Wow this was an eventful day at Monster Manor. First, I wake up and check my TSLA positions and the IB account is doing exactly what it was supposed to do. Then I had a look at my Alpaca account. The price was post-split, but the number of shares was still pre-split!!!! Okay, so I figured they would straighten it out by 0900, the beginning of Alpaca pre-market trading. Nope. Tried to contact Alpaca, reached out on the Alpaca forum, I wasn't alone and things were getting tense. Finally I don't remember, I think about 1030 they had it straightened out. TSLA was untradeable through Alpaca during that time and if it had been dropping, tough. I would have had to stay in and suffered the loss. As it was, it went up nicely until noon, and I sold at the first sign of a lunch dip. It never went down all that much. Started going up, so I bought back in, 20 shares in each account. So far I am up almost 12% for the day and my combined equity in both accounts, along with $5k in limbo between accounts transferring from Alpaca to checking to IB, is well over $25k. I TRADED UP!!!!! YAY!!!! There is rejoicing in Monster Manor! I am pretty sure the overnight will be profitable, and tomorrow as well, barring news or some disastrous tweet from POTUS. I am looking for this to break $500 today. Or $2500 in last week money. The day isn't over yet but I am feeling pretty good about it. So right now the plan, such as it is, is when the $5k that is in limbo is all in IB, I will draw out another $2k from Alpaca into checking, and then move it to IB. When that bit is in IB, another $2k, and so on. I'm only leaving like $500 in Alpaca, just so I can keep playing around with their API and market data using Python. All my real trading will be through my IB account, once it's all in there. This was really traumatic. But it ended up being my best day since I resumed trading in June. I should be over $26k by day's end, and I still got one day trade available and I will have another one available tomorrow. Yeah, that's still a thing, until one account or the other has $25001 or more in it. Alpaca rejected my $2k withdrawal order so I resubmitted. Let's see what happens. After all the crap I put up with them today they better not mess around trying to keep me hostage with my account. The board is clean, I have no open positions. If they jerk me around, sponsor or no sponsor, I am gonna lay it all out on them and tell it like it is. Did I call it, or did I call it? TSLA was $500 at the bell! Still going up, but looking at the day chart, it looks overextended, way beyond the upper Bollinger. Sure, I would expect it to be high today, but I think it will bounce on down to the mean overnight so I will either buy in the morning, or stay out. Probably gonna open at around $480, is my guess. At the close, sold all 40 shares. Total equity including funds in limbo, $26342 and I'm out for the night. Gain of $2215. My best day so far since I started trading again, and if I may say so, not a bad bit of work for a small player. At this rate I won't be a small player much longer. The little black and gray window laying on top of the web browser window, at the lower left, is my IB account equity. The terminal window at lower right is what I have been using to add the two accounts. I like to use Python for my calculator. And here is the day chart. Today was a huge day, and toward the end, price action was pretty lame. Today's candle really sticks up there, too. It's gonna take a dive. Well maybe not? Darn. It's at $515 now. I coulda made another $600 but honestly I am really trade-tired so hey, I made my nut and it was a great day in the final analysis. Hasta la nite-nite, traders.
Back in shortly after the bell. Long TSLA, 20 shares in each account. I was expecting a bit of a dip at the open and that's just what I got. Unfortunately I bought too early. Stock went down a lot more after I bought at $492. So I start out with a big loss. That's okay, I am looking for $540 or better by the end of the day. So I did save myself a little money buying partway into the dip instead of suffering the whole thing. Looking for $600 by the end of the week. Meanwhile it is still drifting downward but I think it has pretty firm support at $475. Definitely it will be started back up long before Lunch. Looking for a fairly shallow afternoon dip. I am working without a net in the Alpaca account. No day trades available so I can't bail. Stuck with it overnight and I am feeling okay about that.
