8 lessons learned from my first 2 months back to live trading!

I re-funded my Sure Trader account on the 6th of December with $2,500 and promptly resumed day trading the next day, Friday, 7th of December, 2018.

From that date till the present day, I have made a total of 122 day trades with 45 of those in December and the remaining 77 in January. During this time my average winner has been around $75 while my average loser has been around $45. I spent $230 in commissions in December or $5.11 avg./trade and $417 or $5.42 avg./trade in commissions in January. 

For the entire period, my win rate was 39%. However, my win rate in December was just 29.55% but I improved it to 44.16% in January.

While my expectancy over the entire 2 month period was +$2.97/trade; in December it was -$4.71/trade but then I improved it to +7.46/trade in January.

The improvements from December to January were no fluke but instead a product of daily journalling and reflecting on my trades, mistakes and improvements I needed to try to make daily. 

That being said, my goal for February is to continue making improvements, reduce the average number of trades I take daily and reduce the number of mistakes I make with a view to making
around 50 trades at a 60% win rate and around +$27 expectancy (($75 x 0.6) -  ($45 x 0.4)) or to gross around $1,350 before commissions and fees which I would like to get back to around the December avg. or $5.10ish/trade.

I think this is very doable if I can master these lessons that I've learned from my last 2 months of trading:

1. MARKET BREADTH/OVERALL MARKET ENVIRONMENT

In December, which was pretty much the last leg of the market correction that begun in October, market plays and shorting (or longing inverse ETF's) worked extremely well while "in-play stocks" did not really get the kind of follow through you'd usually expect from them! For example, in December, I had a 46.15% win rate on market plays although my overall accuracy was a very poor 29.55% as stated above. In addition, my win rate on shorts was 33.33% while my win rate on longs was only 26.09% which is truly even lower as this figure includes longs I took in inverse ETF's which are technically short plays.

January, on the other hand, has been the complete opposite. Shorts have generally had poor follow through, market plays have been less successful and "in-play stocks" have worked very well especially to the long side. My win rate on longs in January was 51.16% but only 35.29% for shorts. While I did not take too many market plays; I was only right on 1 out of the 3 I took while I was right 45.45% of the time on in-play stocks!

LESSON: Try to only take trades that align with the overall market breadth as the probability of success will be higher. Continue to focus on in-play stocks and ignore market plays as long as the markets remain in a healthy uptrend. 

2. MARKET INTRA-DAY TREND & RELATIVE STRENGTH

My win rate on trades that did not align with the market's intra-day trend was only 28.57% versus 50% for those that aligned with the intra day trend of the markets. Interestingly though, for trades that did not align with the overall markets trend but were showing extreme relative strength/weakness, my win rate was an impressive 80%! 

LESSON: Try to ensure that all trades are aligned with the intra-day trend of the overall markets especially for trend continuation set-ups. Pay extra special attention to stocks that are clearly resisting the intra-day trend of the overall markets and are forming tight flags or wedges! 

3. STICKING TO "IN-PLAY" STOCKS

I define a stock as "in-play" if it is on course to end the day with volume traded that will be two or more times it's average daily volume over the past 50 trading sessions. For stocks with a relative volume less than 2, my win rate is 21.88% and stock less than 1 even lower at 14.29%. Where as my win rate rises dramatically to 45.98% on stocks with relative volume of 2 or greater!

LESSON: Avoid stocks with relative volume below 2 like the plague! Trade only stocks with RVol of 2+ and obviously the higher the better!

4. SPREADS, MARKET DEPTH, ORDER FLOW & RISK MANAGEMENT

I'm way too experienced now to still be placing trades in stocks that have wide and erratic spreads, constantly changing market depth and crappy order flow. It's extremely hard to manage risk in these types of situations and I know don't need to trade them to make money. My risk management demands that I enter a hard stop into the system after entering a trade and the above make it extremely difficult to manage risk and it's very likely will not be filled within a few cents of my stop loss if it gets triggered. Most if not all of my losers that exceed 1R were from situations like this!

