The morning didn't look so good. Tried a quick scalp and lost $68. That was my only day trade and now I am down to zero. Switched to the micro futures, didn't see a good entry until well into the afternoon. Actually I saw a couple of bad ones that looked like good ones that put me down $900 but I ended the day up $300 on the MNQ, so $230 to the good. Meh. That's a little better. I really need to crush it once with about a $3k win but crawl first, run later, right? Looking at the day chart, MNQ seems to have maybe hit a bottom. Maybe it will run tomorrow. I am getting up early just in case it makes an early move. If it just sits there, I can work on some razors. I am getting behind. Recent orders have nearly wiped out my stock of ready to ship razors. So am I a good trader yet? Meh. Not really. In the last 3 months not counting a couple of withdrawals to pay bills on my boat... Oh, and including what I still have in my Alpaca account, I have made lessee... $229.65 + 21146 + 1000 - 21000 = $1375 in almost four months. I had some big losing days... a couple with TSLA when I didn't believe the hyooooge up trend was over, and the first two days trading the micro futures. If not for those days I would have another $6k or so and I would be feeling pretty good about myself and my tiny account, which incidentally would not be all that tiny anymore. Well, at least it would be well over the PDT line. So am I a PROFITABLE trader yet? YES YES YES!!!! And I know how to be more profitable. I just need to start DOING what I'm KNOWING consistently and without exception. It's the same in Blackjack. It's the same in Poker. It's the same in Sports Betting. You have to make rules that work and FOLLOW them, or you will lose everything. When I follow my rules, sometimes I lose. Sometimes I win. But my totals will more likely be in the green when I do follow my rules. Or ANYBODY's well thought and reasoned rules. Rules based trading works. The Turtles proved that many years ago. Instinct is for the gifted. I am not a gifted. My instincts always tell me to do crazy stuff and when I do it sometimes I win big, most of the time I lose big. Noobs, don't confuse experience with instinct. When you see a situation that you have seen before, and usually seen it explode, it's worth throwing out a small bet on it again. When you "just KNOW" that stock has gone down far enough and it HAS to turn around on the next candle, without any reason to feel that way about it, that's betting with your guts. And that kind of courage will demolish your account. Experience sometimes defies qualification and quantification. Instinct, wishful thinking, faith-based trading, all will bleed you out.
Several days of $1k-$2k losses had nearly made me drop out again. Yesterday I did not trade. I resolved to only trade the eminis when I have a well established trend at my back, and this morning I decided meh, I would push the envelope and call it an established bullish trend. I never got up over $1200 and never had over $1k realized at any time, but I never went in the red, either. Finished the day at +$594. The nice thing about trading the futures is no PDT rule. TBH I would rather be trading stocks, but day trading with only three trades a week is not exactly hopeless, but it is very frustrating. As it so happens, I now have all three day trades available to me and I might jump in on some stocks tomorrow if I see something I like in the scan. IB increased the margin requirement and with my losses, I couldn't trade NQ today. Instead I traded 5 contracts at a time of the MNQ. It takes a while to get used to the P&L swings. I can't say I don't like it, but it is easy to get scared off, and easy to resolve to be courageous to overcompensate, and so there is an adjustment process even though the underlying is stodgy old QQQ, basically. Seeing the bottom line improve $200 in 5 seconds with a small account is exhillerating. Seeing $200 evaporate instantly without even a puff of smoke, almost, is crushing. This I know... scalping against the trend, for me, is impossible, in the eminis or micros. No matter what side I take, the market takes the other side. I have to trade this thing when it is roped into a trend and it can hardly do anything but continue. At least then, my winning trades outnumber my losers, and my wins cover my losses. There's too many hedge funds, too many banks, too many money managers and too damn many computers trading headless in the futures. When I think I got a rhythm, switcho changeo. When I try to hold overnight, it is like passing out in a pool full of piranhas. My account is down to $17k, even after today's win. So I have a lot to make up. And I still have a few bad habits to break, like chasing sexy numbers. Like being up $2600 and wanting to make it $3k before quitting for the day, as an example that ended up costing me a bunch of green. Like not sticking to the account stop loss I agreed with myself on.
So yesterday I lost I think $396 or something like that. Today I caught a dip at 1200 and rode it up to the middle bollinger for a profit of $547. The plan is, I got other things to do. If it reaches down and touches the lower bollinger again, I will buy and ride it up again. If I take profit or stop out with over $1k profit for the day, that's in, I'm done. If I stop out after losing back $250 of what I made so far, I'm done. If it doesn't make a move in the next 45 minutes or so, I'm done until I get home. Still trading the usual 5 contracts MNQ. I heard The Donald came down with his Chinese Plague and figured the markets would be pretty rough today and I was sort of expecting the dip to become a plummet, but when I got a crossing of the lower Bollinger and a green candle, I knew I had a shot at making a nice little nut. Now the general trend seems to be sideways with enough vol to trade the dips. Right now it's going down but if it doesn't touch bottom before I am dressed and out the door, that's it. So the account is back up over $17.2k and it may not be over $25k until the holidays. And I HAD my total for the two accounts over $25k but I let TSLA pull me down and then several bad decisions in a row, and now getting used to the micros has taken and is taking a bit of time. But I think I have a profit trend started, now.
HAH! It touched bottom and I bought. I used my "dead man switch" technique to lock it in. On the chart in TWS, I drag my stop up above the price action but I don't drop it. Finger stays on. If I lift the finger, the stop triggers and executes. So I thought I had it at $1021 but it slipped $6 in the split second it took to fill the order. Okay, there's my goal. $1k for the day, and I am done. 6% profit? I'll take it. SUCCESS!!! Hope I can do that tomorrow.