At the closing bell I was up 3.64%, a good day for me. Plays on USO, XOP, BBBY, FB, BYND, and AMZN. Some of those were held from Friday. I am holding the last three overnight tonight and so far in the early aftermarket they are doing okay. I am out of day trades so I may just hold the FB and AMZN positions until next Monday, maybe the BYND too, if it behaves itself. Even if swing trading is my intention I like to have those three day trades available in case I need to bail. Down a few points now, but I was expecting that, especially on FB. Should perk up tonight and go nuts tomorrow. knock on wood.
Noon market time, I am up 2.31% for the day so far. No day trades available. FB took a dive and I dumped it at a profit. BYND scared me with a big dip and I dumped it at a profit. AMZN too. I could have kept all three but this worked out alright. I am riding the bull with TSLA, TQQQ, NBL, and USO. This is too easy. My account size is up 5.8% from the close Friday. I sure hope this market keeps doing what it's doing. It would be really nice to be up 10% or better for the week.
NBL paid off with 6.07% profit, and lead the way to the close of another great trading day, it is 1826 NY time and my PL for the day is +2.9%. I am holding USO, HD, TSLA, TQQQ, and NBL overnight. I would dump USO and especially HD for now, but I am out of day trades and either one would be a day trade to sell. They will be extremely gone when I make my first trades in the morning. So, since the close Friday, my account has improved 6.38% and I have had a lot of fun trading. I am nearly back up to my funded amount, just short $400-something. In the present market conditions, two days will put me solidly in the black, and on track to growing this thing up to the PDT line and beyond.
I screwed up badly this morning but I was still unable to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so strong was the bull market. Finished at +1.26%, and only $349 short of my funded amount. One GREAT day, or two darn good days, and I am back in the black. Messed around with Python some more today, put together a gui app to calculate final account balance after x days at average x daily profit and x initial account balance. Mrs Growley, who does a lot of Python, SQL, and PowerBI at work, was impressed. Next I will build a GUI app to pull key data from the Alpaca API. I already have a terminal app for that but the GUI app will refresh every so often instead of me having to run it manually. Yeah, pretty small achievement, I know, but not bad for a high school dropout shrimper and seaman. In a few months I should have a trading machine running untended on my paper account, trading inversed pairs of ETFs. That will only be the first of several projects I have in mind. The big bounce this morning shook me out of all my profitable trades. I should have just held but I bailed, and when I went back in to trade, two of my picks that recently had made me a lot of money, really let me down. I should have been up about +2.5% today. I know, half that is still a good profit so be glad, right? The problem is not every day will treat me as well as the last few days and I can't afford to let any profit slip through my fingers when I can stop it. No day trades left today, so holding everything overnight, good or bad. Better or worse. I think BYND will turn around, maybe GUSH too, and if so I will start out with a good rally in the morning. So, I am holding: FB TQQQ APT AKBA NBL BYND GUSH I should have jumped back into TSLA at 1310 or 1345, when I had good buy sigs. It would have been perfect since I bailed just below the initial morning peak, and avoided the downhill slalom that ensued. I wasn't watching it. Tomorrow should be another good day. If The Donald doesn't say or tweet anything stoopid.
So overnight I held let's see... APT, AKBA, BYND, GUSH, NBL, FB, and TQQQ. A half hour into the open, I am over +1.5% for the day so far. As everything hit a high and started back down on the 30 second chart, I sold off. I now hold 2 shares TSLA, 10 shares FB, one share AMZN. No day trades available until Tuesday so I am officially IN for the three day weekend. My funded amount is $8k and right now I am only down $240 so I should be, hopefully, firmly in the black when the market opens next. Cash is like around $25 LOL! I should catch NBL at the dip and grap a share hahaha! But no margin, that weekend account killer. I am thinking there will be a strong rally before the close today, FOMO prior to a three day weekend in a strong bull market. The breakthrough is very encouraging, don't know what the DOW and NASDAQ are doing right now but TQQQ busted up through $105 and keeps boinking up against the $105.75 line. I think it will breakout again and if it does things are gonna be getting crazy. Will this last into next week? I honestly doubt it. There seems to be no real substance here. COVID cases up, everybody retrenching even though they need to get out and work and do business. I kind of expect things to get a little bearish around Wednesday. I will have to consult the tarot and read some chicken guts to be sure. I suppose my trading has been a bit aggressive but as soon as I break $10k I will pull it back a bit. Right now I am still playing with solidly replaceable money and I want to grow it, not fund it up. At $10k I will have something to be a bit more protective of. The takeaway here is Good Money Management in Day Trading is managing your account and risk in a manner that is appropriate for you in the right now, not a set of rules found in a half dozen books that all do nothing but paraphrase one another, and intelligently adapting your chosen rules as the situation changes. So now nothing for me to do here. Holding two bucks cash and I am not buying on margin, so I can't buy. No day trades available, everything bought today so can't sell. Can't buy, can't sell, all I can do is watch and worry. I think I will go cook some chicken and waffles, have a bloody mary, and relax.