LESSON: Do not trade when you cannot enter a market stop in the system aka no trading in pre-market or after hours. Do not trade if you can enter a market stop but are not absolutely certain that you will get filled within a few cents of your planned stop out point.

5. FLOATS 

Stocks with float under 25 mil, I have a 50% win rate but -$26.25 expectancy on the ORB set-up but 100% win rate on trend continuation set-ups like pullbacks, flags, wedges, etc. Clearly due these types of stocks being very spread and erratic at the open!

With mid float stocks (between 25 mil and 500 mil) my win rate on trend continuation set-ups is 43.48% with +$15.74 expectancy and 35.71% win rate with +$2.60 expectancy for ORB set-ups. 

With high float stocks, float > 500mil, my win rate on ORB set-ups is 50% with +$24.21 expectancy but -27.27% with -$12.64 expectancy on trend continuation set-ups. 

LESSON: Avoid trading micro float stocks at the open. Focus on higher float stocks for the ORB play. For trend continuation plays on the other hand, avoid trading stocks with float above 500mil and favour the lower float stocks! 

6. THE 5-MINUTE CHART IS MY BEST FRIEND!

Any time I deviate from the 5-minute chart and step down to the 1-minute chart I almost always end up taking a poor entry, setting too tight of a stop loss (and consequently over sizing), not giving solid trade ideas even time to work or getting out of moving in my favour way earlier than I should. 

LESSON: Stick to the 5-minute chart at all times: for low risk/high reward entries + setting proper stop losses + giving trades room to work initially + locking initial profit and then letting the 2nd half of trades mature into big winners!

7. TRADE MANAGEMENT/COMMISSIONS

Stop getting carried away with 3,4 or even 5 partial exits. My trading size is not big enough for that! This is only carrying up my commissions and fees without a dis-proportionally larger increase in profits as well as stifling the gains from my partial position.

LESSON: Exit winners in 2 pieces and no more than 2! 

8. MONEY MANAGEMENT

Too often I've been guilty of giving back more than half of my profits on the day and sometimes even going from a significant green position into the red. Furthermore, on my biggest green days, I rarely if ever suffer two consecutive losses out of the gate. 

LESSON: Reduce my maximum daily stop to $100 or 2R from $150 or 3R until the first month I'm able to pay myself. Do not give back more than half of profits on  the day. Do not go from green to red on the day! 

Day Trading Review for the Week starting 17th of September, 2018

So for the 2nd week since going live with TradeNet/TEFs, in terms of profits, was definitely far better than my 1st week! This week I grossed $434.57 versus $186.75 which turns out to $336.17 versus $116.40 after commissions and fees. On the surface, this does appear to be really good and in fact I am happy to be green. However, when you dig deeper, it turns out that I really didn't trade that well!

Firstly, my accuracy fell from 58.8% all the way down to 41.7%! I took a total of 24 trades this week versus only 17 last week. These trades included a lot of really poor set-ups hence the fall off in accuracy. Where I did compensate, however, for this fall off in accuracy was with a few really solid winners that resulted in my average winner being $87.96 versus $47.23 from last week and my average loser this week was only -$31.81 versus -$40.79 from last week giving me a ratio of avg.winner/avg. loser of 2.76 which is really, really good as it far exceeds the 1.5 to 2 range I like to shoot for. 

So the adjustments I made after last week's analysis definitely worked and up until Wednesday's close I actually traded really well. In fact, Wednesday was record day for me as I recorded something in the region of $370 in gross profits! To be honest, I think this was my problem I got overconfident on Thursday and this lead to some really sloppy trading on that day. I ended up taking 4 trades, all losers and lost something like $225 in that single session! I really should have stopped trading after the 2nd loser as I could sense something off with my trading. Even more so, after my 3rd consecutive loser I definitely should have shut up shop as I like to give my self 3 strikes maximum before calling it a day. 

