What's up everyone? All right? So today I'm finishing the morning up 3603 dollars which is on the surface a great morning. but before we get into today's midday market recap: I Want to talk for a minute about not comparing yourself to others? So over the weekend I got myself, you know, a little bit frustrated because I saw on Twitter that there were some traders that made a lot more than I did last week last week I finished with about $22,000 in profits and again on the surface that sounds really good. but then when you see someone who made $100,000 in that same week, you can't help and at least I can't help but feel like cheese. you know I need to step it up.

I'm not I'm not making the most of these opportunities I'm not being as aggressive as I should and you can start to feel a little down about yourself. and so what? I told myself over the weekend as I was sort of reading those tweets and thinking about it is I was like you know what? I'm Monday morning I'm just gonna start with 8,000 shares. let's start with 10,000 shares and me. You know what? Maybe I'll take a twenty five thousand share trade and make two points in the trade and be up $50,000 and that's getting into swing for the fences.

and when I do that I almost always get myself into trouble. Here's the deal. at the end of the day at the end of last year, I finished in really, really good shape and it wasn't by getting really aggressive and trying to really, swing for the fences. it was mostly thanks to slow and steady being really consistent, closing the majority of my days green even if it was only $1500 or only three thousand dollars because over you know, a span of 12 months, all of those days add up to 250 350, 400 thousand dollars in profits and so yeah.

Sure, it would be really nice to have one week where you make $100,000 or $150,000 but you also have to remember that you know a lot of the traders that are that aggressive are also gonna have equally big or at least at least very large losses and we don't always see the other side of the coin. You know people like to show what they want you to see, so it's the same with social media. It's it's a curated experience. You know, very carefully curated lives that people project on social media and so large creators will project just those big green days because that's how they want you to look at them and it's no criticism towards them for doing that.

and I get it. A lot of people do that I do something a little different which is I post all of my winners and all of my losers and I do that because I want you guys to see both sides of the coin and my hope is that yeah, you guys will see the days that I make a lot of money and that's awesome, but you see the balance. You also see the days where I lose money and where I'm frustrated or you know, bummed out or whatever so you realize that it's not all green. Now for me, not comparing myself to others is something that you know I always started have to work on because I wanted be the best trader I can be I don't want to be the best trader in the world I don't need to be the best trader in the world.

You know it's one of those things where there's always gonna be someone out there who's better than you, right? Whether it's better at trading or better at whatever it is you do as an artist or is this or is that there's always someone out there who's gonna be better. There are a very small handful of people in the world that are literally the best at what they do and if you said that is, this is what I need in order to be satisfied with myself. Well, most likely you're gonna come. You're gonna fall short and you're not gonna be happy.

So living a happy life means I think not comparing yourself to others so much and instead if you want to compare yourself to someone, compare yourself to yourself. And so for me this year, my goal isn't to try to make ten thousand dollars a day on average and finish the year with two million dollars in profits. I'm not gonna set the bar that high and then come up way short and be disappointed. What I want to do instead is look at last year last year I was averaging about seventeen sixteen hundred dollars a day.

So this year I'd like to average closer to two thousand dollars a day maybe twenty-five hundred dollars a day because I know that if I average twenty-five hundred dollars a day, I will almost double my profits from last year. So instead of making 350,000 I'd be making closer to six hundred seven hundred thousand. And if I could do that again the following year and increase my average to three thousand a day or four thousand a day, then maybe in two or three years I'll be making a million dollars a year. So let's compare myself against myself.

and I encourage you guys do the same thing right now. we're at the beginning of the month and there's that kind of you know urge to try to have a really great month. and so when you see someone else out there because doing better on the month and then you are, you could kind of feel like dang, you know that guy's he's already in the driver's seat on the month and I'm still trying to get things you know going. But just remember, slow and steady wins the race.