WOOHOOOOOO!!!!! I stayed up late getting some orders ready to ship in the morning and hey, look... pre-market. Let's see if my stocks gapped up like I thought they would. It is 0520 market time, and I am up 3.24% already from the close on Thursday. Sweet. TSLA is leading the pack, up 5.84% for the day so far. I honestly thought FB would be the big winner Darn. Didn't hit SEND before I hit the sack for two hours. +2.8%, NY time.
A half hour after the opening bell. Nice. No big risky moves, just quality stocks in a bellowing bull market. Hoping for another $100 profit before the end of the day, but my buy-in was $8k so I am now in the green again.
+5.82%, not bad. BUT that was at about 1145. Then came the rain. A lot of stuff I bought this morning so I couldn't sell. No day trades left. Just had to ride it down. Well, +2.72% isn't so bad. And at least I got above my $8k breakeven for a while. I don't think it's gonna run like that tomorrow but hopefully I will end the day tomorrow in the black again. It was a very exciting and compelling day. But I could do with a little less of that tomorrow.
Not a bad start to the day, but not a gentle one. SQ hit the dirt overnight, and pulled me way down. Decided to hold it, in light of the trend on the day chart. Turns out it was the right move. Trust the trend. TQQQ was dancing all over the place like a boiler going dry. I took advantage of the market going bananas by selling my doubtful stocks at the tops and succeeded 100%. Bought TSLA and I almost got shook out, but again the big chart looked good so I stayed in, and it was the right move. Now I am holding 3 shares TSLA and 30 shares SQ and as long as the NASDAQ and my belwether TQQQ are trending up, I am feeling pretty good about the setup. SQ I bought yesterday so I can bail. I have one day trade available so I can bail on the TSLA if I have to. I am firmly in the black, my equity flirting with the $8100 level. I think I am set for the day and will likely hold these two stocks overnight. In the morning I might break off a piece of each, and buy some FB or something. When the QQQ stops trending up then I will do something else but I am feeling good about the large caps right now.
This is where I was halfway through the morning. Up from $7809.25 at the end of trading last night. Sweet gains, huh? By this time I was out of daytrades again, as usual. So I was stuck in a couple of large-ish positions when the other shoe dropped a few minutes later. And here is where I ended up tonight. Still, not bad. Will it gap up? I think maybe not. I think the pre-market will be pretty quiet and tomorrow will see a modest increase. Holding TSLA and FB, 3 shares of each. My little python app tells me I have $3214.52 cash in the account, something the TradingView interface doesn't see fit to show me directly so I wrote this little app, which also tells me how many day trades I have used up in the 5 day rolling period. Anyway when I sold off what I could, this is what I ended up with, and I thought I would keep it until the end of the day and load the boat with whatever looked good for the overnight. NOTHING looked good for the overnight. But the market seems very unfriendly so maybe having less than the full account in play overnight is a good precaution. Because I therefore only have $4861.11 in play, any gains will be a bit weak, but any losses, too. I am feeling alright with that. I don't absolutely have to make +3% every day, right? For tomorrow I will be watching NVDA, TSLA, AMZN, GOOG, FB, MKC, SQ, BLUE, HUYA, NFLX, and BBBY. <EDIT: and AAPL> If the market tanks, I might take a small position in SQQQ or LMF. Maybe DRIP.