probably happens if a customer makes a change, but at least you're getting paid for it. I mean, if it happened because you made a mistake, but but it happens all the time for traders. Imagine building stone walls and then you've got to then the stone wall falls over and you've got to start over, right? Uh it it just feels uh very demoralizing. You know, you're starting to make some progress. This is what it must be like to be a postal worker. The mail never stops. You know, you start to finally get caught up and then boom, another big truck comes in.
So, here's what I'll tell you. Uh, I did upload my bare market strategy episode on Wednesday, which I encourage you guys to check out, and I'll put a link to that at the end of uh, today's episode so you can watch it again. There are a couple of things that I changed in my trading that helped me evolve away from being in that um, terrible cycle of, you know, two steps forward and then two big steps back. Number one, uh, and this is also a lesson that, um, Jess has shared with us. He's, um, a member at Warrior Trading. He earned his million-dollar badge, um, a couple years ago. He's been doing really well. He's still trading every day and actually does mentor sessions for us. and he said that for him he didn't really have like a very clear um easy to identify turning point but that for him um he just sort of slowly was spacing out how often those red days were happening. They still happened but instead of happening once a month they start happening once every 5 to 6 weeks and then once every two months and then more like once a quarter. And I would wager that even now in his trading, he probably still has a decent sized red day. You know, every every few months he has smaller red days as we all do, but I'm sure every few months he ends up catching a bigger red day, gives back a week of progress, and he's like, "Man, that that was a bummer." Um, you know, but the green stretches in between those red days are longer, so he makes more in those green stretches. And uh and the red days are likely more controlled because he's stopping sooner.
Those are subtle differences. As a beginner trader, the red days get bigger and bigger and bigger because you get emotionally hijacked. You spiral. You don't stop when you should. You just keep trading more and more and more and more till the loss is enormous. And that's all based on trading from emotion. And on the green days, you're not as efficient in your trading. So, you're not capitalizing or extracting as much from the market as a more seasoned trader. So, your green days aren't as big. And the red days also are happening so often that you're not making enough progress before they they occur. So how do you stop that? Is it to make more money or is it to lose less? I think losing less is actually a good u goal. I don't think you necessarily need to make more. If you are having green days, you know, periodically I think you're doing well, you know, more often than not, I think you're doing really well. Book that profit. Try to lose a little less. So how do you lose less? Focus on accuracy. Number one, try to trade the best quality setups. And number two, set guard rails on your trading that if you go down more than X amount, you simply get up and walk away. And by doing that, you are capping your red days. So if we look at my trading, you know, I mean, this well, so uh Tuesday was the closest for me going uh and having a red day this month. They went down just about $6,000, which was about, you know, I didn't want to go too much further red than that, but I was able to recover off that level with a small base hit. And then we had a decent trade here, and next thing you know, you know, I was um back into the green. But it it is important to draw a line in the sand where you're going to say enough's enough.
So, let's see. If we look back at um I wanted to look at the month of um let's see, we'll just do yearto date. So year to date, um I had a couple red days in um February. So these to me were controlled tolerable losses. I still finished both these weeks green. This week was red, but you know, that's okay. In January, I also had a red day. Um that was controlled. It was moderate. I can accept that. So trying to keep the red days, you know, I mean, look, that's $400,000 of profit and my red day is only five grand. So clearly I'm doubling down and getting super aggressive on the green days. And when it's not happening like here, it's foot off the gas. Even on this day, I only took two trades. Two trades. So I want to overtrade, if you want to call it overtrading, on the days when I'm making money, and I want to undertrade on the days when it's slow. I think most beginner traders do the exact opposite. They overtrade on the red days, getting desperate to recoup those losses, and they undertrade on the green days. they're happy to be green and they're like that's good enough. I'm not going to push it too much more. Now, um this month for March, my highest uh quantity of trades was on the day I was up 52,000. And I am a little disappointed that I gave back some off the top, but um but nonetheless, it was still a solid day. So, all right. Well, that gives you a little bit of an intro here to today's recap.
So, today was a slower day. I really felt pretty early on that today didn't have um a lot of potential. It is, as you may know, Friday the 13th. It's a terribly unlucky day to be trading. Uh and so, you know, for that reason alone, I was hesitating. Um but in all seriousness, it has been a slower week. I have not had a big green day this week. I um had a no trade day on Wednesday. And so I kind of felt like, you know, let's just try to survive. Let's just get through the rest of the week. So when I first sat down this morning, we had ELPW, which was up. Um, however, if I back up this um chart a little bit, you'll see that um it's kind of an interesting setup where it sort of rallied into after hours and then pulled back a little bit and then popped up again pre-market. I just wasn't really crazy about this setup. Um, I don't know. There was just it felt too much like we're on the back side of this move here. This was the peak and if we were still making new highs, I'd be interested, but we're on the back side of that move. So, it popped up here, wasn't interested, it sold off. So, no trades on that one. Then we had EDHL. EDHL. This one popped up at 4 in the morning. or something like that. Um, you know, makes a pretty impressive move. I think you can safely say from 350 up to 750 and then gives it all back. So, that was sort of the context this morning, seeing that we already had a few stocks that hadn't held up super well. So, I really wasn't happy u to see that. So, that was EDHL um and ELPW. So then I'm sitting down 7 a.m. I'm watching scans. I did see um ACXP. This one um on the scanners. It had popped up a couple days ago, pulled back, was sort of sitting here. It ended up popping up to seven, then reversing down. I didn't take any trades on it. I just it it sort of happened so fast that I missed the first part of the move right here. Um, and I pulled it up right in here and I was like, I don't know, it's a little too extended. I think I need to wait for a pullback. And then it flushes all the way down to six and then it it didn't really give a a setup. So, being patient um saved me from taking a loss on that. Um, B Aif that this is the leading gainer right now up 76%. But it's a cheaper stock. It's more thickly traded. You could see on the level two, it's quite stacked. a lot of buyers, a lot of sellers. One cent spread, 50 million shares of volume. It'd be hard to get 15 or 20 cents a share out of a stock like that. So, that was not very interesting to me. Um, we'll look at KIDZ um in a second. That was the one that I traded. Hit the scanner at 7:30 as you could see about 728. It had news. FRSX, this one also had news. Um, you know, large scale public transit project, not a super exciting headline, but it pops here from 250 up to 4 and then drops all the way back down. It's actually now red 8% on the day. So, that's not super impressive. Um, but prior to that happening, KDZ popped up on the scans. And this one, um, I initially pulled up. I saw that it had a headline ties in with AI, a little bit of robotics there. So, I was like, okay, it's a US company. Uh, I, you know, I'll give it a try. I saw on the chart, it's a recent reverse split and it was certainly moving quickly. So, it hits the scanner. Ding, ding, ding. I pull it up. I see that it's got a 1.2 million share float with news and I'm like, all right, this this is something I can work with.
