Biggest Red Day...
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What's up, everyone? Welcome to day 27 of my small account challenge of growing a $2,000 account using Charles Schwab as my broker. Today is a red day, and it's not a small red day. I got smoked today. It's a pretty big red day. And you know, look, I'm disappointed. We're going to talk about it during the recap. One of my goals for this challenge is that I show up every single day to give you guys a recap of my trades, whether they're green or red. I've had many days where I had a couple red trades, but I still finished the day green. Today was one of the days where I took two trades, I lost on both of them, and they were both outsized losses, and the second one was bigger than the first one. And I think that this all speaks to something that's going on in the market today. So, yesterday, if you tuned into day 26, was a solid green day. In fact, it was the biggest green day I've had so far during this challenge, and it is very typical that a red day will follow a green day. A little bit of complacency, a little bit of overconfidence, feeling like, "Oh, I'm doing so well." The sort of emotions that come with a good day can create a little overaggression, uh and result in following day being a red day. And I also had a nice big green day in my main account yesterday. So, kind of doubly green, and then today, not so good. And then secondly, yesterday was a good day, and then this morning, pre-market, when I sat down to look at the scanners, we didn't have anything that looked good. The leading gapper was only up 40%, and I sat here from 7:00 to 7:30, 8:00, 8:30 to 9:00, 9:30, and there was nothing that moved. So, I had no trades pre-market. And then at about 9:15, 9:45 or 9 9:30, 9:55 going into 10:00 a.m., we had a stock that squeezed up, made a big move, and I felt FOMO. Fear of missing out, frustration of missing out, the disappointment of missing out, the regret of missing out. I missed out, and I knew it. And that wasn't a good feeling. And I I unable to maintain the discipline to say, "You know what? It's all right. You'll live to trade another day." Instead, I acted on the FOMO and I took a position. Let's talk about it. Let's jump into the recap. Now, as a reminder, all of the profit from the small account challenge gets donated to charity. Unfortunately, today I've given back a little bit of profit. So, that's not great for the charitable organizations that we're donating to, but uh you know, big picture, over the course of weeks and months of trading in these small accounts, uh we're still raising a lot of money and doing a good thing. So, $385,000 raised so far and $390,000 has already been donated to children's hospitals across the country. All right. So, this morning, when I first sat down, um pre-market was very slow. And then the opening bell gave us this surprise action. Um ED BL, LGHL, uh DFNS, uh BIYA. There were a few others that started to squeeze up, as you'll see. And that struck me as being a bit surprising. Um so, if I pull up my my chart uh here, let's see. So, let's look at this one. So, INFL, this stock made a big move after hours, as you'll see right here, then pulled back, squeezed up pre-market at 4:00 a.m., tries to break VWAP, it can't, tries again, it can't, sells off, and then at the open, halts up at five, opens and goes into a second halt, then halts down, then halts back up, then halts up again, then dips and rips up to a high of 820 before dropping all the way back down to 460. DFNS, this one was strong yesterday, um squeezed up pre-market, pulled back, and then in the afternoon yesterday, it pushed higher all the way up to 16, then up to 20, dips down pre-market, goes back up to 21, but pre-market, it was on lighter volume, there wasn't any fresh catalyst, and I just I didn't trust it. So, no trades there. At the open, it rips into a halt, opens and goes into a second halt, a third halt, a fourth halt, ends up going from 20 $20 a share all the way up to 37 and then dropping back down, then coming back up, double topping just about and then coming back down again. So, this is a 14-point move. And of course, I missed the whole thing. And look, if we had had that kind of breakout during pre-market, of course I would have traded it and I probably would have done quite well on it, but for whatever reason, this one waited until the 9:30 opening bell to pull away. And so, as I sat here getting ready to do my recap, which was going to be a no trade day, I was feeling um a bit frustrated and I was like, well, you know what? It's the end of the month, uh last few days of the month, I don't