If you want to be a trader and you want to do this for the long haul, you can't swing for the fence. Swinging for the fences. What strikes you out? That's what blows up accounts. You have to focus on taking profits when you have them.

and remember that every single day that you close green even if it's only a hundred dollars, if you're making a hundred dollars consistently, you're doing something nine out of ten traders haven't figured out how to do so. You're really doing a great job. Now for me making $22,000 last week, that was a great week. Sure, it's not the best week any traders ever had, but for me it was a good week and I'm happy with that.

So I really encourage you guys to do that kind of you know moment of reflection and and have that that presence of mind when you start noticing that you're comparing yourself to others to kind of bring it back to let's just compare myself to myself because comparing yourself to others I Really don't think it's the recipe for a happy life. All right. So with all that said, let's get into today's midday market recap and break down our traits from the morning. All right.

So here we go. let's go over the trades from this morning. Overall, pretty decent morning finishing up three thousand, six hundred and three dollars. So let me drag this up and you guys can take a look at my PL for sure.

I Was a little cautious this morning just because you know last week was a great week, a really good start and I wanted to just continue to build that cushion even though I had that kind of moment over the weekend where I was telling myself to be really aggressive I was able to bring myself you know back into focus before the bell and say let's just start by kind of easing into the week. so you know I kind of feel like Monday morning after the weekend is kind of like you know it's going back to the gym after a you know, a couple weeks off and you don't want to just go full force right away. you kind of gotta loosen up. ease your way in and see if it's gonna be a good day and and if it is then you know be aggressive but you don't want to start.

you know, pushing too hard because then you can get yourself into trouble. And so today with my trades I kind of wanted to test the water and see if we were gonna have nice opportunities this morning and so my very first trade as you can see here let me scroll up was on my Zs. now this one was EMA my SZ this was one of our leading Gabor's and it was. you know, definitely a stock that I thought had some good potential.

you can see pre-market oops, hit a pre market height 265 and then it pulled back a little bit. So I was watching this as soon as the bell rang for a possible break of the pre market highs and I ended up getting in because it opened right underneath the half dollar. I got in right at 250 7,500 shares and it popped up and broke over pre market highs. So I'm in at 250 and selling through to 67, to 70 and to 68.

So my very first trade right out of the gates 20 seconds into the day I'm up like 1,300 bucks. so you know that was a really solid first trade. It was pretty easy, low-risk you know I was a little aggressive on share size, but you know I pretty much doing what I would usually do on this and actually this is interesting because it shows that I got in right before the bell rang I don't remember doing that but I guess and we were right right at the cusp. So anyways, right in there 249 250 and then selling as we squeezed up.

So that was my first trade 1200 bucks Second trade: I lost 1200 bucks that was on Nuro I jumped into this one right off the scanners and this is kind of crazy today. The action we saw in this stock I jumped in it at 205 right out of the gates. it hit 206 and then dropped down to 185. So I'm in at 204 - OH - I stopped out at 186.

Quick loss just like that. and look, it ended up doing it again Later it popped up to 219 and then dropped all the way to 167. That is brutal. A really quick drop I didn't get in it on the second one because I saw it hitting a scanners and I was like now I'm not going back into that one.

It already fooled me once. I'm gonna leave it alone and I'm really glad I left it alone because that could have ruined my morning. So now I'm up only like 60 bucks on the day you know After that neuro trade I went from being up 1200 to up only 60 70 bucks. So next doc to hit the scanner was dealt de LT now on this one I Felt confident being a little more aggressive because it made a big move yesterday.

Now I was a little iffy about the fact that sold off as much as it did yesterday afternoon. but there Friday afternoon. but as it was squeezing up here I figured it was definitely worth a stab. I jumped in at 250, rode the momentum all the way up to a high of 289 mm.

