The idea is if Mrs. Monster finds her in bed with him, Mr. Monster will be woken up whether or not he gets his morning coffee!
Woke up late again. I wasn't going to trade unless unless, because I thought I was out of day trades. I got looking at STKL which treated me right yesterday, and it was looking awful good. I checked my homemade API applet and low and behole, I actually had two day trades available. Bought 400 shares, then it dipped and I bought 400 more. Started the day at $8099.41, stopped out for a profit of $88.04 and now this account is up to $8187.45, or a 1.07% increase for the day. Bought in at 1053, bought 400 more shares at 1107, sold for $6.49/share at 1122. Stock still has some life left in it but I am done for the day. And now the shoulda/couldas. I was looking at this stock at the close of RTH yesterday when it was looking like it was gonna run up again, and I coulda bought this at $5.99 and the same 800 share position would have made me $400. Or I coulda bought at $6.06 at the open, after seeing encouraging signals in the premarket chart for a $344 profit. Then on the other hand, I probably would have stopped out at 0955 when it started into the dip that reversed at 1010 visible in the above chart. Well, I still woulda had a profit and I still did have a profit. And here's the P/L page. At the end of my half hour workday, this is what really matters. The cursor is on yesterday's close and today's equity and P/L are above the graph. I'm still $2 down from my high on the 8th so too bad I didn't set my stop up a tick higher on the trade.
Dagnabbit! I just violated at least two of my trading rules just now. Let's see... 1. Don't trade the news. Everybody else already did that. 2. When you quit for the day, stay quitted, at least until right before the closing bell. 3. Buy the dip. Buy the dip. Buy the dip. I just had to get involved in the Kodak fooforay. Lost $30. And used up a day trade. Now I am down to zero day trades again until Monday, at least on this account, so I got to finish setting up TWS today or no more trading until then. I hate opening a position even if I plan on swing trading it, when I can't bail out until the next day. Wasted a day trade. Wasted $30 on a stupid trade with a bad entry. Wasted valuable time when I could have been watching random youtubes. Meh.
DARN. Gave up on KODK too early. Thass okay. Before the bell I bought TQQQ, STKL, and a gold mine, CDE. I got some more profit out of them and now I am up almost 2% for the day, and I expect STKL to gap up and make one more big push. TQQQ not sure about but I think it will gap down a little overnight and climb through the morning. Barring any news or weird tweets from POTUS. From recent behaviour I would guess a deep dip around lunch time and more increase in the afternoon. If CDE doesn't show me anything I am dropping it first thing in the morning I think. So anyway right now I am at $8252.48 total equity, $5569 in play. Hoping for another $40 or $50 by the opening bell, and then starts the same old way again. I GOT to get through the day tomorrow without screwing up. Making way too many mistakes. Sure, anybody could have let KODK get away. But I violated my own rules multiple times so I really need to tighten up on that. Final P/L: Not so bad. I should be happy with it but it could have been a lot better. And if I make as much tomorrow I will be pleased. If I can just get up to $10k in an expeditious manner I will be feeling pretty good about my trading this year.
My P/L page at the closing bell. It's not over yet, either. NO day trades available today. I own 6 different stocks and I am stuck with them until morning, for better or worse. Alpaca starts the day at 0700 NY time so the figures are a bit different from how I would calculate them, in the short term. I figure the day ought to start at midnight. Or 0400, actually. Never mind. Anyway at the bell my total equity was $8360. Couple weeks ago it was $7100-something. Funding is $8000 so I did bad and now I am doing pretty good, as most everyone should be doing right now. I thought I was getting FB at the dip but I was really buying in mid-plunge so it was an instant loser and hasn't had time to give me much profit yet. The company had to testify about something and they took a beating but pretty sure they will come back. No time to watch the news. Busy making money. GLG looked good but it is just sitting there looking stoopid. 100 shares, showing me $0.01 profit. Now THAT'S a penny stock LOL!!! Trying to put a little distance between me and the fashionable tech stocks right now. Not feeling the love for TSLA, GOOG, AAPL, etc at the moment. I think when the crash comes, they will be leading the plunge. FB is an anomaly to that due to the dip/plunge today. Stoopid KODK. I should have loaded the boat with it at the open and dropped it like hot steel at the top reversal. I haven't put together a watch list for tomorrow yet. I think actually I want to work something up in Python that will give me the top stocks that have the most consistent gains over the last 3 days but are below a moving average for the previous 15 minutes. That should give me an interesting list. I will twiddle with details like volume and market cap too. What I want is the steady-eddy performers that are in a dip and ready to buy for the day or the overnight, with decent gains but few surprises. I am fine with 1% days, honest. All I need is 111 days at 1% and I am over the threshhold. 22 weeks of hard trading. No, I didn't calculate that out longhand. I wrote an app for that. It's fun to throw the figures around but boring to keep punching a calculator for 20 minutes. Holey crap! My 100 shares SWBI did a power dive!!! I totally wasn't expecting that. Felt like a kick in the huevos when I noticed that! I just lost $100 profit thereabouts. Hope I get it back by morning. Well, nothing I can do about it except sell in the morning or hold it and see what it does tomorrow. Sometimes you get the alligator, sometimes the alligator gets you, I guess.
