I was much better with my overtrading today and followed 90% of my rules. I had a couple miscues in the morning but if you cut your losses quickly, those are minor. Mid morning, I was short a stock, and its price moved quickly against me and my stop order did NOT fill. That’s when I made my fatal mistake – I had the bright idea to double my shares at a higher price, then I gave it a wider stop order limit than I normally do to let it breath!
Right where I shorted was the low price of the stock for that swing at around $7.25 and then when I finally was stop lossed almost a half buck later at $7.71, that was the high point, at least of five minutes ago because it pulled back. That set up would of made a great long!
So I’m down $300 in my prop account, and I have only one winning trade with over a .10 cent gain in about two weeks of trading.
I have to go back to the minors for you baseball fans (opening day will be here soon!).
I keep learning so much each day, my discipline in general is getting better, and while my profit / loss statement is not showing it, I am light years ahead of where I was….
But there is no reason to keep losing money at this pace. So I will do my same routine and prep for paper trading – and follow the same rules, and see how I progress, and re-evaluate March 23.
I will post my trades from today over the next couple days when I’m not so frustrated. While I am a little down, I do see some light at the end of the tunnel and know I just have to work harder and smarter.
I’m also going to do a post on some of my biggest mistakes this past couple weeks – a “Losing Trade Analysis” series, if you will. My inclination is to put them under the rug, but I will learn from them more by really looking at them.
Last, on a brighter note, my Think or Swim account, with what I call my “Bottomfisher Portfolio” is up $140 with commissions factored in. Whether that will be lasting depends on how long this rally sustains.