Meh. I thought it would give me at least a little profit. Maybe it will gap up tonight. Pretty sure it will start moving on up, tomorrow. It was just way overextended on the day chart and had to take a correction. The trend continues. Alpaca is really being hardassed about turning loose of my funds. This is the second day I have left $2k in reserve just so it would be "settled" (LOL what utter BS!) so I could draw off $2k and go through the long convoluted process of getting it into my IB account. I was figuring on doing this $2k at a time, trading all the while with both accounts, and never having more than $4k in limbo and not earning for me. Well if they want to be like that, as soon as I stop playing with TSLA I am putting this account to bed for the required two days, not trading ANYTHING with it, then drawing all off except a token remainder. They don't seem to want my business. I don't recall IB ever giving me a hassle about withdrawals. I am getting totally unsatisfied with this so called brokerage. So now I been there and done that, and I totally do not recommend this broker for any purpose other than practice at python development. Some day IB will put a decent API together, and make nice with TradingView, and the only reasons I ever had for going with Alpaca at all will be totally rendered moot. But back to the topic. So I finished about $400 down, both accounts combined. Friday my IB account will be up another $3k in funding, when the last two transfers post there. Meanwhile that makes $5k I can't trade with at the moment. I could have sold my IB shares but I just felt like keeping both accounts the same for now. Easier to count my money. I know, stupid reason, and I could have cut my losses quite a bit by selling off over there. Well, I don't care about counting my money any more right now, just getting more of it, and getting it away from Alpaca and into a grownup brokerage. My goal when all is said and done is to end up with 40 shares of TSLA at $600 each for a bit over $4k more profit and then start trading exclusively with the IB account. That will give me somewhere more than $30k and all that will remain is to get it all in one place and start trading like a boss. With what I have learned in the last two years I should be able to quadruple my account by the end of next year, and start drawing profits off for investing and just plain enjoying. Once Mrs Monster retires I will put her to work and her SQL and Python skills will come in mighty handy. Things are definitely looking up. For the next day or two I would really like to see TSLA get back up to $538, the high of the premarket.
So yeah I lost a bunch in TSLA. False buy signals and I really wanted to ride that thing up to $600. Anyway so finally I soid off for the last time and bought a small stake in CCL to hold for a bit. I am going to let the Alpaca account settle now, so I can empty it out and put it all into my IB account. I am back under the PDT threshhold by "a lot" but not more than I could make in a day or two of take no prisoners, winner take all trading, or a few days of more laid back and conservative trading. I have abandoned my Alpaca API trading bot project and one way or the other I will get IB's API to work for me. Meanwhile all my trading stake will be in one place, with a grownup brokerage. Still gonna keep a few hundred in Alpaca just to keep it open and keep the data available for TradingView, which I will still use for charting and scanning. Lesson learned from this debacle, NEVER OPEN A POSITION I CAN'T BAIL OUT FROM. Lesson number two, DO NOT LET LACK OF DAY TRADE AVAILABILITY KEEP ME IN A STOCK JUST SO I DON'T USE UP MY LAST DAY TRADE. Lesson number three, when you are losing money you are doing something wrong, so stop. Funny how some of these lessons I have already learned, huh? Well, in the big scheme of things, little harm done. So TSLA might have support now, at $400 or so. TQQQ at what... about $143, I forgot, not looking at any charts right now. Don't really have a plan for the morning except I am getting up late and Mrs Monster will have a nice tall Bloody Mary waiting for me, and hey, I don't have to trade if I don't feel like it.