So, here's what happens. This thing initially pops up to 320. It pulls back. It pushes up to 330. It pulls back. It squeezes, as you can see here, up to a high of 380. Then it dips down right here. And this is where I took my first trade, getting in on this little pullback right here. And this was a uh like a $700 winner. I got in and it was 15,000 shares or was it 20? Something like that. 15 20,000 shares. And I only made about 5 cents a share. I wasn't able to get a big winner on it. So, it popped up, but not very much. I got out. Then I got back in right here for the high day break. I made 2 cents a share. Got in, got out. It didn't really work. Then I got back in uh right here for this squeeze higher. And again, only got about 5 cents a share. So, in total, I took four trades. Each was with between 10,000 and 25,000 shares. being a slightly lowerric stock, I felt comfortable taking that share size, but I I wasn't able to get more than five cents a share on even my biggest trade. And so the result is on those four trades, I, you know, bought and sold churning fees and commissions and I didn't really make a lot. So, in fact, today my fees and commissions are about $292, which means it's more than 10% of my total profit, which means my net profit after the fees and commissions will be about $1,900. Well, a little bit more than that, but um you know, but close, right? Yeah, about $1,900. So, um that's a little bit that's that's higher than usual. If we look at my um my metrics here, let's see. Um, did I close that window for Trader View? Um, I might have closed it, but um, no, it's right here. So, if you look at my metrics year to date, you can actually see what my total fees and commissions are on the year. So, as of right now, my fees and commissions are um about $12,500, which is really moderate. That's not bad um on, you know, $638,000. But today is a day where um you know the fees are higher and so it's a little bit disappointing but um it I mean it is it's just a ratio but the percentage is a little higher and it's just because we weren't getting as much action and I wasn't able to get 10 15 20 cent winners.
So the broker that I use we do pay fees and commissions with direct access brokers and they typically average about one penny per share. So if you only make two cents, half your profits, fees, and commissions. If you make 10 cents, it's only 10%. If you make 20 cents, it's only 5%. So, you know, it's and it it just is the way that the fees are assessed. You and there's not an option to be purely per trade because the ECN fees are what really add up. So, you can be per trade with your broker commission, but then the ECN routing fee to the exchanges is per share. So if you're doing 10,000 shares, you're doing 100,000 shares, it's per share. So, you know, I mean, it's just it's just the way it is. It's the cost of doing business. And I'm okay with that. I would still argue that I um even in what I pay, it's um if I was using a commission free broker, it would cost me more than that $12,000 so far on the year in the form of um slower order execution and missing opportunities and uh potentially more slippage on some of my orders. Depends on the broker though. Some commission free brokers can give nice price improvement and um offer more liquidity than the displayed market. So that one's a little bit but definitely from a perspective of speed. When I want to get in, I want to get in and when I want to get out, I want to get out. And a direct access broker lets me do exactly that.
So those are my four trades on KIZ. It um is nice for the accuracy to be green on four out of four, 100% accuracy today. But the average winners um you know, as you can see, 2200 divided by four only $5, you know, $50 per trade. So that's going to bring down my average winners. And it wouldn't be hard then, you know, for me to take a 20,000 share position, lose 10 cents a share, and all of a sudden go back to being break even or even red on the day. And that would be pretty discouraging. I'd have a 75% win rate, but my average winners are only 500, and my average losers are 2,000 to invert profit loss ratio on break even. So when I see that my average winners are really small, that's a reminder that the odds right now are not in my favor to be aggressive. I want to be more aggressive. When I'm getting big winners, that's when I want to trade more. That's when I want to increase my size. Today was not that type of day. So for that reason, I decided to stop earlier today and I'm going to enjoy um the rest of the day Friday in Puerto Rico. All right, so with that, I hope you guys have a great weekend. Make sure you check out my bare market strategy episode. I'm going to put a link to it right here. And I'll remind you as always that trading is risky and my results aren't typical. So please manage your risk by trading in a simulator before you ever put real money on the line. With that, I will see you guys back at it streaming bright and early on Monday morning.