$23 profit and so that got me back into the green. Alright, so that was De LT again on this one. jumping in at the half dollar I go for entries at half dollars and whole dollars and obviously I buy on pull backs, but this one was a good entry at the half dollar so dealt nice trades on that one next one CNET see net is another stock that was really strong last week and so as I saw this one popping up again I jumped in. where did I get in right just over the half so - 54 to 57.

my average was right around 255. so I got in there I added at $7 selling at 702 704 and then I sold the rest at 679. another $1,400 a profit and with that I got myself up to right around 3,500 and my very last trade of the day was on my SZ getting in at 265 for the break of hai of day so this one curled up, it tapped, came just under high of day and so I jumped in it right here at 65 ended up squeezing all the way to 289 I didn't really do as well on it as I could have I got a little nervous and got back out at 268. So small little trade there at another, you know, 50 bucks or whatever.

but overall you know today we saw pretty decent action. Aside from that one drop on Neuro. the market was pretty clean. so I had a total of five trades today and I'm green on four out of the five.

my average percentage gain was four-and-a-half percent. today. my average winners were fifteen cents and my one loser was 17 cents. So it gives me accuracy of eighty percent with a roughly one to one profit loss ratio.

Not bad. I mean obviously I'd like to keep stops tighter than 17 cents, but narrow just dropped really really fast. so I just wasn't able to get that stop any tighter. So here we are.

This is the fifth day of the year and I'm up right around twenty Five thousand, Five hundred dollars on the year. So five days in daily average is five thousand dollars a day now. I Talked a little bit in my intro to this midday recap about daily averages. Last year, my daily average was $1,600 right around there, which was good I mean I'm happy with that.

And so my goal this year isn't to try to have a 5,000 dollar average for the entire year. I Don't think that would be realistic to try to grow my daily average by 300% I'm not gonna be able to grow at times 3. but if I can have my daily average be closer to $2,000 a day or $2,500 a day, I'll be closer to 600 700 thousand dollars in profit this year and that would put me in line to break over a million dollars this year. So I started last January with 583 dollars as of today.

Right now my account is it 361 thousand dollars. So I'm 36 percent of the way there. You know the goal is a million dollars and in order to cross that line obviously I would need to make over six hundred and forty thousand dollars between now and the end of the year. That's setting the bar pretty high.

But you know if we just do the math, what is? Let's see six hundred, six hundred and forty thousand divided by 230 trading days left would be a twenty seven hundred dollar daily average. So you know again I think that's gonna be a little too high because I expect we're gonna have months that are gonna be slow. There will be points where things you know just kind of. We'll be lucky to make five hundred a day, but if I can stay focused on trying to keep my averages as high as possible then you know I think I can be in in pretty good shape.

That's that's what I'm hoping for. and Eugene to answer your question last year I made Let's see around three hundred, seventy thousand dollars, four hundred thousand total commissions were about fifty thousand dollars. So three, six, three Eighty or whatever was my net and I have if you add the fifty thousand and commissions, that's what I made gross. All right.

So anyways, yeah so commissions are. you know, maybe 10? 15 percent of my gains go to commissions and it's not based on percentage, it's just based on per share and per trade. But it ends up kind of being around. you know, 15% or so.

So anyways, you know, the goal this year is just just try to be as consistent as possible. try to boost up that daily average. if I can do $2,000 $2,500 a day, that's awesome and if I break the million mark in early 2019, I'm fine with that. That's totally ok.

I don't need to hit that in two years to take $583 and turn it into a million bucks in two years would be pretty crazy and it's gonna take more than just a home run to get there. You know I need to be really consistent I need to keep my stops as tight as possible I need to stay focused. You know, trade smart so you know that's kind of where I'm at right now. And today was a day that I came into the market, stayed pretty focused and I was able to come away with thirty six hundred dollars in profit.

So we'll do it again tomorrow. and I'll trade in the morning tomorrow afternoon I'm gonna fly to California and then Wednesday morning I'll be trading from California So be trading on my traveling trading station, but it will be. You know, business as usual. pre market analysis starting around 9:00 9:15 and then getting into trading as soon as the bell rings at 9:30 Justin Yeah, so when I start trading in, the IRA I'll be sharing those trades as well.

and I'll be basically trading and trading, trying to trade in two accounts at once. which is I've done it before. It's a pain, it's not easy, but I will do it. And so for instance, I might say okay, you know I'm getting in my SZ right now and I'm also getting in in my IRA So I'm in with my IRA But the thing is, I can only take three trades a week because I'm only excuse me gonna have about ten or eleven thousand dollars in the account.

