All right. Well, I'm going to give you guys a little recap. um of where I'm at on the day. So today's no trade day.

uh I just didn't see anything that looked that great. I actually already logged out of my platform but I'll log back in just so you can. uh so you can see. So no, no trade day for me today.

Uh when I sat down I sat down early enough and it just saw, you know, a couple reverse split stocks. thmo Uh, this one did give some opportunities I did not trade it. uh if we look at the on the one minute, uh, there was a hall to the open. it halted up uh at 4 51 and then it resumed from that Halt and it actually did like a brief dip right here and then halted up a second time at like 491..

and that second halt, you know that you there. There was definitely a dip trade there I just the volume was light I wasn't really sure about it so I didn't take that trade and I did not take the trade on resemption from the second halt because I thought that was too risky. It sells off, it comes back up, sells off, and then right here broke back over five. That could have been a decent trade.

Uh, went up to a high of about five uh, 55 and then reverse and halted down at 472. So short-lived strength. So and now that five minute candle is so ugly with a shooting star. high red volume so that one's no good for me.

so no trades on it. although there are a couple opportunities I didn't take the trade uh op ended up pulling back O-r-i-c this one uh I squeezed up a little bit. it was something I was kind of watching as a maybe over the pre-market High which is around 460 but I just wasn't really sure about it. The floats a little bit higher.

27 million shares. uh kind of a continuation stock after. uh you could sort of see this this setup here. so I just I left it alone I I just wasn't really sure.

so that was oric. um let's see ISO no trades on that too cheap. ym ygmz this one I Almost took a trade on and again short-lived momentum. so on this one we had a squeeze up into a halt at the open.

it pulls back, it pops back up and right in here. Uh, it. let's see yeah I was right in this area I was watching so I was consolidating here, pulled back to a low of 539 and I almost punched it at about 5 45. and I you know my starters 3 000 shares and I was like okay I could punch that for six three thousand and then being with six thousand and the spread just for a second opened up to I don't know maybe eight cents and I just sort of thought twice of it I thought I don't know not sure.

not sure about this one and then it halts up. Uh, opens at six dips and squeezes up to 640. thought about the dip and rip but the spreads were pretty big and I just said nope, not doing it and then it halted down and now it's halted down again. So short-lived Um moves today.

Nothing has really held up super well in small caps, at least so far. And you know my sweet spot in terms of time of day is between 8 and 10.. So if I haven't taken any trades by 10 a.m then as a further step of risk management I can say you know what I don't think I'm gonna take any traits today. So that was the decision.

My metrics right now. Um, you know I've been in this kind of like slump here the last, you know, like two months. Um I had a really nice hot streak. um and then I had like four or five red days that were a little bit bigger at the end of October a couple red days in November Nothing crazy, but you know, a couple red days and so you can see my Equity curve is kind of flattened out after the uh, strong summer.

like 367 000. Kind of like flattened out here. Uh, look at the 30 day you can see it's it's progress but it just it's just slow and so in. in fact, um November was the worst month I'd had in two years.

Uh, I made less than ten thousand dollars. It was a very slow month for me, but it was still a green month. Uh, and December isn't really that much better. So we're just at least for small cap trading.

It feels like we're in a little bit of a a slump. And one of the things that I've said because you know of course I've been trading for such a long time is we always have these. you know, ebb and flow. We have hot streaks and we have called streaks.

We have hot streaks and we have cold streaks And you know we're obviously we're not the market maker. We're not the broker dealer that just prints money every single day for us. We need that volatility and and we need liquidity. And that combination of volatility, liquidity, and some degree of predictability is just what we have not had as much of.

uh, at least as far as I've been able to tell in the last like six eight weeks. you know, Again, with a couple of exceptions. we've had a couple stocks that have made some nice moves, but because I've been sort of in this mode of feeling like I'm in a little bit of a slump, it becomes a bit self-fulfilling because then you trade more conservatively and then when something does work, you kind of miss it at the same time. My job is to manage risk, right? I'm in charge of a fair amount of capital.

That's my account and my job each day when I'm trading, it is to manage my risk to try to take risk that has a good opportunity for giving me reward right and and have a good return on that risk. And if I don't see it I just have to be more conservative and so I am doing that. and all in all, I'm okay with grinding on smaller numbers. I feel a little burnt out because I know that in one day I mean you know? Well, first of all, this is thirty thousand dollars in profit over the course of like I don't know like seven weeks or six weeks that's less than I've made in one morning in a hot market.

So I feel like I'm making very slow progress which can make me feel a little bit burnt out. and I know that in one day I could lose eight or ten thousand if I got a little too aggressive on the wrong stock, right? a little too aggressive on a position on uh, thmo, You know, long for the break of five, adding or 550 and all of a sudden caught in the hall down down. 75 cents a share or 50 cents a share. You know, 15 000 shares.

if I stepped up to the plate, that could be a big loss. Same thing with Ygmz. You know, uh Ygmz a trade on this one. Come on.

Uh, that went the wrong way that I didn't cut my loss on. Come on, look at this. Halted down a second time. I mean this is this is nuts.

