Well, everything I held over the weekend got sold at a profit. I am out, clean, clear. Back up to $8127.90. I would have been better but I bought 50 shares TQQQ just before the bell and it did good until it did bad. Stopped out, $70 loss. I should have held SRNE longer. I failed to fully evaluate all four open positions independently. PRTY was a no brainer sell. GLG too. And SQ, it's done for now. But SRNE probably has another day or two in it. I don't think I made a mistake buying TQQQ and I think my stop was set properly. Hey, it's called risk and sometimes your risk realizes into damage. It could just as well AFAIK have gone up to make a new high today and given me a couple hundred bucks profit. So I am up 1.25% for the day. Meh. I'll take it. $100 up from Friday's close. $222.82 down from my high of $8350.72. And still in the green on my $8k account. So not a failed trader, so far. SQQQ looking good but no way am I going to buy SQQQ right now with no day trades available. I sure was thinking about it for a moment there but I would be making a mistake buying SQQQ without a stop under it. I just know the chart next time I look at it will show it went up 10% and stayed up til morning but I think I am doing the right thing. Probably won't trade tomorrow. I have commitments that will keep me at the marina, the notary, and in Baton Rouge all morning maybe all day. That's okay.
Bought 100 shares TQQQ, with 2 daytrades available. I will probably be using one of them at the closing bell today. I am currently using over $3k margin and I don't like to have any margin overnight. The bulk of this position is probably going to be held at least 3 or 4 days, maybe a lot longer. Maybe to the end of the month. Or until pre-election jitters set in and there is no immediate profit left in the position. So the recently made all time high of $131.93 is a strong possibility within the next 3 days. $122.74 is my break even. $9.19 difference. Just counting my chickens before they cross the road here, but if I hold all for three days I could be looking at $1k profit, maybe four days and not three. Still I'll take it. I am going to need to ditch the margin at some point soon, though. Leveraged wins are cool but leveraged losses not, especially when I have to pay interest on the loss. Then again, the interest is chimp change with Alpaca. One Day candles: And 15 minute candles I think I caught the dip pretty good this time. Meh. It touched the upper Bollinger at $125.04 and started a gentle bounce back down. Briefly considered selling 50 shares but then I looked at that beautiful day chart and unconsidered. I'm looking at the $127.75 it made last night and thinking that looks pretty good for a high today. So I will sell 40 at $127.00 maybe. DARN. Groceries are here and Mrs Monster is in a meeting with a couple VPs in attendance so I got to put the cold stuff away. Setting a stop for the whole position, locking in at $8500 equity oh crap I just stopped out before I even typed the period. Well okay over 2% for the day now I got ice cream melting and a guy is waiting on me to sign the bill of sale on a boat we are selling. Half the proceeds going into one of my two trading accounts, either this one or the IB account which I still haven't finished configuring the big trading computer for. I am working on a laptop right now. Gotta go peeps bye
Well looky there. TQQQ down to $118. Nice. Maybe it will go down some more and I can pick it all back up again cheaper.
bought 100 shares TQQQ in the premarket. On the day chart it definitely looks ready for a surge of mean regression action. On the 15 minute chart, meh. But I am expecting a good push at the opening bell that should last until about 1130. Maybe a dip and more upwardness. Right now as I wait for the bell, I am down $30 and if it goes to -&60 I think I will bail. Another botched entry. I should have waited for the stock which is in a very slight decline, to break upward of the 9EMA. I am expecting at least a $5 gain this morning, which will put me over $9k. Ah there it goes. A little twitch upward. A minute before the bell. wait for it, wait for it..... Okay, 5 minutes and a few seconds in, I am up $150 so the botched opening I will forgive myself but not forget. Botched openings are ever my bane. Well it boinked up against the $122.50 line a couple of times and now it is consolidating just above $122. I moved my stop up just under that area, $121.86, and locked in $100 profit. Moved the stop up again, locked in $200 profit. Moved the stop up again, locked in $300 profit. Moved the stop up again, locked in $400 profit. I hope I am not being too predictable here... I think it will run for another half hour, dip for lunch, creep up another buck or two, decline slowly into the close, and gap down a buck for the open tomorrow. Tomorrow should see a gradual climb of $4 for the day. I has spoken. TQQQ surged $3.70 in the first half hour. Wow, nice. $5 in the first hour. But now it is meeting very stubborn resistance at $126. I really need it to make $127 before lunch so I can lock in my goal for today. Hell with it. I am breakkng the pattern. I am bumping up my stop another half buck in case of a reversal. The volatility is not there right now, and the trend is temporarily out of steam. I could close out now and have my goal met but I think it is good for quite a bit more before the day is done. Okay I will post this now, and move my stop up. If it stops out I am still up $450, only $50 short of my goal for the day. <EDIT> Changed my mind. I ran the stop up high and tight, locked in my $500. Now let's see if it stops out or soars into the stratosphere. Either way I am good. Hooray for me! My account now stands at $9045 total equity from a funded amount of $8k and lots of ups and downs. I am feeling really good about making $10k next week. Maybe Mrs Monster will let me go ahead and fund on up to $25k+ but honestly I am doing okay right now. It's just aggravating, dealing with PDT hassle and losing money when I can't bail out of a position. That has probably cost me about $3k so far this year. Thank you FINRA for protecting me from making profit. Assholes. It simply wouldn't do, to increase my tax bill, now would it?