Things I want to work on for the final week of September and going forward:

1. Adherence to my 3 strikes rule! If I am to stay in this game, I need to be disciplined and call it quits after 3 consecutive losing trades. There's always another day!

2. I'm going to take both unrealized and realized PnL off my trading platform for 2 reasons. The first reason relates to trade management. I've found myself making trade management decisions based on unrealized PnL and this has been causing me to leave profits on the table! I need to focus on the price action and volume of the stock instead while I am in trades. Secondly, I want the way I'm feeling on the day, the market environment and the quality of opportunities that are emerging or not on the day to dictate the number of trades I take and also when I decide to call it a morning. I've found that when I'm up after 1 or 2 good trades; I'm reluctant to take quality signals for fear of giving back profits but when I am down on the day; I force trades with low quality set-ups trying to make back my losses. 

3. Not losing sight of the bigger picture idea/bias/set-up in my case the daily chart. This week I took a couple losing trades that in hindsight could have been avoided if I had just taken the time out to confirm alignment with the daily chart first. So on my technical analysis platform (ThinkorSwim), I have removed all time frames below the daily. There's only the daily, weekly and monthly. I will only then transfer a ticker to my execution platform (which has the lower time frame time charts aka 1-minute and 5-minute) to look for intra-day set-ups after it has already confirmed what I want to see it do on the daily! 

I simply want to focus on making good trade after good trade after good trade and not on PnL or making money etc. I know I have edge, I know profits will come as long as I make consistently good decisions. Looking forward to next week...let's do this!!!

My day trading review for the week starting 10th of September, 2018!

On the 10th of September, I resumed my third attempt (in a little over 1 year's time) at growing a small live account. My first 2 tries were with SureTrader; however this time around I went with TradeNet. This decision was primarily due to financial reasons as it costs much less to purchase the TradeNet intro package (I paid $399...got it at a discounted rate on a summer promotion) than to fund a SureTrader account with a minimum amount that makes sense (I'd say around $1,500-$2,000 to get sufficient wiggle room and intra-day buying power). 

That being said; I started the week with $14,000 in buying power as do all purchasers of the Tradenet intro package who choose to go live. After the close on Friday; my balance stood at $14,116.40. So essentially, I made $116.40 in profits after commissions and fees. I'm really glad that I ended the week green but I should have done way better! 

Here's the breakdown of my trades from my first week. I took a total of 17 day trades and ended with an accuracy of 58.8%. There is definitely room for improvement here but it's not so bad as I shoot for an accuracy or around 60-70%. In terms of win:loss ratio however, this is where I really fell down! My average loser was -$40.79 which is excellent considering that my risk is set at $50 per trade. My average winner on the other hand was only a disappointing $47.23 giving me a win:loss ratio of only 1.16; well below the 1.5-2.0 range I'd it like to be.

Looking back at my journal; I noticed two major glaring issues and a minor one that were the causes of my below par win:loss ratio: 

1) adjusting my initial stop loss too early and too aggressively thereby stopping my self out of perfectly good trades! To fix this issue; I will continue placing a hard stop after putting on the trade but I will not touch this initial hard stop until I get to take my first partial off at or near 2:1 if my stop does not get hit first. 

2) hesitating to take my first partial off at or near 2:1 as per my trading plan due to greed and nit picking the exit price. To address this I've added hot buttons to my montage to either "Sell Half" position or "Buy Half" position at market. So price gets at or near my 2:1 zone; I hit the relevant hot button and take half off as per my plan instead of nit picking over a couple extra cents with limit orders.

A third but not as serious issue was jumping the gun on a couple entries before getting confirmation and also taking a few trades that didn't have realistic 2:1 risk/reward potential. To address this issue; I will change the default order type to "STOP LIMIT" which will force me to assess and plan out all of my trades properly before entering. 

So I will continue focusing on my process, and my strategies as outlined in "My PlayBook" while also implementing the above adjustments which should improve my accuracy but more importantly significantly improve my risk to reward ratio!

