Alright guys, so today is day 12 of the small account challenge and we're gonna go over what I did today. the ups and downs: I'm finishing today up 47 dollars and 15 cents which feels like a miracle. Today was the first day that I really thought I'd be having to do a red day Recap: First traded the day. well the first first trade of the day that I got filled on I lost 580 dollars plus commissions I was down over 600 right out of the gates and you know that's part of the deal when you trade at the open your trading the most volatile time of the day.

so you know that you're either gonna go you know, up 500 600 or down. And as long as you have a relatively good sense of you know the good quality setups and how to minimize your risk, then you'll be right more than you're wrong. But today was one of those days where you know the market was out of my side and I took a loss right out of the gates. So cat be Ca TB this was on our hide.

this was on our Gap scanner pre market and you know I was looking at it and I was like this looks solid. It really does. It looks like a good you know, good setup. We've got news.

I'll show you the chart here. We've traded it in the past, it's a former runner so the setup on the daily chart was looking like this: We've got looking like we're gonna open just above the 200 moving average right here now. Obviously it's come all the way back down, but it's a stock that has a history of running on this big day. Here we've got a big big candle.

we've got other ones in the past so I was like alright that looks good and you can see here after those of you watching on the stream. that's my A P&L today 47 dollars and 15 cents. So obviously nothing really to brag about. But probably the best thing is that this is an opportunity to talk about risk management and self control to things that I was tested on today.

Alright so cat B when I saw it on the scanner so I was like okay, looks good. there's a headline, it's low flow good daily chart check-check So I'm just going to write this down that I like it over 480 for the break $5 the market opens and right away I put out two orders to buy 4,000 shares at 480 I put those orders out I thought they got filled in Sure Trader I switched to my speed Trader account and I buy seven thousand shares. So now I'm holding what I think is 4000 to my share trader and seven thousand my regular account pops up thirty cents I sell in my in my Speed Schraeder lock up to grand I look over at Sure Trader and I have zero shares I have no position and I don't have any orders that say that they're pending. Yeah, you know it's just no position and so I'm like you have to be kidding me, This is the second time this has happened.

This happened yesterday on NX TV and you know what? yesterday? maybe it saved me because NX TV squeezed up and then dropped hard. but today it cost me. so I I'm thinking that between yesterday and today I'm probably it's probably a wash, but that would have been about a thousand dollars and I can't help but feel a little bit annoyed that something just didn't work I don't know what it is I've emailed support to say hey, you know obviously there was an issue here I sent the orders but they didn't execute. You know what's what's the deal it's now happened two days in a row yesterday I thought maybe I just did something funny but it happened again today so obviously something was something is not right and so that left me with a winner in my regular account.

but no trade at all on the easy setup of the day in my small account. and you can see here it spiked from 480 all the way up to a high of 550. So you know I was like alright, well you know what, this is strong. It's clearly a strong stock, so I'm going to jump in on the first pull back.

All right. We got a little pullback here and I decide to jump in right here for the break over 550. We've got a little bit of a flat top here. Consolidation at 546 at this was at 9:33 and 934, it sounds like alright I'm going to get here for the break over 946 I'll show you guys the chart.

So I was like I'm gonna get in for the break of this line I got in on that red candle. it squeezed up to a high of 50, the high was 51 and then it dropped all the way down to 18. It popped back up I held through the drop. it popped back up here and they ended up getting out with a 580 dollar loss.

So I was like alright, that's it, you know I I missed the easy trade I get in on the first pull back and I just lost 600 bucks. So that is the biggest loss that I've had in the short trader account and I was feeling a blood pressure rising a little bit. I was already frustrated this morning. you know, before I even sat down to trade I was just I was annoyed I was just I was off my routine I was just kind of flustered and rushed.

This morning we had a bunch of people emailing with a tech support issue so I was just like trying to figure that out and I was feeling flustered and then when that first order didn't go through, you guys probably all sort of noticed this in the chat room. I was like, you know, Alright, you know that's that's kind of like the straw. Breaking the camel's back is like getting cracked and then when I took the loss, that's when the straw broke and at that point I was like okay, you need to like, get centered here. pull it together.

You don't want to go into the downward spiral, You don't want to go into that dark place that every trader knows so well. So I said alright, let's just slow down, let's step back, take a breath if you close the day down 600 bucks. It's not the end of the world. You know it's really not.

It's it's fine. I Started today with $7,500 I Know I'm due for a read day so I closed the day read. It's no big deal. It doesn't change the fact that I'm gonna be annoyed about it, but let's not make this day any worse.

So I get into I get into the the next tray. the next setup I see was see RDS It spiked up to 428 and was halted and I was like okay. Interesting light volume, but it looks good. It resumes at 460 I Want to get in just under the half-dollar It resumed over the half-dollar so I was like okay I gotta wait.