Stopped out. That's okay. I made my goal. I increased my account over $500 to over $9000 so for me it has been a pretty good morning for me and my micro-account. I only bought 100 shares and I could have bought 141 shares. So I might have just as well made $700 profit. It seemed like a good decision at the time. Risk enough, with what... about 30 shares bought on margin. The balance was right. If I had bought the whole banana I could still have started with my stop at $100 loss level and stopping out would have been slightly more likely but in the end it would have been no problem. Okay well, the risk level seemed appropriate and in the same situation with the same expectations, I would make the same decision. If I had not stopped out, I would still have sold at least 50 shares at the close of the day. Manic moves like this, even with a good catalyst, often retrace a bit and I hate seeing a big position gap down strongly, and then wonder if it will keep going down at the bell, or retrace the gap back up. 50 shares worth of overnight risk I could handle. Okay I know everyone loves my screenshots so here ya go: I stopped out at $125.88, my break-even was $120.84 I think. So my high P/L percentage was like around 6.24% and high equity was $9049 or thereabouts. So I didn't give up much immediately, however it looks like TQQQ is starting to drift upward and I still think it is good for another $2 or so but I'm out. I got to make bagel dogs for Mrs. Monster while she tries to earn a living for us poor Rednecks. Seems like almost every time I clear the board before lunch and then change my mind and go back in, I lose big bucks. So yeah all logic points to going back in with like 50 shares, but I'm not. After all, if EVERYBODY made $500 and kept grabbing more, we would run out of money pretty soon, right? This was an easy day to trade. I wish they were all like this.
Yeah I know, right? And I actually caught the entry and the stop/exit not too bad, in retrospect, though I was at the time disappointed with how my entry worked out. Then after lunch TQQQ went up some more. Meh. I was thinking about buying at the close for the overnight but now that I have had time to think about it, I am thinking it might gap down and so I will take a look at it right before the bell tomorrow morning. I'm done for the day adn I am gonna stay done for the day. I have made good money in the afternoons, and good money buying late in the afternoon for an overnighter. BUT when I clear the board AFTER a solid morning of trading, going back in has often been a mistake. I have turned a couple of +4% days into +1% days. So this is how I am playing it today. I think this is my biggest win since I started trading again. No sense messing it up. I am not gonna rule out afternoon trading but I am not going to put a morning's hard earned winnings at risk all over again in the afternoon. Today was a great day and I am determined that it will remain so, and the lure of more $ is not going to influence me this time. Goal tomorrow is $400. Today was stoopid simple and I am gonna probably do the same thing tomorrow, load the boat with TQQQ before the bell with a good stop. I might stay in overnight with a reduced position size. If the trend holds true, we are looking at a new record high in the Nasdaq either tomorrow evening or Friday morning. I want a piece of that. Recent behavior repeating itself would have TQQQ at least approaching $132 tomorrow and continuing upward 3 or 4 more days. Us bulls might be getting close to the end of the happy times. Get it while you can, and get ready to start playing the short side, or get out of the way! It can't keep going up much longer!