How I made 18% gain on my $1,000 account in 1st week back to trading!!!

So as promised, here is the analysis of the trades I made in my first week back in the game!

Here's a screenshot of my trading journal in TraderVue:

As you can see from the screenshot, I grossed $254 or 25.4% gain on my $1,000 account from just 5 trades in my first week. After commissions and other fees (not shown); I netted a decent $180 in profits or about 18% growth in my first week.

My accuracy for the week, 80% (although based on a small sample size) was better than I anticipate it will be long term. My long term goal is 60 - 75% accuracy. 

My win:loss ratio was 2.20:1 ($71.62/$32.50). Although I would like to see this higher; I am very happy with this and I will be elated if I can maintain a 2:1 win loss ratio long term!!

Based on the statistics above; I can expect to gross around $50 profits per trade. Further I know that I will make between 1-2 trades per day or 5-10 trades per week next week. So my goal for next week will be to gross $250 - $500. So basically if at the end of next week I can at least match my performance from this week I will be satisfied. 

Bear in mind; my goal is a 50% growth on my account by the end of my first month. So if I can maintain my performance this week through the end of this month; I will easily eclipse my 50% goal. None the less; I will not allowed my self to get carried away with the "projection" game. My focus will continue to be making solid trades, base hits one at a time and if I'm performing and feeling well push for that home run trade near the end of the week like I attempted with $AUPH on Friday although it did not quite pan out. 

Looking forward to another solid week of trading. Always remember; defense first!!! Winning trades will take of them selves as long you're patient and let them play out. It's the big losing trades and consecutive losing trades you have to guard against! 

Best of luck next week...CHEERS!!!

Trading update 6/18/2013

It was a good but not great day for me today. As although I locked in some decent gains; it wasn't anywhere close to what I had expected. But at the end of the day a profit is still better than a loss. Here are the trades I closed today:

Stock

# of shares

Entry

Date

Exit

Date

PnL

QIHU	50	$44.00000	6/14/2013	$47.00000	6/18/2013	$150.000
XRM	250	$9.87760	6/11/2013	$11.01000	6/18/2013	$283.100
XRM	250	$9.87760	6/12/2013	$10.85000	6/18/2013	$243.100
QIHU	50	$44.00000	6/14/2013	$46.75000	6/18/2013	$137.500
SOHU	60	65.420000	6/14/2013	$66.54000	6/18/2013	$67.200
ANGI	100	26.510000	6/17/2013	$26.60000	6/18/2013	$9.000

So basically I sold all the swing positions I came into the day with and booked closed to $900 in gains. 

Near the end of the day, I added a couple swings I'd been eyeing for a few days now:

STOCK	# OF SHARES	AVG. ENTRY PRICE	% OF PORT.	CURRENT STOP	TARGET
VSAT	100	71.998000	79.42%	$71.00	$75.00
TSRX	500	8.650000	47.71%	$8.50	$9.25

If these swings work out I'll be very close to achieving my target of growing my account to $10,000 this month. My account at the start of the month was around $7,230 and it currently stands at $9,150. In other words, I'm up about 26.6% for the month and 14.4% since the inception of my account in late April! 

Not bragging but how many traders do know of that are achieving this kind of returns in the current market with a clear strategy and trading plan spelled out nightly?

Trading update, game plan and best ideas for tomorrow!

Today was simultaneously a good and a bad day for me. On the one hand, I locked in over $600 in gains and I'm sitting on $200ish in unrealized gains which means my account is now up over 10% from its closing value on Friday. However, on the other hand, I made a total mess of my exits in $OSH and $MNKD. 

With $OSH I sold 1/2 of my position into the gap up at $2.53ish which was not so bad. At least this gave me peace of mind to ride the other half knowing that its virtually impossible for me to not profit from the trade. However, ride I did not do. I got nervous and sold 1/4 position at $2.80 and then sold the remaining shares at $2.99 just as $OSH was breaking out of an intra-day base...big mistake! $OSH spiked a further $1.50+ from there. I should have caught this move with at least a 1/4 position...sigh.

