Our family is starting to get back into a routine and after catching up with some work this morning, I goofed around with trading FAZ and FAS via Complacent Panda’s stock contest as I had no time to do homework or prep. I was happy to get my contest account back into the green after getting as low as $90K or 10% down – now up to $104K. My main goal is not to come in last place like I did last time.

What were the lessons from this?

1) It’s pretty easy to overtrade these ETFs.

2) It’s hard to distinguish when they are bouncing off versus breaking out of a channel.

3) All of my profits were from two primary moves – being long on financials going into yesterday, and shorting them this morning. I day traded them a half dozen times this afternoon – but that ended up being just a wash.

4) For some reason, in this contest trading – I don’t get emotional like with my paper trading using my TOS practice account.

5) You have to have wide stops – I was correct shorting financials into the close but I got shook out at 3:45pm for a small profit – but after that it RAN!

I have everything lined up to still start trading with real cash using small positions with a prop firm around April 1st. Cy Group has been great with my slow start. I hope to make some test trades using Laser over the next ten days.