January Trading Recap

Much better job not fighting stocks this month and with my sizing, loss cutting could use some work still though. I also need to start focusing on my entries more, way too many missed/squandered opportunities this month!

Link to loss journal

Some 2016 Updates

Since we're entering a new year, I figured it would beneficial to do a quick post updating some information that may be out of date or not clearly stated on my blog. I hope everyone finds this beneficial and it answers some questions!

Brokers I am using:

• Centerpoint Securities (ETC Clearing)
• Centerpoint Securities (Vision Clearing)
• Speedtrader (COR Clearing)
• Fidelity (Roth 401k Retirement Account)

Trading platforms I use:

• DAS Trader (Provided by Speedtrader)
• Sterling Trader Pro (Provided by Centerpoint)
• ThinkorSwim by TD Ameritrade (For free charting only)

Level 2 Provider:

• DAS Trader (Available through numerous brokers)

Stock scanner I use:

• "Equityfeed"

Similar scanners I have used and liked:

• Interactive Brokers scanner (found on their TWS Platform)

News alert software:

• Thomson Reuters Eikon

Free scanners (with less features):

• http://finviz.com/screener.ashx
• ThinkorSwim by TD Ameritrade scanner

Stock promoters I follow closely:

• http://tradetheticker.blogspot.com/p/stock-promoters.html

Trading rules I think are most important:

• http://tradetheticker.blogspot.com/2014/02/some-tips-for-new-traders-from-old-blog.html

Trader Tax Preparation Services:

• Green NFH
• Tradelog software

Any questions not answered here can be found on my FAQ page:

• http://tradetheticker.blogspot.com/p/list-of-faq.html

December Trading Recap

Here's my video recap for the month of December! Overall a slightly better month, but I still have a ways to go. Biggest thing I need to work on is detaching from the money side of things and just focusing on trading well!

Link to loss journal: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a7ZSLtv63pVI-d41RYf-CcQtRZOIEEAmOgalN9kbQYA/edit#gid=1782025275

November Trading Recap

Before I launch into my recap of November, let me take a moment to thank all of you that took the time to reach out to me with words of encouragement following my last post. I truly appreciate all of the support and suggestions!

We're going to go ahead and do a video recap! It just comes across way better than text in my opinion, but if anyone would prefer I go to written recaps let me know!

Here is the link to my loss journal

Working to Break a Slump

For the past several months, I've been suffering through the worst slump I have ever experienced since I started trading. You really could say that ever since my PBMD loss in late May, I haven't been the same. I let myself turn into a stubborn trader with an inflated ego, someone who cared more about making "enough" money than about trading well. I notice that many of my favorite setups still work well, but my ability to trade them has greatly deteriorated due to mental and emotional mistakes. It has been incredibly frustrating and humbling, and one day in October it led me to ask that dreaded question, "Am I sure I want to keep trading?"

99% of the time, I absolutely love trading. I love the challenge of it and the potential reward if you're performing at your best. That's why it was so surprising to me to find myself in that place emotionally, because I'd never been there before. I had to stop and evaluate why I had suddenly had been pushed over that edge, when I hadn't even felt that low back when I was first learning and struggling. 

When I finally came up with the answer, it was actually pretty frightening. I felt that I had lost the ability to control myself and my emotions. I wasn't losing because I couldn't make sense of the markets. I wasn't losing because my favorite patterns stopped working. I was losing because of ego. I was losing because time and time again, I would watch a stock blow through my mental stop point without taking it off. I was losing because I couldn't even get myself to put in physical stop losses, as I vowed I would do. I was losing because I'd get frustrated by all of this and then play the next setup with ten times the size I'd played anything else recently. You can guess how that usually ended. I thought about quitting because I couldn't stand the thought of possibly throwing away everything I'd worked so hard for, especially due to what boiled down to a lack of discipline.

Of course, we're talking about my lowest moment here. The other 99% of me that loves trading won out with ease, because I still believe in myself and enjoy trading so much. But it was still uncomfortable to find myself asking that question, and it was even more uncomfortable realizing how hard changing these bad habits really is. For example, I've been talking about needing to cut losses better since my LAKE loss last year - and two six-figure losses later here I am still talking about it. This is exactly why so many traders fail. It's easy to figure out the changes you need to make, but so many of us lack the fortitude to follow through and actually make and sustain those changes.

I don't want to be another failing trader statistic. I don't want to become a story about someone who made it big and then threw it all away. So now I'm going to truly get serious about changing, rather than just jumping back into the market as if everything is "business as usual," like I normally do after a bad run. I read my first trading book ever, Momo Traders, and am currently working through my first trading psychology book, The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist. I've lowered my position sizes drastically, telling myself that I will now only risk $1000/trade, or $2000, if it is truly an exceptional setup. I have also identified the three most costly trading mistakes I make and will be meticulously tracking them and working to eliminate them.

• FOMO (Entering a trade due to Fear of Missing Out, rather than waiting for my ideal setup)

• Trading too large (Sizing in with more than my planned $1000/$2000 risk for various reasons) 

• Failure to cut losses (Continuing to hold a stock beyond my planned stop point)

Every month, if I make one of these mistakes and take a loss, I will enter it into my log. At the end of every month, I'm going to use this blog to help hold myself accountable. I will post an end-of-the-month recap and share all of my losing trades that broke these rules, with details. The goal will be to see improvement every month, as I, hopefully, slowly eliminate these mistakes from my trading. ONLY when I've seen significant improvement will I begin to consider sizing up again.