It squeezes up to five. It pulls back and I got in for the second break of 5 2000 shares I jump in and it pops up to 5:30 So I'm like all right I'm up $600 on the ask and I held and then interestingly we had five thirty on the ask and then suddenly 480 on the bid. huge spread and I was like okay, this is looking a little nasty because I'm gonna be down $400 if I hit the bid and now I'm gonna be down a thousand bucks So I was like alright, let's just kind of give this a second, let's see what it's gonna do and what it ended up doing was popping up popping back up a second time to 5:15 and on that second pop I was able to get out. we had the high which was I guess 5:30 So right in this candle here we popped up to 506 506 and I got out at $5 I made one penny on two thousand shares.

so twenty bucks and it was glad to be out of that one. and then I said okay, you know what? today's feeling like it's not your day that trade didn't really work, you know, cat B or right on the first one, but obviously wrong on the second one. So even if I had made money on the first one, I'd probably only be a little bit above breakeven so maybe I should just call it a day. And then I saw Gee Lbs and John as you guys all know in the chat room he said Russ take a look at G lbs and I pulled up the chart and you know what? this is the value of having a thousand We I think we had 1100 traders in the chat room this morning that I've all trained to look for the same type of setups that I love to trade.

we're all trading for the most part the same strategy so he said hey, look at G lbs he's another set of eyes on the market. He made a hundred sixty thousand dollars last year trading these same patterns and I was like okay, I'll pull it up I took a look and I said you know what that looks good I like it I like it a lot over 850 because that's going to be the first five minute candle to make a new high So right there, over 850 I got in and this is a trade that I would have loved to have taken 5000 or maybe even 10,000 shares of. but in my speed in my short trader account, this is on margin restriction so I could only take 1200 shares. So I bought 1200 shares at 850 and I held it.

We went up to a high of 947 and I locked up about 70 cents of total profit which was solid. So that was seven hundred and sixty nine dollars scaling out into the move and that got me back to break-even and then up just a little bit into the green. Now this also exemplifies the frustration with using leverage. I was able to use leverage on cat B and as a result I because the trade went the wrong way I went deeper into the red than if I was not using leverage.

Now a good trade comes along G lbs and I'd like to use leverage to get myself up into the green and to give myself a really big winner, but I couldn't So that's kind of the luck of the draw. You know it's a trade that if I've been able to use leverage, I could have easily made $3,000 It was a great setup. 60 cents per share. It's fantastic.

Almost $1 per share on that 5-minute break out, but you know it is what it is. So this is one of those times where trading in a small account, you know I just have to deal with these restrictions and these limitations. So once I closed that trade, I was like, all right, you know what you're back to break even on the day up 47 dollars. Let's just consider that by itself a victory and throw in the towel.

I thought for sure I was gonna be doing a red day recap. You know after that 580 dollar loss and then after C RDS and I was just like I'm not seeing anything that looks good and even earlier this morning I didn't think G Lbs would be an easy one to trade, but then in the first 15 spiked up quite a bit. So I bought the first pullback. So today's a day where I took I tried to take four trades, I ended up taking three, I would have been right on three out of the four and I would have had one loss Cappy unfortunately didn't get filled on the first trade, only got filled on the second one which was a loser.

and then my trade on G lbs I wasn't able to use leverage so I wasn't able to make as much as I would have liked and those variables kind of brought me to break even on the day instead of green on the day. So despite having you know 66 percent accuracy today and a positive profit loss ratio and I really wasn't able to make much progress. And commissions were 150 bucks. So day twelve of the small account challenge: adding forty seven dollars to the total P&L it's small step forward and I'd always prefer a small step forward to a small step back or a big step back.

So I'll be happy with you know the way. I'm finishing up today I certainly could have been worse and you know the reason that the day wasn't worse was because I bailed out a cat B you know I bailed out fast I could have held it while it went down more and more and more and instead I just said nope, hit hit the bail button, Get out, don't hold it, just get out. Don't even think about it. move on to the next one.

You know it's not fun to take those losses and to realize the you know to see it go into the red and then have to press the sell button. but it's always better to sell down five hundred then down a thousand. It's better to sell down a thousand than down 3,000 So you have to pull the trigger at a certain point, both to take a winner off the table and to cut a loser short and so on. on.

This one I was quick to cut short cat B and I actually held G lbs longer than I usually would and I did that because I was like look, I've only got twelve hundred shares I'm not I'm really not going to make my money back until I get sixty cents and usually I don't trade that way. that was trading a little emotionally. usually I would have taken profit early you know, especially if I had bigger size. But on this one much sighs and I think I was kind of like you know what? All or nothing I either finished the day green or I'm at max loss.

So clearly I was getting a little bit emotional and letting those frustrations get to me. Yesterday we had a student asking me why I don't trade Power Hour why I don't trade the last 30 minutes for the last hour of the day and one of the reasons is that I have a hard time switching gears from being and kind of like a chilled out like you know, maybe I'm working like answering emails, are doing mentor sessions. but I'm not trading I have a hard time transitioning between those two things. So like in the morning from 9:00 a.m.

to 11:00 I'm focused 100% on trading, but then to go from noon to 3:00 to working with students and then go back into that trading mindset is something that's really challenging for me. I find that when I try to come back into it I'm just more complacent. Kind of like just lacks about the way I'm trading. I'm sloppier and I am not as I don't make smart decisions generally speaking.

so you know I think that that is just you know for me, a character trait. it's just the way that I am I I'm a morning person I suppose where I'm really kind of at my best in the morning and then you know as the day goes on I kind of fade I get a second wind in the evening. but I'm really kind of in at my peak right early in a day. So knowing that it makes sense that I would be most aggressive during that time of the day in the morning when you know I can multitask well I can make quick risk decisions and make the right decisions and just you know kind of quickly get my work done and and have some good good trades.