With $MNKD I was totally impatient. After it gapped up following the news on Friday (AH) like I'd wanted and then started dipping...I sold my entire position @ $6.90. I did't even give it a chance to prove that it wasn't going higher and higher it went...closing up 14%+ and a few pennies off hod. The $8.00 profit target I had in mind looks almost a certainty now. Another trade I made a complete hash of.

I sold $SKUL for a loss as I'd planned as it never showed any signs of going higher. I held onto my $SCTY and $SPWR shorts like I'd planned to in last nights post. Although $SCTY hit my target...I have reason to believe it trades lower tomorrow. I will be looking to book it into a gap down or morning panic. My target is the $35/$36 area. $SPWR closed well off its lows after an ugly sell off in the morning. I think I made a mistake by not getting out of it flat before the close of trade as solars look like they want higher now. I will monitor it closely tomorrow and if I don't see immediate weakness...I'll be happy to get out of $SPWR around breakeven.

From a bigger picture perspective, I believe the markets want to bounce. We are very oversold here...just take a look at the McClellan Oscillator. In addition, many sectors/stocks formed hammer candles today after 5 - 6 consecutive down days. I think we get at least a 2 - 3 day bounce here and accordingly I'll be looking to add some long exposure from my ideas below:

Update on my trading!

Since the 10th of May, I haven't been able to trade on account of my violation of the PDT rule in the speed trader account I was using at the time.

As a result I was forced to open a new account and decided to go with MB Trading as their platform especially charting and drawing tools seemed more like what I wanted plus their flat rate commission is much lower than Speedtrader's!

So after 2 weeks of waiting, my account with MB Trading is finally set up and funded and I can continue where I left off. Which was down roughly 7% for the month of April and roughly down 8% since inception in late May.

I used the down time to continue practising with my trading system and to review the trades I made. I've concluded that my poor performance thus far has a bit to do with my selections but even more to with my lack of patience and discipline!

I've been guilty of over trading a bit and not being choosy enough about the stocks that I put on my buy list daily. I need to be very selective about my trades as I am limited to making less than 3 day trades per week. That is if a stock triggers an entry and stops me out the same day: I can only do this 3 times in a week.

One of my biggest weaknesses has and continues to be letting winning trades run. As soon as a winner starts going through a natural normal reaction, I get antsy and want to sell even though absolutely nothing is wrong with the position.

A second major weakness I need to work on is getting frustrated and selling out of trades that are working just because I got stopped out of 1 or 2 that did not work.

All in all I'm not letting my winners run and this is causing me to have a negative expectancy!

I will work on these weaknesses by being more selective about the technical patterns I allow to enter my buy list. I'm demanding the best quality only!

Secondly I'm thoroughly researching the fundamentals of the company as well as its story and possible catalysts that could push it higher. So that once I decide I want in on a stock; I'll have strong conviction to hold it through its normal reactions.

Another rule I'm going to implement is to not exit a position unless it hits either my hard stop pre-determined and placed before the open of trading or hits a pre-determined profit target during the session.

I'm going to try my best to stick to these rules and and I'm confident my performance will turn around.

I've already posted the stocks I'll be looking at for tomorrows session in previous posts. However, my favourites are $XRM, $PCRX and $OSH. We are still in an up trend based on my marketing timing indicators and so I am still long biased; although I am some what weary of further selling this week. Should the markets continue selling off causing my timing indicators to turn bearish; I will remain in cash and look to put a few shorts on. One stock I'm eyeing is $SBGI.

**On a side note; I've been play around with the MBT Desktop Pro platform for the past few days now and I've got to say I'm very impressed! With the exception of perhaps Light Speed; I think its the best trading platform I've ever used. Once the executions are good; it will be perfect. I can see my self trading with this broker for a very long time!

Looking forward to a profitable and fun week...all the best with your trading!

Trading update...