So I'm below the twenty five thousand dollar minimum. So three trades a week I'll probably trade once on Monday once on Tuesday once on Wednesday just do one trade a day. although I could do all three trades in one day and then not trade for the rest of the week. I Guess it just depends on what type of opportunities we see.

but I'll have one end three and one exit because I can't scale out with the PDT rule because each one of those cells counts as one of my three trades. So and yeah, six I know the time zone. So yeah, you know pre market analysis will be 6:15 for people on PST but you know I I just keep myself set on Eastern time because even though I'm in California I'm still trading and doing everything on Eastern time zone. So but anyways, yeah, so with the IRA, I'll be limited for the first you know month or two until I get myself over 25,000 and then from there I'll be able to trade a little more aggressively.

So the thing with trading in an IRA is that you can't short stocks number one and number two. You don't get any leverage. so if you have $10,000 in there, you only have ten thousand in buying power. You don't have leverage times four.

If I put in twenty five thousand, I only have twenty five thousand I don't have a hundred thousand. So that's the drawback. And then the other drawback is that I can't take out the profits until I'm like sixty years old. But I don't mind trading into accounts, right? I can trade with you know, my main account for money that I want to take out and I can trade a little bit in my IRA account for money that I'm just saving and that's totally fine.

I'm okay with doing this so that's kind of the game plan. I've been working on getting it set up I Got a call Interactive Brokers again today. You know we're just trying to get my my old IRA rolled over into their account and it's just gonna take a little bit time. now.

The cool thing with Interactive Brokers is that you don't have to wait for trades to settle. You can trade immediately. They call it IRA margin and basically it's like margin times 1. You don't have buying power, but you can de trade as much as you want once you're above $25,000 So below $25,000 you're still limited to only 3 trades a week because it is a margin account.

So I'm limited on my trades, but you know we'll just see how long it'll take me to get from 10,000 to 25,000 Hopefully I can do it as quick as I can. Hopefully we get a couple of like you know, hundred percent movers I buy. Let's see, you know, 5,000 shares of a stock at 250 and sell it all at $5 right? I Do that a couple times and I'll get myself up pretty quickly, but you know it'll be a little slow going for the first month or two and then once I get over that level I'll be in be in really good shape. So that's Interactive Brokers Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade both give you margin on IRA accounts so that'll be nice.

and commissions I don't know what they're gonna be, but I'm not really that worried about it, it'll just be regular commission rates all right. So yeah, so that's coming soon in 2018. Just waiting for stuff to get set up there and you know things take a little while to get transferred over, but you know in the meantime just focused on trying to be consistent and keep those stops as tight as possible and focus on trading. You know, the first hour, the first hours when things have been really the best.

So get in, get aggressive, and then look, you know my my last trade was at 9:50 I didn't even trade past the first 20 minutes. So 20 minutes and then I'm done. You know? So that's that's really what? I Like you know, just to get in, get some profit, get out, and do it again tomorrow. All right? So anyways, that's the game plan here.

I Hope you guys have all had decent start to the week. It seems like some of you did pretty well on De LT and my S Z especially and hopefully you didn't get beaten up too much on Nero if you did trade it. but we'll be back at it again first thing tomorrow. Hopefully we see some more good opportunities and we can keep building up that cushion on the month and on the year.

Alright everybody, so that's it for me. I'll see all of you back here first thing tomorrow morning pre market analysis: 9:00 A.m. 9:15 So I'll be trading in the morning and then flying in the afternoon. All right.

So that's the game plan. I'll see you guys back here in the morning if you're still watching. You must have really enjoyed that video. So why not subscribe and get email alerts anytime? I upload new content.

Remember when you subscribe, you become a member of the Warrior trading family.