So and Jose when I buy large positions like ten thousand shares I always buy in small increments so 2500, 2500, maybe 5,000 but usually they're in sort of small increments and I don't swing trade all of last year I only I didn't hold a single trade overnight so no swing trades, just day trading for me and usually Colorado like if I take a few trades and I'm just not seeing resolution at a certain point I'm just like okay, you know after usually after three trades of being breakeven I would just say look the markets not on my side today I'm not feeling it so I'm going to throw in the towel sometimes I'll give it a little bit more time depending on how early it is, but it kind of depends. So the stocks that we traded today for the most part see a TB G Lbs G Lbs High-volume today. Four million shares see a TB cat B Total volume today is 2.5 million shares. A huge spike in volume see RDS total volume today only seven hundred thousand shares.

but it does represent a really big spike in volume. much higher than average. So all the stocks we trade is today high relative volume. You know, looking either for that catalyst or the technical breakout, that opportunity to get a quick trade right out of the gates and you know today was a day that I didn't really come out ahead, but you know that's that's part of the deal with training.

you know? Obviously you know not every day is going to be a big big winner, so sometimes you just tread water for a couple days while you wait for that next a quality set up and at this point you know tomorrow coming to the end of the week, you know I'd love to get myself over eight thousand. Eighty Six Hundred is kind of the the spot I've got in my mind because I want to beat my my one-month challenge from last year so I got to get over 8,600 but I don't expect I'll have a problem with that next week. I would just it would be nice to be able to do that tomorrow. but I don't know if I'll get a thousand dollar winner it? We'll see, We'll see what the market can give us tomorrow and just keep grinding.

$10,000 by the end of the month hopefully is not going to be an issue. that's that's kind of where I'm where I'm headed right now. so a couple more good days, a couple big steps forward will get me there and then I'll be almost halfway to 25,000 which will be really exciting. So March 1st is kind of.

You know where I'm hoping to be at 25,000 by March 1st and we think about that to take $500 $583 and turn it into 25 grand in two months and that would be that would be pretty pretty awesome. So we'll see if the market slows down for a week or two weeks. That could throw things off, but it's really just about finding one two, three trades a day. Get in, get out, take the profit, look for the next opportunity.

Shut it down. 11:30 Alright guys, so that's it for me today. Day twelve: the small count challenge up forty seven dollars feel like a narrowly avoided a loss. so I'm happy for that.

Alright, and any questions that you guys have, no, no Mike I didn't mean like the market would close down I just mean like if things slow down. like if if there just isn't a lot of news, you know a lot of the stocks that were trading. it's because we've got breaking news. So if we go through a couple weeks where there's not a lot of news, then things will just slow down and we'll just kind of have to tread water.

And that's happened before. You know that's not a big deal, it's just part of the part of trading. I very very rarely trade past noontime. Sometimes if we have a stock that's like super super active, you know, going parabolic something like that.

I'll trade I'll trade through the lunch hour, but I usually don't and only a couple times have I looked back and kind of regretted it and thought I should have traded that I usually am just like yeah, that's okay. Alright, so I'll ask. Prices are limit orders. Yeah, if I'm yeah, Matt if I'm selling on the ask, that's the limit order.

It's not a market order. it'd be a limit order to sell up on the ask. and I always try selling the ask even when a stock is dropping. I'll put out an order on the ask, but if I can't get filled, then I'll just hit the bid.

Alright, so and I don't use tick charts I just use the one minute occasionally for stock like an IPO I back it down to like 10 second sharp. but I don't even do that very often and I don't trade IPOs that often either. Daniel Yeah, there are some slight lags and differences between different charting platforms I Have noticed that in the past I even noticed that on the level - between Speed Trader and Sure Trader which are side by side, but sometimes there are some slight differences and you know I think there's There's just so many variables out there that you'll notice that a little bit. Generally though, you should be seeing the same basic things.

So Alex one of the problems that I had when I funded my Sure Trader account is that I was doing credit-card deposits or trying to fund it on my credit card just for this. The fact that it's easy it's easier to use a credit card than to do a wire transfer and have to go to the bank. and the first time I did it the credit card was declined because it was a you know charge in the Bahamas it was outside my normal spending pattern. so I called my bank and I was like hey, what's up why declining it and they said yeah, we blocked it, you can try it again but in the meantime I had just used a different credit card and it went through so that may be something to look into.

Alright guys, so with that I will call it a day and I will see you all first thing tomorrow morning Friday and hopefully we will be able to finish up the week strong. All right, Thanks guys! I'll see you soon. Let's be honest, if you made it this far, you must have really enjoyed that video. So what's stopping you? subscribe right here and get email alerts any time I upload new content.

Until then, happy surfing.