As the markets sold off hard today right out of the gate, none of my watches from last night triggered. So I added no new positions.

Further, the persistent selling triggered my stop in $BCRX early on then later I was forced to cut both $FLO and $VCLK before they hit my stops on account of the persistent selling in the markets.

So now I'm 100% cash and my account ended down roughly 4% for the month of April after four consecutive losses in $SPW, $BCRX, $FLO and $VCLK. Although the markets have not been easy to game, I'm looking forward to making back that 4% and then some in the month of May!

On another note, I will be travelling on Friday. I need to get a few things in place before I do, so I'll be taking the rest of the week off from trading. However, look out for my next blog post sometime over the weekend.

All the best with your trades for the rest of the week!

Getting back to my core focus...

After a very ordinary September in which I only managed to net a little over $200 and a very poor start to October; down $600+ already; I took a very close look at my trades since I've gotten free of the PDT rule. I've decided that I'm going to make the following changes effective tomorrow:

1) Go back to only watching the 4 - 5 set ups that I really, really love as opposed to 20 - 25 set ups of a wide variety most of which I have no real conviction in;

2) Use the 15 minute chart for entries and setting stops like I was doing for the most part when I was under the PDT rule with my IB account in August as opposed to using the 5 min chart. The 5 min chart is way to noisy and prone to "wicking" you out if you use it to set stop losses;

3) Wait patiently until profit targets are hit before taking any profits off the table. Manage open positions by using support/resistance levels on the 15 min chart to trail my stop loss.

So now I've got close to a $1K hole to dig my self out of before I get back to green on the month. Hoping to do this sooner rather than later.

Good luck and good trading!

How I made $550 on $ARNA in 60 minutes!!

It has been a while since I've updated my blog. Haven't made it a priority really between trading and school especially since I share most of what's important via twitter any ways. Twitter is much more convenient in any case and forces you to get straight to the point which is better for all in question.

However, it doesn't hurt to do an occasional blog post especially since today marks a special day for me as my account has hit new all time highs for the first time since inception. Will post a more detailed update under the performance tab above as well as on profit.ly here by the end of the day. I really should be studying as I have exams starting in two days!

But basically, I nailed $ARNA short today which I had been stalking for days. I shorted 1000 shares at $9.24 at 9:45am as it was breaking down from a head and shoulders pattern on the daily chart which I had been tweeting about for days now!! Then I covered 500 shares at $8.70ish and then the other 500 at $8.68ish both at 10:45am for a decent $550ish gain or a nearly 3% gain on my account in about 1 hour to put my account up 0.5% since inception and into new all time high territory. My plan now is to continue trying to make one good trade after one good trade and that should be good enough to take my account well past the PDT rule aka 25K by the end of the year!

Cheers...good luck and good trading!

7 Week Progress Update

The close of trade today marked the 7th week since I've started back trading my own retail account. Came back almost at the start of the correction and it's been tough going. That's not to say that there haven't been money making opportunities but my trading has been fraught with issues both external and internal that have hindered my progress. However, I'm not one to complain and now that it seems we might be on the verge of a new up trend; I'm looking forward to turning things around and to making some serious profits on my account. Here's a break down of my PnL including commissions for the 7 week period:

Week 1 (23rd Apr - 27th Apr) -$24.47 (5 trades)
Week 2 (30th Apr - 4th May)  -$220.64 (4 trades)
Week 3 (7th May - 11th May) -$183.15 (3 trades)
Week 4 (14th May - 18th May) No Trades
Week 5 (21st May - 25th May) +$85.01 (2 trades)
Week 6 (28th May - 1st Jun) No Trades
Week 7 (4th Jun - 8th Jun) -$193.43 (3 trades)

Net PnL = -$536.68

I keep my losses very small. So I know that when ever I hit a green patch my account will hit new highs. For instance, if I'd only handled my $DDD trade alone from this week better, my account likely would have been close to break even or even into new highs. I'm gaining more and more confidence in my process by the day and also I'm beginning to see more opportunities daily. This is an indicator that the markets appear to be regaining health.