Look at this chart. I mean that's terrible. So every time I see that it reaffirms why I'm sitting on the sidelines. Why I'm being cautious and you know that's going to be that's gonna be my job.

Um, you know I was talking yesterday a little bit about when I first started trading. How I I kind of approached trading. um, thinking a lot about my friend who had made money trading penny stocks. And you know, of course trading penny stocks as I know now is incredibly risky.

but you know I had this friend in high school who made about sixteen thousand dollars trading a penny stock and I don't know how much money he put into it. Uh, I mean you know, probably a couple thousand dollars. so it was probably like some big four or five hundred percent type of return. and so when I was in my 20s and I inherited a hundred thousand dollars from my dad, you know, after he had passed away and when my younger sister turned 21, we both got that money.

So I was 24. at that time I sort of thought. Okay, well um, can I actively trade this and can I make enough money actively trading it for it to be my full-time job managing this capital. And naturally, if I'd invest the whole hundred thousand dollars in, you know, Procter Gamble or Coca-Cola at two and a half percent interest.

Uh, the dividend dividends. you know 2500 a year wouldn't have. uh wouldn't have been enough to live off of. So I had to start to increase my risk tolerance in order to get a bigger return.

And you know you could look at junk bonds that yield 10 12 percent. Well, that still wasn't enough. You know I knew that I kind of needed to make 25 30, maybe 50 000 a year. Probably not 50.

but you know 50 would have been certainly nice at that time. But 25 30 000 a year would was fine. So you know 500 to a thousand a week? roughly? Well, geez, that meant I needed to grow my account by 30 to 40 50 a year. And so I started just basically increasing my risk tolerance to where in the market I could find that kind of return.

And with my friend who had made, uh, sixteen thousand dollars trading penny stocks, there was a part of me that thought, you know, geez, I'd only have to do that three times a year. If I did that three times a year, I would I would hit my goal. And so I think it's worth keeping that perspective that you do not have to trade every single day. Now most of us will because we see opportunities or because we just like trading.

But in fact, in some markets, it really is better to sit a bit more on the sidelines and keep in mind that all it takes is, you know, really, probably a couple of good trades a month, a couple of good trades a month where you execute them well, and where you step up a little bit could be more than enough. but you know a lot of Traders get into this habit of over trading, digging themselves a hole, incurring unnecessary losses, and then you sort of. You get into this, um, that's nasty false break out there too. You get into this kind of nasty cycle of just almost.

You're trading just to cover your losses, and that can be a really bad bad habit. So you know, I'm sitting here trading a lot less than I'd like to. but uh, you know, looking for opportunities, trying to be disciplined, and uh, and and finding enough opportunities to be making a little bit of money? All right. So you know, five hundred a thousand dollars a day.

So yesterday I was up. Uh, eighteen hundred day before was 1200, day before was 500. that was that day I went red before finishing green. So I was happy just to be green, not 2500, 600, 2 000.

Yeah, these are really small green days for me, but relative to trading with smaller share size. I Think this is the right approach because all of these small trades will add up. You know, over the course of days and weeks and months. and then if I'm managing my risk and we you know a couple times a month end up getting a really nice uh day where I can be up 4 800 or you know, 10 000 or something like that, you know then those are going to help kind of fill the Gap I In fact I had one gear where um I can't remember um when it was but I had one year where I think three days, two or three days accounted for like 30 of my profit for the whole year.

So you know it, just kind of, you know. goes to show why it's important to show up every day. Um, because you never know what's gonna what's gonna happen. Um, and you know what if you had those three days in December at the end of the year you could have spent like the whole basically year thinking you're behind goal, behind goal, not gonna hit, not going to hit it.

and then the last three days it's like it doesn't you know you end up um, having a hot streak and we have some great momentum and in three days you add a huge amount to where you're at on the year it can happen. So I try not to get too bent out of shape when I go through the the Downs um and when I'm on the UPS I Always try to remember that these are these are temporary. There will be another uh, slow period in the future and during that slope period I Want to remind myself that uh, trading in a cold Market can feel exhausting and a grind and that there will be another hot market around the corner. Whether it's a week from now, two weeks from now, a month from now, we don't know.

but you want to try to keep yourself in the game as long as you can keep gaining experience, keep practicing, and give yourself the ability to um, you know to be able to capitalize when things do pick up. I Think the traders that become too aggressive and then end up just spiraling well they then they can end up missing the next hot streak right? So that's not worth it. So I'm here in the trenches with you guys every day trading. small size right now being conservative.

uh I did have a bigger loss in October of 8 000. uh and that was probably the biggest loss I'd had in um in a long time. So you know I mean we can look at where I sit on the year. Um, let's see.

Um, this is going to show. Let's see, let's look at detailed. So on the year right now, um, you know I'm sitting at 983 000 uh in uh in gross profit. That's gross profit before fees and commissions.

Unfortunately, my fees and commissions. are substantial this year and I'm sitting at 800 000 after fees and commissions. So you know that's something that I'm thinking about for next year. Um, you know, in terms of Brokers and should I should I just you know, switch to use my TD Ameritrade account more.