So today I kept it very laid back, with 300 shares CCL, made a modest no-stress profit, and I will be holding it at least until Tuesday. TSLA was looking good coming out of that bottom reversal but I didn't buy because I wouldn't be able to sell and I didn't think it was looking like a good weekend hold and wa lah, I was right. Still I could have made about $45/share on about 30 shares. Well, Tuesday I will look at TSLA, and TQQQ and some NASDAQ heavy hitters and maybe load the boat, at least the IB boat. I still have about $9k in the Aplaca account but I can't play it. I have to let it "settle" for two days so I can pull it out into my checking, then deposit it into IB and wait 4 days there, and then all my chickens will be in one basket. Currently I am still $1500 or so below PDT threshhold. Maybe by Tuesday CCL will have me a bit closer, and I will have at least one day trade available for that account. I usually use TQQQ or QQQ as my index rather than IXIC because it shows a volume. Not the NASDAQ volume, but a sentiment based volume nonetheless. Looking at the day chart, a bottom reversal early Tuesday looks very likely on the NASDAQ and of course on TQQQ specifically. Look at the volume on that final top&tail candlestick, after the hyooooge red candle the day before. So the TQQQ closed about where it closed two weeks ago. If you ever wanted to jump back in time and have a chance to buy it cheap and watch it go up almost 25% in less than two weeks, I think this is the next best thing. And TSLA looks like it may have already started to rise from the pit.
Still holding 300 CCL @ $18.18 and this morning bought 100 RCL @ $70.57. I put stop limit orders under both, just below the last dip. After every dip I will move my stop up under it, I think. For now. Later I might slack the stops down a bit for the long haul. I really anticipate holding these beyond the holidays, maybe into Easter and certainly up to just before Mardi Gras. I just put in a withdrawal order for all but $288 of my Alpaca funds. $10.3k, which will be going into my IB account. It's looking good for me to be back up over $25k very soon, this time not split between two accounts. I have been studying up on IB's API and I am almost ready to start coding something up, maybe a simple trend trading algo using Bollinger and MACD. I will of course let it play for a while on the paper account. If it works out then I will give it a few hundred to play with in my live account, and if that works, even returning an average of 0.25% per day, I will expand it to trade more than one stock. Hah. Both stocks have nearly recovered from the dip. Rising strongly, with decent volume for this time of day. Count out your money, folks. I am collecting. The artist formerly known as small trader is in da house.
Meh. Stopped out on both, $152 profit. I was really looking for at least $400 today. That's okay, still well over 1%. And that was with only $12k+ in play. I was undecided whether or not this was a correction, or a sho nuff bear market. I am starting to lean toward the latter. TQQQ has dropped around 25% in 4 days. For consecutive red daily candles. Tomorrow I just might start watching for a good buy signal and get me some-a dat dere SQQQ stuff, me.
Thanks to everyone who recommended the micro eminis. I tried paper trading it this morning, wasn't getting live data. Then I went live, and I wasn't getting ANY data. I traded anyway, hopping back and forth between TradingView chart and TWS ordering, lost a little. Later in the day I had data! I bought coming out of the squeeze and got faked out, lost a bunch. Tried to ride a reversal that was only a reversetickle, twice. Was down almost $200. Third time's the charm. I caught a sweet entry and exit and finished $20 up for the day. Meh. Not bad for first day trading this thing. (MNQ December) and I still haven't quite figured out the margin trading this via IB but on the last trade I bought 4 contracts and no nastygrams from the broker. For all its size, this thing is pretty mild mannered. I can see making a steady eddy 1%, 3 out of 4 days. So I will play the trendies on stocks when I have day trades available, and the rest of the time watching for long side setups on MNQ or maybe the others when NASDAQ is lagging. I will be back on the big kids' playground in a month or less, I think.
Longside scalping in a general downward trend is kinda like Charlie Brown trying over and over to kick the football. The little bottom reversal doji down on the lower Bollinger line and then that first green candle are like Lucy, smiling sweetly, assuring Charlie Brown that THIS time, she is really going to hold the football and not snatch it away. I was up $140 at one point and then 6 trades later I was down $66. Well, I got to go to the post office. I have orders to ship. I'll be back later.
Big downward move in the NASDAQ. Got faked out by a false buy signal on TQQQ but stopped out with only a $37 loss. Went at it again after the true reversal and ended up +$168 for the day. I should have been watching TSLA. I would have made twice as much, at least. Not holding anything over the weekend except a few shares of CCL. Monday I think TSLA will make another nice move and probably some time during the day, the nazz will make another small rally good for another decent win.