What I know I need to do a lot of work on is my emotional control during trades. This has been the major  cause of my recent woes. And I believe once I can master this aspect of my trading I will be ready to pump consistent gains on a weekly basis and get my account past that the golden $25K mark! Plan to celebrate the day I get there but in the meantime I'm still about $6,500 away...lol Looking forward to weeks and months of steady profits. Hope you enjoyed reading!

How I drew my account back down 2.26% and why I'm not worried!

Although in some ways the PDT rule can be a curse in that it limits you from making more than 3 day trades in a rolling 5 day period. The limitation can also be blessing that prevents you from over trading and shredding your account apart with long strings of losses and the consequent commission expense.

In the last two of my three weeks back to trading (the first one ended break even) I have been guilty of forcing trades when there were clearly no opportunities there in addition to a couple of random day trades! The result of this is that my account is now down 2.26% since I have re-commenced trading in late April of this year. To see all my trades including those I made in the past 3 week, click the following link: http://profit.ly/user/elingford

Thankfully commissions at Interactive Brokers are very cheap and despite my over trading; 12 trades have only cost me about $48.00 in commissions, that is, an average of $4.00 per round trip! This is a sharp contrast to my last broker (Lake Street) at which I was charged $6.50 per trade (buy and sell) (in addition to $150 for their software which was advertised as $120). In other words, these same trades would have costed me a whopping $156.00 instead or more than 3x the cost at Interactive Brokers. This is one of the major reasons I'm reluctant to go back there!

Any ways, that's besides the point. The markets have been horrible since I started back trading and are now in a full fledged correction (I use the $BPNYA and $BPCOMPQ with a 10 day simple moving average to determine this). So I guess in some ways I can still be happy that my account is only down 2.26% despite my over-trading and forcing longs against the tide!

Upon reflection, my trading behaviour is reminding me of when I first started trading at Lake Street around the 1st of August in 2011. The markets had also been at the start of a correction. Further, although I had recognized this, I was forcing long trades every day of that correction (being in chat room that hardly shorted anything during the entire correction didn't help either) and to make matters worse I was abusing my new found freedom from the PDT rule to jump in and out of the 3x ETFs racking up small losses and commissions which added up to huge sums at the end of the days!

So by the time the correction had ended and the markets bottomed out in October 2011 which led to the eventual rally that ended in March/April 2012; both my account and my confidence had been shot and I was no where to be found to take advantage of this "easy money" period!

I said all that to say that I find it quite ironic that I started back trading in similar market conditions and also exhibiting similar trading behaviour. As the saying goes...fool me once shame on me...fool me twice shame on you...it would really be re-miss of me to repeat the same mistakes I made in the summer of 2011. Having recognized this I vow not to repeat that same careless trading behaviour. But that does not mean I don't plan to make any trades.

Apart from becoming a much more disciplined and patient trader at this point; I have become far better at recognizing intra-day chart patterns than I was last year and at aligning daily chart patterns with intra-day chart patterns before buying/selling. I plan to put these skills to use day trading primarily earnings break outs only when "perfect set ups" are presented to me in an effort to execute one good trade; one good trade; one good trade after another! I will stay away from trading stocks on my nightly swing list since the correction means that the odds are not in favour of longs but also intra-day volatility and over night gap ups are making it extremely difficult to swing short stocks! Over nighting any thing either long or short except stocks with fresh news is too risky in this market and more of a guessing game.

I also know I'm much more comfortable trading a retail account ( I don't feel like I have to force trades to make a minimum number of trades for the month to avoid the software charge) and I don't mind being under the PDT while I try to regain my bearings and become a consistent trader once again. Besides I only need a couple months of solid trading to get over the $25K mark since I'm not too far away :) Consistency means a lot more to me at this point because once I achieve that my account will grow. I have done it before and I know I can do it again.

So here's to closing out this month with profits and to many more profitable months in 2012!

CHEERS!!!