Here's the culprit. Wasn't as bad as all that. The day chart looks good. This move is consistent with recent moves. The day trend still looks great. I am staying in unless unless. This stock is gonna make me money. and now it is after the postmarket session and there is where I stand. Wow today's P/L graph is pretty wild. But I am only $43 down from my high today which was $8390, and I think half of my portfoilio is going to gap up and make me some money in the premarket and I should be back up scaring the hell out of $8400 by the opening bell. My goal is to be at $8500 by the close tomorrow. Easy enough goal. Except no day trades available. I will be able to sell anything I already bought today, but anything I buy tomorrow I am stuck with until Friday. And that's the way it is, as Walter Cronkite used to say. Good night all, see you in the morning.
Holey Cow! The premarket kicked my @$$!!! Whew! Starting to recover. But I was resolved to just hang on. Except for FB, everything in the bag was in a very strong multi day trend and a couple stocks were a bit overextended. And now it's down again. I bet a lot of little guys get shook out this morning. This is brutal. I'm staying in though I might dump FB. So much is gonna be happening today I will wait until the end of trading and just do a recap. So back to the charts.
Well, things got pretty dismal for a while there. At one point in the day I was down from &8350-ish to $8100 or so. The day charts all said the same thing. All of my stocks except FB had multi day, even multi week uptrends. And they had all been overextended. All were higher than where the continued trend would have had them. So, I knew after a bit of adjustment, they would all be back up. But when? In a few hours? Tomorrow? The end of next week? Nothing for it but to see which go up, and dispose of the weaker ones as they broke out. Now, it is one thing to do damage control on today's account. But trying to think outside two dimensions, I considered tomorrow, and I wanted to already own stocks tomorrow, and be able to sell or hold as the market dictates to me. So as I sold, I kept an eye out for trending stocks and bought a couple, but I did not completely load the boat. At the end of the day I still held $900-something in cash. So now my portfolio is as follows: Yeah, I bought back in to STKL. Shouldn't have sold it in the first place. Waited for FB to give me a profit. I knew it would chop up and down enough to go green for me at least for a moment so I waited and got rid of it when it did. It is not trending smoothly and not a team player. I wanted escalator stocks that I could predict with reasonable certainty to have a reasonable price/time line that I could work with, and that I could recognize when they were overextended and ripe for sale, while I pick other similar trenders and pick them up in their dips. So as I think I have said, Alpaca starts the day's logging at 0700 while my mind logically sees the day beginning at 0400 when prices first start to move. Before shutdown last night at 2000, my total equity stood at $8350.72, respectable enough, striking distance from today's goal of $8500. At one point in the premarket this morning I was down to $8088 or so. A regression of two or three days in my progress. Deja Boo, all over again. I agonized over the obvious thing to do, which was to bail, and I could, too, since everything was an overnight hold, bought yesterday, and selling would not be a day trade. I studied those day charts and decided that this drop today was a short term anomaly and the trends would hold true, at least on the great majority of the stocks I was holding or observing. FB had to go, though. A dependable riser in the face of adversity, but there was no trend. I don't remember now what all else I had. I'll check the logs and present them. Okay... FB Stop SELL 10 shares @ $233.63 07/30/2020 01:24 PM bought yesterday @ $232.63 GLG Stop SELL 100 shares @ $2.88 07/30/2020 01:27 PM bought yesterday @ $2.68 TQQQ Stop SELL 6 shares @ $112.31 07/30/2020 01:37 PM bought yesterday @ $110.49 GSS Mkt SELL 200 shares @ $4.31 07/30/2020 03:24 PM bought yesterday @ $4.06 Saved a dollar here and there by trusting the trend and not panic selling. Nothing sold at a loss. YAY!!!! I just lost a lot of my profits made during the night. BOOOOOOooooo..... Then I had to do something with all that money from selling. Checked my scanner and picked up LAC Mkt BUY 200 @ $6.38 07/30/2020 01:51 PM STKL Mkt BUY 300 @ $6.32 07/30/2020 03:59 PM And still holding TSM and SWBI. That should give me a nice profit going into tomorrow. I suspect all or most will gap down a bit but should rally after the xchg opens. Goal is $8400 by end of trading tomorrow. At the high of the day I was over $8300 and I was really hoping to see $8350 again, because I anticipate a small loss tonight. And that's the way it is, Thursday, July the 30th, 2020. This is Growley Monster, signing off.
Crap on a cracker! This is not the thing to wake up to in the morning. I need my cappuccino NOW!!! Looks like just one single trade though. At $6.15 but the bid/ask are $6.56 and $7.00 so hopefully it will work out at the bell. But TSM and LAC are troubling, as well, trading normally and down a good bit. The trend is losing cohesion with TSM so I may have to sell at a loss.
Hmpfh. I picked two winners and one loser. Wouldn't you know it, my biggest position was the loser. Started with the loser. PEIX. The news was just too strong. Bought at the opening bell and it promptly plummeted. Mrs Monster reminded me I was gonna buy Marathon and so I did, made a nice easy $110 or so on it. Bought one I was looking at Friday, DOYU, cause of the sweet trend. It went up nicely and I think it will have another great day tomorrow but I couldn't sell that stoopid PEIX, out of day trades. Thank you FINRA for protecting me from myself but your stoopid rule has cost me many thousands of dollars. I don't know how much protection I can afford. But a lot of times I have got stuck in a stock overnight like this and it rallied the next day so not despairing yet. I'm down $8 from Friday's close. Meh. Live and trade another day. Nice. Not nice.