want to make any big mistakes, so look, it is what it is. Um but I I was feeling a little bit frustrated. And so, then um I noticed INLX. And I had I already been kind of watching it. It halted up to these times, halted back down, then come back up here, sold off, come back down, came back up here and it dropped down right here. And then it rips up right here and it was such a powerful squeeze up um that I actually decided um it pulled back, it comes up here, it pulled back and I jumped in right here. I decided to jump in this um and I was thinking, all right, I feel like this is going to halt up and we're going to start to actually pull away here. And so, that was my first entry right there at a little over $8. It goes up to 815, 820, it's almost halting up and I take I don't know, a thousand shares off the table. I think I had a 4,000 share position. So, 4 * 3 is like $32,000 uh or 4 * yeah, no, sorry, 4 4 * 8 uh 32,000 dollars roughly. Uh so, probably had something like 4,000, 5,000 shares on it. And so, then it flushes down here and I end up stopping out the rest at like 750 and I'm down 1,600 bucks. And I was like, "Ooh, bummer." And check the time. It's 10:30. So now I've broken the ice with my first trade later in the morning than I typically trade. And I'm like, "This is not good." Well, okay, maybe we're going to have a red day. But, at the same time I was looking at IN INFL and I was looking at the daily chart. Let me pull it up for you. And I was thinking to myself, you know, no it wasn't I INFS, sorry. Um No, that wasn't it either. Uh sorry. Back this up. I INLF, sorry. Okay. So I was looking at the daily chart on this and I was thinking, you know, I mean, if this thing really starts to curl, um you know, we we could end up getting a nice squeeze here. I mean, I don't know how high it's going to go, but there's actually quite a lot of room. And so I started thinking, you know, maybe maybe there's going to be something here a little bit more to work with. Um and so as it curled back up I got back in right here at about 770. And I was like, "I think this is going to squeeze back through eight." And, you know, boom. And then instantly almost like 30 seconds after I got in it flushed and it halts down at 680. And I'm holding 4,000 shares. And in an instant I'm down four grand. It resumes and it goes lower and I stop out. And so I lost $7,332.81 today. That's a brutal loss. It's nearly 20% of my account. I had $38,000 at the beginning of the day. So this is the biggest loss that I've had so far without a doubt during the small account challenge. It's disappointing. That's a big setback. You know, 26 days, one red day back there at some point was a small red day. And now, you know, a a pretty good size drop. And so, at this point, I mean, look, what's done is done. And it was a momentary kind of all of a sudden, um I'm punching an order at $8, and then I'm down 50 cents a share. And now I'm down 1,600 bucks. And then it curls back up, and I'm like, "Okay, now I think this is going to work." I get back in, and then it's halted down, and I'm down a dollar a share. And in a matter of like 10 minutes, you know, things unraveled. And this is why This is one of the reasons, of course, that trading is so difficult, because it requires this constant presence of mind. You've got to constantly be on the defense to not allow these emotions of fear and, you know, FOMO to creep in, overtake your trading, and then in in an instant, you've made a big mistake. You've bought something at the very high of day right before a big flush. And so, you know, look, I'm I'm pleased with the fact that um if we look at my metrics here um over the 27 days, that I've been able to maintain now 76% accuracy. Two losers today drops my accuracy from 78 down to 76. Um but, you know, 59 trades, 45 winners, 14 losses. So, the accuracy has been pretty solid. I've done a pretty good job, um but over the course of 59 trades, I've probably had these two today, um and maybe maybe let's see, there was one I think on Friday, um and then I think there was another a couple, so maybe there's been like four of those trades that have been pretty bad. So, you know, look, almost 8% 10% of the trades, if we're going to round up, you know, six trades out of 60 have been pretty bad. And the losses of those six trades have probably totaled, you know, 90% of the amount of money I've lost during the entire challenge. I've made a lot, I've lost a little, and so I sit, you know, exactly where I'm at now at 31,000 in total growth. So, on the one hand, I am really pleased with my success. And I think it's important to be able to look back and