What's up, everyone? Welcome to day 25
of my small account challenge of growing
a $2,000 account using Charles Schwab as
my broker. Today, more or less, is a
break-even day. It's technically a small
green day, which is good. I mean, but
realistically, whether I was small green
or small red wouldn't really matter. I
took two trades. The first one was a
winner, and the second one I gave back
pretty much everything I made on the
first one. So, accuracy today, 50%.
Average winner, [music] average loser,
about one to one, so I'm break-even. And
I'm a little bit bummed out. You know,
it it look, it's never fun to be
break-even. It's never fun to give back
profit. My kind of rule of thumb is that
if I give back more than half of my
profit on the day, I have to walk away
because it's a point where I can get
emotionally triggered. You know, I had
something, and then I gave it all back.
If I have something and I give back a
quarter of it, I still feel pretty good,
you know, cup's still half full. If I
give back half of it, then I'm like, I'm
starting to get frustrated. If I give
back all of it, now I just kind of want
to get back to where I was, or somewhere
somewhere somewhere anywhere better than
where I'm at. And that's a problem
because now I'm thinking, well, today
already is frustrating. So, what's the
difference between being frustrated up a
teeny bit or potentially red? Both ways
I'm frustrated, right? So, now you
justify, well, since I'm already
frustrated, I might as well just take
another trade cuz if I lose, it feels
like there's not as much emotional
downside since I'm already emotionally
upset, right? And but the up side is
that, well, if on that third trade or
whatever, I end up being green, then
all's well that ends well, and now I
feel great. So, now the reward potential
isn't just the money. It's the emotion.
And that is now guiding your trading,
and that's where things can get really
slippery, and you can end up spiraling
and just losing more and more and more
and more. And I've done that. I know
exactly what that's like. I've been
there. I'm I'm not immune to it today. I
mean, this is something that I still
struggle with from time to time. So, if
we jump onto the screen share, we'll go
over the trades from today. As you guys
know, all the profits from these small
account challenges gets donated charity.
Not much to contribute today,
but we have so far raised over $385,000
and donated $380,000
to children's hospitals across the
country. So, today was day 25 and, you
know, we really didn't have too much to
work with. The scanners were a little
bit
lighter in terms of opportunities.
Yesterday, we didn't have any big moves.
I knew this. I sort of predicted that
today was going to be slower and I wish
I'd taken my foot off the gas a little
bit
faster. So, we had EXYN hit the scanner
right here with breaking news. It's a US
company expands into multi-billion
dollar defense sustainment market
bringing field proven AI autonomy to the
US Air Force aircraft readiness. So, I'm
like, "Okay.
AI, you know, keyword in there. This
seems like this could be good." It
starts to pop up. I look at the daily
chart. I see that it's blue sky over
720. So, 720's the all-time high the
stock has ever traded at. And it's never
had a day with volume over a million
shares. And so, suddenly, it squeezes up
here and has a ton of volume. So, as it
pushes up here, it ends up hitting a
high of five.
It then pulls back. It pops up. It pulls
back. It pops up and it kind of unwinds
back down. I jumped in right here for
this breakout and was in and was out and
locked up a profit. Nothing crazy, but
$766.56.
So, my entry here was for the break
through the high of day. So, this is a
higher day breakout setup. We had pretty
good volume coming in on those candles
and I was like, you know, looking for
this to squeeze up to 720 and then above
that, blue sky, no resistance.
Unfortunately, it rejects back down as
you can see.
So, nonetheless, I was in and out of it
quickly.
That was good.
But, it didn't hold up. And it ends up,
you know, kind of coming back down and
then finally rolling over here, which
was pretty ugly.
So, that was EXYN, first trade of the
day, 766 bucks. And it didn't really
work out that well. It wasn't that great
of a trade. But, I proceeded to take
another trade, and that was on MSS. MSS
hits the scanner here. It's also a US
company. They've got a headline also
tying in with AI. So, I'm like, "Okay,
you know, interesting." It's a very low
float stock. It pops up. It has this
first pullback right here. Then, it
squeezes higher. It dips down right
here. Pops up to 520, pulls back. And
right here, tries to do this sort of
curl over the volume weighted average
price. And I bought 2,000 shares at
$4.25.
And I was looking for this to curl back
to the high of day. And I stopped out as
it came back down here. And I gave back,
as you could see, $716.45,
putting me up $50.11
on the day. So, this is a day with lower
accuracy. Now, [clears throat] I'm up to
56 trades in total, 50 44 winners, 12
losers.
78% accuracy, a 1% decline from
yesterday. Well, a decline from 79 to
78%. And yes, the account is technically
still growing,
which is good.
You know, but
obviously, today was not the day that I
was hoping for. So,
it's Friday. It's the end of the week.
It's been a good week. You know, I made
progress this week. I have more in my
pocket than I had at the beginning of
the week. And yet, I finished the week
feeling a little bit deflated, a little
bit disappointed. And that's because of
sort of that recency bias of feeling
that I'm only as good as like the last
trade. And the last trade was is loser.
So, I'm not feeling that great. I'm a
little bit bummed out. And it's
important to recognize that because that
emotion is starting to, you know, creep
in, then it creates this feeling of kind
of disappointment and frustration. And
then it's like, well, jeez, if I took a
trade right now, let's just imagine, you
know, we've got stocks that are still
moving. It's still early enough in the
day. So, how about that? How about, you
know, I don't feel so great right now.
So, RADX is popping up. How about I
just, you know, buy 5,000 shares of this
thing? And if this thing goes from 350
to 4, and, you know, 5,000 shares will
make 2,500 bucks.
Done. Then all of a sudden I I feel good
on the day. But what if it flushes to
250 and I lose 5 grand?
Uh-oh.
And then I'll think, you know, you went
from up $700 down 5 grand. Clearly, like
the market wasn't as strong as you
thought it was, otherwise you wouldn't
have given back the profit in the first
place. You pushed it too hard. And why
didn't you walk away sooner? You made a
big mistake.
And I don't want to do that.
Uh so,
oh, excuse me.
Uh maybe I'm a little tired today as
well, I don't know, but
uh in any case, um you know, you've got
stocks moving, but I just I recognize
that I'm a little bit emotionally
compromised, even even just with a $700
loss. You know, just it just kind of,
you know, gets you this feeling of like,
ah, it's just not a great way to finish
the week. But uh that's why it's so
important just to walk away. So, I'm
walking away, and I'll live to trade
another day. I'll be back at it bright
and early on Monday morning. So, those
of you guys that want to watch over my
shoulders I'm trading, check out the
2-week trial. Begin it over the weekend
if you want. You can go through some
classes over the weekend. You can study
up chapters 1 through 6 of Day Trading
the Basics. And then uh you'll kind of
be up and running bright and early on
Monday morning. I'll remind you as
always that trading is risky. Easy come,
easy go. You guys have seen this in my
trading. I'll be up six figures. I'll
give back. I mean, it's, you know, I'm
generally making progress, of course.
That's in my big account. Um, but it's
it's going to be very quick. You know,
you have a big winner, a big loser. So,
please manage your risk and practice in
a simulator before putting real money on
the line. I'll see you guys bright and
early Monday morning.