Uh, I'm not really sure, but in any case, um, if we look at my win-loss expectation, you could see that I've had a couple periods this year where I've gone kind of things have been sort of slow. I'll just zoom in on this for a second. You know this this year's I mean it's not been what I thought it might be. um I don't know why this is like so I had a period uh, started the year strong and then gave back profit.

This was sort of I was still in the roller coaster right here I still thought I was gonna have like a fantastic year like 2021 and I was trading really aggressively and then I kind of started to hunker down and get a little bit more conservative. Um, and things were pretty slow through like May and June which is kind of the same as it is now I was just like, you know what, just keep your head down small gains. That's fine. And then we ended up having a terrific month of um August right here.

Great month of August a great month of September and then things cooled off a little bit here in October and I'm kind of back to the same spot I was here so sort of stair stepping up but trying to do everything I can not to have big drawdowns. So my biggest drawdown of this year was in January of 105 000. that's a substantial drawdown. Uh, and one of the things that I set my intention uh for was to reduce those drawdowns.

So the next biggest one was about 50 000, then 38 000, then 21, 16, 3, 000, 1400, 2, 000. a little bit of a bigger one here in October down about 19 000. Uh, and then you know, recoup that took took more time to recoup that loss. As you can see here, it was sort of a stair stepping back up.

Uh, but you know, recouped it and now back. Uh, basically at all-time highs in my account. So you know, just to give you a little bit of perspective. Um, this year has certainly, um, fallen short of the goals that I set for myself.

Uh, but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that certainly one or two good days, even if I had them next week could change this pretty substantially. And also, there's just a degree of I can only do as well as I can do I mean if there's a lack of volatility or liquidity or predictability, then I'm going to make a little bit less. And maybe next year will be worse. Maybe next year will be better.

but in any case, I'm far exceeding the expectations I set for myself when I first came into the market to start trading, but far exceeding them. and as long as I can can continue to do that, you know I think that's um, that's gonna be. that's gonna be good. So anyways, um gives you a little perspective of where I'm at here on the year and I'll be back at it first thing tomorrow morning.

I'd love to finish the week with some trades I don't like no trade days, particularly. this would be my second one. uh no, actually this is my fourth of the month I had one last week on Wednesday and I had two, the fifth and the sixth. So I've had some no trade days this month.

um yeah, it's kind of um, yeah. kind of a bummer, but looks like I have one day here where I was green before commissions but right after right there on that day down 200 bucks or whatever. So yeah, anyways, uh, a couple more no trade days but I did have a really nice August a no red August that was great. um some great momentum.

Then we had the Chinese IPOs had a good September and I sort of thought at that time, as long as I could stay the course, I'd have a good rest of the year and then things really cooled off quite a bit. So wow, Nothing, nothing you can do but just ride, ride the waves of the market. ups and downs. Now, of course I say that.

I I Don't want to say I'm completely um, you know, powerless. I I can adapt my strategy I can try to venture into new areas of the market if I wanted to I could try to short more aggressively or just try short selling more. Um, you know I mean I've talked about that quite a bit for me at this point because I'm trading in a Roth IRA so I you know for what it's worth. Um, this is almost entirely in a Roth IRA this year.

So I don't have any income tax on this. My taxable gain is like I had a couple trades in my main account and that's it. So you could if someone made this much. um, you know, shorting for instance, it would be intaxable because you can't shorten a tax-free account.

So for every 800 000 they make, they might only be keeping about 500 000 of that 450 000 because of state and federal income taxes depending on what state they live in. So like. and then that's you know. Not to mention I made a million.

but I'm only keeping 800 because of fees and commissions. So if I was, if this was all profit to the short side, I would have made a million and I'd only be keeping probably about you know 400 450 000 of a um you know I mean that's just the way it goes, but it makes me. It doesn't really incentivize me to think a lot about shorting because not only do you have the borrowing fees and you have the commissions and you have your Ecn fees right? you've got the locate fees, the Ecn fees, the commissions, and then you also have taxes. So it's like I get to keep 40 cents of every dollar I make come on.

I I mean I get it like that's that's the way it is. Um, but but the reason it's a come on is when I have the alternative to trade in a retirement account which which we all do who are U.S residents at least. So um, so that does, um, you know, lock me in a little bit to trading to the long side. but then I can keep you know 80 cents of every dollar I make after fees and commissions.

so I don't know. So that's what I'm doing for right now. Again, at a certain point, you know 40 cents on a dollar is better than zero on zero. I mean if there's nothing then you know keeping eighty percent of nothing is is nothing.

but we'll just we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I I'm not there yet. So anyways, that's it for me. Reminder: As always, my results are not typical my experience is trading haven't been typical, and there's no guarantee you'll find success whether you trade with me or you'll learn on your own.

So um, so manage your risk and practice this simulator before you put real money on the line. And don't try to blindly follow me or anyone else. Take it slow for those. um, they're gonna watch this recap on YouTube You're welcome to come and check out our holiday sales with the coupon code trade 2023 to save 40 on your one-time membership fee.

All right, So that's it for me. I'll see you guys first thing tomorrow morning.