give yourself a pat on the back that you've done a good job to get from where you were to where you are right now, even in spite of this drawdown. Losses happen. Momentary lapse of judgment happen. Whether it was FOMO or it was you didn't sleep well and you were had a shorter fuse and you got frustrated and stubborn. Whatever it is, it happens. And so there's just no way to completely avoid that in trading. And even if you're like, "Oh, I'm going to automate my trading and create some high-frequency trading algorithm." Which by the way, as an individual retail trader will never really be able to do successfully to compete with these hedge funds that hire MIT graduates that are like the smartest and you know, they could possibly be with these types of things. But even if you were to do that, even those free high-frequency trading algorithms make mistakes. Now, no one really says they're responsible for a mistake. Oh, the computer made a mistake and and lost some money today. Oh, well, I guess that's just what happened. You just chalk it up to the fact that there's no such thing as 100% accuracy. And so, you know, as I said now with 76% accuracy, I am a little disappointed that I'm now going to have to spend the next you know, the certainly the rest of this week recouping that loss. The biggest green day of this whole challenge was yesterday at 3,900. So, to lose $7,000 in one day is, you know, 50% more more than that than my biggest green day. That by itself doesn't feel good. It will hurt my profit-to-loss ratio to have losses that are that big. Um but thankfully the accuracy is maintained uh a high level and so I'm still net profitable as a result. And if I can go another 26 days uh until I do that again, well, then that would be probably the best I could hope for because it will happen again. It's only a matter of time. This is the way trading is. Easy come, easy go. And so I always remind you guys to manage your risk. You shouldn't blindly follow me or anyone else. I make mistakes. You know, there's no trader who doesn't make mistakes. So, you got to learn a strategy. You got to sit down. You got to show up. You got to trade that strategy every day. And you've got to try to take your winners, you know, with a bit of grace. And just accept that, well, I got beat up today. And I made a a few mistakes, but, you know, I I don't need to be too hard on myself because, look, you're trying to do something that's very difficult. A lot of people give up. A lot of people get frustrated. This emotion of disappointment then leads to, you know, tomorrow coming in and losing even more because trying to make back the $7,000 in one day and swinging for a home run and then you lose and now you're down 14,000 in 2 days, 20,000. And then all of a sudden you're like, I I give up. You know, I I gave back 30 days of progress in 3 days. This is I'm done. And I've seen that happen to a lot of traders. And so, it's probably the most important thing here at this moment is that I'm in a fork in the road where I can either spiral and continue just trade from pure emotion. I'll buy $31,316, which is my current account balance, of the next penny stock that pops up. And either goes up 200% and I double my account in 1 day or it drops 50% and now I'm at 15,000 in the account, right? It's either going to be, you know, a hero or a zero. Or I take the other path, which is not as emotional and it's just basically buckling down saying, well, I'm going to be here for a little bit. It's going to take me a little while to make back this loss. I can do it because I know I've done it before. And I'm going to do it by trading with smaller size, just chipping away, getting in, getting out, trading during the window I typically trade the best, 7:00 a.m. to 9:30, not after the open, and focusing on the types of stocks I do the best on and just taking base hits, getting in, getting out, getting in, getting out. And three or four days from now, even if I haven't made back all of the loss, but I've had three or four small, medium-size green days, emotionally I'll be back on track. And then at the end of the day, the profits are the byproduct of your strategy and a byproduct of being a confident trader who's trading calm, cool, and collected every day. So, that's where I'm at here for day 27. You get to watch live if you do the 2-week trial, which I encourage you guys to check out, and continue to see how I how I, you know, rebound from this red day. All right, so that's it for me. Reminder as always, trading is risky and my results aren't typical. So, manage your risk by practicing in a simulator before putting real money on the line.