You can expect a post from me in early December, recapping my November trading. It has already been a wild ride as I lost discipline for about a week and a half and fell into some very frustrated/emotional trading. More on that later! 

Momo Traders - My First Ever Recommended Trading Book

Over the past couple of years, I'm sure I've frustrated many of my readers who have asked me the question, "What trading books do you recommend?" I've simply never had an answer. Reading trading books never interested me. I had skimmed a couple, but for the most part, I felt like I would just be wasting my time. My thinking was that I would rather spend my time learning by watching the market than from outdated info in a book. Sure, reading the stories of billionaires on Wall Street could be interesting, but there was no way I could relate to that or use it to make myself a better trader. By the time I even knew trading psychology books existed (one of the only categories that I think could be useful), I was already quite successful and felt like I didn't need them.

In late 2014, Brady (@MiltonaTrades) and Nate (@InvestorsLive) approached me and asked if I would be interested in being one of ten traders featured in their upcoming trading book, Momo Traders. The book would be written in a question/answer interview style and explore the path each individual trader took to eventual success, as well as the many lessons they learned along the way. I loved the idea and agreed to be interviewed, which turned out to be one of the most intense interviews I have ever participated in. The Skype interview took almost three hours to complete, but left me feeling great about the quality of information I had shared, and I was incredibly excited to read the interviews of all of the other traders who had been featured. In my mind, I was (and still am) a small fish compared to some of these traders, who make millions of dollars per year. Like myself and everyone else, they had all started as beginners once, with much less money to their name, and I wanted to read about their journey and learn everything I could from them.

Now, a year later, Momo Traders has finally been released. As I had hoped, the stories inside are absolutely incredible. When you see these traders posting screen shots of their massive profits now, they don't seem human. However, to read all of their stories, hear about their early struggles, and learn that they came from the same place that you did, is incredibly inspiring. No two stories or strategies are the same. So I would suggest that you really take your time while reading each chapter, maybe read just one or two chapters a day like I did.

Another big perk to Momo Traders  is that a portion of the proceeds goes to charity! Not only are you investing in your education, you're contributing to a good cause! There is SO MUCH to learn from each one of these traders, so I highly recommend you pick up your copy on Amazon or at momotraders.com. It's a very inexpensive investment towards your education, and you can learn how these ten traders, who were once beginners too, became the millionaires they are today.

More Details About My Watchlists

For the past six months or so, those of you that follow me on Twitter may have noticed that I've been posting a list of stock symbols that I'm watching for the following day. I'll be the first to admit that this is not at all detailed regarding my plans for my trades - I just want people to have an idea of what I'm looking at. For those of you who haven't been following me, below is an example of what one of my watchlists might look like:

The responses I receive from users who view these watchlists are far-ranging. The most common question I'm asked is, "Long or short?" Sometimes, one of the stocks will make an especially severe move in one direction or the other and I'll get a "Great call!" Or every now and then I may even get an especially entertaining troll warning me not to short their company because it's going to save the world with whatever miracle product they're working on. Regardless of which of these categories you fall into, I want to provide a little bit more detail about what these watchlists mean and what I'm thinking behind the scenes that you don't see.

For those of you that missed HOW I pick tickers for my watchlists, you can find my OTC scan parameters in this post, while my listed stock scan requirements are in my 2014 Vegas presentation slides. Once I have these tickers, what is my plan for them?

The truth is, when I list these stocks, I probably am short-biased most of the time. When I say short-biased, I mean that the primary play I'm looking for the next day is a short sale opportunity. But this is not always the case. There are some long setups I like as well. Which way I'm biased is always affected by the "big picture", how the daily chart looks. I run my scans, I look at daily charts, and I cherry pick the setups that I think I may have an edge with, long or short.

While all you see may be my list of tickers, far more goes into my watchlist than that. Below, you can see an image of the FULL watchlist that I created for myself the night before September 8:

As you can see, I have very specific plans for each ticker. In some cases, I have a plan for both a long AND a short opportunity, should the setup present itself. Just because a ticker is on my watchlist does not guarantee I will trade it the next day! When I pick my stocks, I have a VERY specific scenario I'm looking for in order to make a play. If that scenario doesn't present itself, I will not feel compelled to do something anyway with the stock. In some cases a stock I was looking to short will fade away all day, but I won't trade it once, because it never gave me the ideal setup I was looking for. I have absolutely no problem missing the play if that is the case.

This is how I trade day after day. My list of stocks changes, my plans change depending on the daily chart (and in some cases, some intraday details), and then the next morning I look for my top watches to, hopefully, give me an opportunity I planned for. I'm watching these stocks because they're liquid, because they're volatile, and because they're the most likely to set up in a chart pattern that I'm familiar and comfortable with. 

I'm sorry I don't share my full watchlists on a nightly basis, and I have no plans to do so. I really do believe that it's possible to be too spoon-fed when it comes to trading and that it will hinder newer traders' development if they're just trying to follow other people's plans. I'll let you know what I'm watching, but you will only improve by making your own plans, trading your own niche, and looking for the setups that YOU are comfortable with. This may also mean making your own mistakes, but I know that I wouldn't have become a successful trader if it wasn't for learning from the mistakes I made day after day when I first started trading. Even now, mistakes are my best learning tool.

I hope my nightly list of tickers continues to be helpful, but I encourage all of you to form your own bias, make your own plan, and learn from your mistakes along the way!