Still learning not to give back profits.
Today was a great day with over $1700 in profits which made up for my red day yesterday when I was down $700. My biggest lesson I have learned in the past week is to use hard stops to try to protect myself.
Monday morning was going great I was up $980 in profits in the first 45 min. I said I was going to walk away and……
I did not of course. I saw more opportunities because I wanted to hit my $1000 goal. I scalped a couple profits of JWN and BITA and MGT. Then I decided I wanted to get back into MGT because it kept spiking.
Here is where I went wrong. I was being emotional with my trades. I wanted it to go higher instead of letting the chart let me know when to enter. I am not a great break out trader and I was trying to do something that doesn’t do well for me. For some reason I kept trying and kept trying.
To make it worse I was revenge trading and positioning fairly large because it was a penny stock. I was long 6000 shares and my worst loss of the day was just before close when the stock went down to 2.89 and hit my stop. If I had let it ride overnight I would have been up roughly $12,000 today. It could have also taken an after hour tank.
I think I self sabotaged myself in my brain thinking its ok because I made $980 already I can be more aggressive when in fact. I need to do just the opposite to protect those profits.
Trading is definitely all about yourself and the market. Don’t get distracted with necessarily what the masses are doing if that doesn’t match your strategy. In life do you feel best when you are being yourself or when you are trying to impress people and doing things you think they will like?
The same is true with trading. There are some traders that are absolutely amazing at breakouts and penny stocks. I know for me that is not my expertise. I am doing well with my strategy that I have developed. Yes there is some quick money in it, but I don’t execute those trades well.
I find when I deviate from what works for me I end up losing. Why try to do what others are doing? Why not do what works for me. If it works why break it?
Trading for me is enjoyable when I am confident in my entries and feel my risk is truly minimized. Like today with FRAN. It was oversold down 30% on news of the CEO voluntarily leaving and estimated poor earnings. The market reacted and it dropped the stock. These are the ones I love. I went long at 10.474 with the analysis looking at the chart that it is setting up for a double bottom a great bearish indicator on the macro scale looking back at the year. So I thought I will put in my limit order to sell at 10.68 which looked like a resistance point for the day and if it spiked it should execute there. I did 10.68 because there was a big order to sell at .69 and I wanted my order to execute.
Trusting my trade and my decision, I left my desk and went for a run. I took a small walk break as my cardio has been suffering since I sit trading a lot more. During that break, I checked the price for fun. It was a .63 and I was going to change my order to lock the gain and in that time the stock broke through .70 to .73. I knew I had just made $1000 while out for a run.
Depending on your trading strategy and your risk tolerance it is possible to trade being away from your desk.
This week has been a great week. I spoke with two amazing female traders from Australia and I was interviewed by Jacob Whitish, a writer for TheStreet.com. I will definitely post the link to the interview once Jacob has it ready. You will be able to access it for free on the Digital Stock Summit page as well. The other Summit videos have a fee, but mine will be free for everyone.
As always I hope the blog is helping you in your trading journey. No matter what happens don’t beat yourself up. You are human and imperfect. Learn from your mistakes.
If you have any questions or comments leave them here or reach out to me on Twitter, Profitly, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Carpe Profits and stay green.
This blog is for information purposes I am not a registered securities broker-dealer or an investment advisor. The information here is not intended as securities brokerage, investment or as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any company, security or fund.