I'm in, TQQQ again. I was going to max out on the position size with 141 shares but I like nice round numbers like 100. Stock goes up a penny, I go up a buck. Stock goes up a buck, I go up $100. Easy to count my money before I got it. My pre-market starts at 0900 and I bought at 0900 for $12.80. For me to get my $400 goal today, it has to make a new all-time high. Currently the all time high is $131.93 and I am looking for at least $132.80. Darn. It's a good thing I didn't go all in. I thought I had a day trade available. That's what my app said. Turns out, I do NOT have a day trade available so I can't sell today and it would kinda suck to have a margin call if the price dips. So now I am locked in to the position until this time tomorrow. That's okay, it should go up up up, for another 3 to 6 days, looking at recent history. My short term prediction is it will continue to go sideways and at the bell it will flagpole up a buck. FWIW. Doesn't matter. I'm locked in, anyway. So, here I am, locked in to a position $3859 greater than my account size, with no stop. Biggest risk I have ever taken, in trading. Looks good, though. Tomorrow I can sell if I want. Well my prediction for the opening bell was a little off. I was down $80 at the bell and then it started growing a nice green candle, which then wilted like it was standing on a hot car hood. That's okay, it's going up over the day. Well, since I am locked in and can't bail out, no point in watching this thing. I think I'll make some waffles for me and Mrs Monster, then go putter around out in the shop, or maybe get my big trading computer configured and place an order with my IB account.
Crap on a cracker. I was up well over +$200 and then TQQQ dropped like a prom dress. In the red. No big worries, the trend is my friend, but this is disappointing. The upslope in the morning session was way shallower than yesterdays, and I was pretty much resigned to only making maybe $300 by the bell, but now today's results are anybody's guess. In fact as I write this I am not at all sure that I will finish the day in the green. Still I am pretty sure in 3 days it will be up around $135 or $136.
and now the day is done. I finished at $9048.80, up from $9010.80 this morning. At my peak I was up $248. So I gave back like $190 or so of my hard won profit. Sounds like a pretty crummy day, right? Even though my P/L is at a so-so .42% increase. So what did I do wrong? Mainly I did not verify before placing my buy order that I had a day trade available. In fact I did not, and once I was in, I was locked in no matter what, until tomorrow. Not such a tragedy, in light of the trend on the day chart. But in the immediate here and now I lost a bunch of money. Because I couldn't bail. And I would have, after the peak of an unexpectedly shallow intraday trend right at the usual lunchtime slumptime. Once it got below $200 profit I should have hit my stop somewhere around there. I could have picked it up again about 45 minutes before the closing bell when I would have expected from past behaviour that it would start to climb again. Instead I had to endure a cruel dip because I can't sell until morning. Another thing I did wrong, that I have been doing wrong. I didn't check on the margin maintenance requirement. Alpaca requires 90% on overnight margin loans for 3x leveraged ETFs. Wow did I get caught with my pants down! Got a nice margin call warning email, and promptly okayed it with Mrs Monster to transfer $4k from my checking into the Alpaca account. That problem solved. And a lesson learned. Normally I do not hold anything overnight on margin. What did I do right? I only bought 100 shares instead of what I had planned, 140 shares, which would have almost zeroed out my total buying power. So in a way I did bad. I didn't stick with the plan. And for no other reason than I like 100 shares for quick and easy P/L computation in my head. With a day trade available and a stop order following the price upward, I would have done pretty decent. $200 initial profit from the morning session, then about $75 from buying the afternoon dip and holding into the aftermarket. A far cry from my goal of $400 but not so shabby at that. What I did get is Mrs Monster's blessing to put more of MY money into MY brokerage account. You see, even though I am in every respect the king of my castle, it pleases me to humor my queen, letting her think she has a say in such matters. It is worth it to see her happy. LOL. Okay, it would cause a great deal of strife if I just went for it, but I have had a lot of successful days lately and with the margin call and all, she didn't make a fuss. So that's good, an extra $4k to trade with. That much closer to the PDT threshhold. In a few days I should be up to $14kand by elections, over $15k. Then the holidays ought to give me a good boost if we don't get a hard market crash like I am kind of expecting any day now. The plan for tomorrow? The deposit I just made probably won't be playable yet in the morning and I am just about tapped out for cash, so no buying. 100 shares is still a nice round number. I will sell off going into the mid-day dip if it appears again, and load the boat (cash only, no margin) in the afternoon rally for holding over the weekend. Past behaviour has things being very green until maybe Tuesday. What else happened good? Well being locked in, at least I won't miss the gap up that I expect to see. I do have profit for the day, just not cashed in yet and not much of it. Another green day, yeah. Still disappointing, and nobody to blame but me. As you can see, my high equity was $9236.80 and I ended the postmarket at 9048.80. Here is the 15 minute chart. You can see where a stop moved up high and tight at 1100 like I did yesterday would have bailed me out after the first peak, and low volume would have made me suspicious of the post-lunchtime second peak, but increasing volume on the first red candle would have confirmed my doubts and the reversal would have been obvious at 1515. I would have loaded up as far as my cash would take me, for the overnight. Pow. $200+ more than what I did make. And no margin call crap which actually turned out to be a good thing LOL