All right, so time for a midday market recap. We're going to go over the trades from today and interestingly you know a GRC Between yesterday and today, just day and night yesterday, I took five trades and ern yesterday took four trades and I was right on all four, just totally on point. Accuracy was fantastic. It was a great day today.

I took four trades four trades that fell into the strategy being stocks gapping up and going higher and each of the four were losers. And you know, obviously that's you know, really frustrating when when you come into the market looking to follow rules and trade a quality setups and then you just everything you trade goes the wrong way. So I'm going to go over the trades I took starting with the first one which was SS KN this was on their Gap scanner and I was watching this pre market. We had this pullback and then this pop-up and a little consolidation.

now. I'll show you on the one-minute chart the setup on this one we had right before the bail about four minutes of consolidation under 450. So as soon as the bell rang, I knew that I wanted to get in at 450 and that's exactly what I did I jumped in at 450 and you can see right away it hit 451, one up one penny and then drop down to 420 and then it continued to fade. From there it ended up going as low as 350.

I Mean this is the type of thing that we just keep seeing again and again and you know we have seen some that work, but we more often than not we've been seeing these really big rejections. so I was following the rules on this one I jumped in and I hit my max loss on it and I bailed out I did get some slippage. Now the next trade I took was Nov n this was also off the Gap scanner and right here you can see this pre market move up to a high of 6 dollars. It opened a little bit lower and did this 1 minute.

A kind of a opening range break out over this candle right here. So I was kind of watching it for a long at 568 for a one-minute opening range break out, but I hesitated on it a little bit. It pops up here to a high of 90 and it pulls back for one second and I got in at 90 from 90 we went up to a high of 605, I was up 15 cents and then in this candle here dropped all the way down to 537 and I stopped out to 537 which was very frustrating because I did everything right I mean I may have been chasing this one a little bit, but for 590 was the place I was watching pre-market that was the pre-market level for the break over six dollars. it came up, tapped that level, pulled back for a second on maybe like a thirty second chart.

you'd be able to see it a little bit better. I Got in for the break they're looking for the move over six. seeing that on a daily, we had no resistance until 721 and then it just got hammered back down, dropped all the way to 37. and so the frustrating thing on that one is that following the rules I was III mean I immediately lost 50 cents per share even though my max loss is only 20.

So that was really just an irritating trade. So there at that point, you know, five minutes into the day, the two trades have taken a jump into both of them and they both get slammed back down. and I think that you know at that point I was like okay, well you know, obviously the markets a little bit choppy. we're not seeing that clean follow through I was looking for I need to wait for an A quality set up.

The next one that showed up was sign Up. This was also on the Gap scanner gapping up and as it started to squeeze up I looked at it and I was like this I mean this looks great I really thought it looked fantastic So I got in for the break of 450 for the air sorry 350 for the half dollar break and you'll see here. We went up to 54 and then within 10 minutes it had dropped all the way down to 3. and so once again we were seeing.

You know? And then of course when you look at the five-minute chart you have this squeeze up and then this doji candle and this red candle red candle and this ended up selling off all the way down to I think below $3 so 306. So it's really interesting is that we had a stock gapping up. it started to get a little momentum and squeezed up and I jumped in at the logical place the place I would normally take the trade and I just got completely rejected off that level. Now on this one I was I think I was being a little more aggressive because I wanted to compensate for the first two losses they had just had so that certainly didn't help that situation.

And then the third trade was ROK a or the fourth trade and this one was also a gapper gapping up pre market it started to pop up as you can see right here and I looked at it and I thought this looks good for an entry at 450. half dollar entry again and this one again had a great daily chart. Lots of room to the upside, no nearby resistance. so I jumped in.

at 450 we popped up to a high of 466 and in 3 candles we dropped all the way back down to 410 and in fact within 10 minutes it was lower than than it had even started. So I don't know where all this selling came from. you know it was a gapper. It was strong, it started to squeeze up and then all of a sudden it rolled over and not just pulling back a little bit.

I mean it gave up all of its games. It actually closed read on the day. So we see this here on our okay you know right closing right on the day we see it on Seinem where it popped up and then closed right on the day we saw it last week with earlier in the week with Apop and this day it was a doji candle we had. OBC I mean we've had was it this one? yeah as this one here with that red candle and we've seen this again and again again.

where these stocks start to pop up, they look really good and then suddenly they get rejected. So I'm not really sure what to think of all that you know obviously. I've talked about how this this whole month has been really interesting for me because it's been the worst month I've had in two years of trading in terms of my my profits. but all you know, all the other metrics follow along with the profits so the my accuracy has been lower, my profit loss ratio has been bad and as a result of course I've not done well this month.

and um, it's definitely interesting. It's to me I'm noticing that we're not seeing that feeding frenzy that we used to see on these stocks where they start to pop up and they squeeze and then traders just jump it now. I Think that this kind of highlights the ability to capitalize on other traders fear of missing out. FOMO Right when other traders have the fear of missing out, what do they do when a stock starts to pop up? as soon as it starts to pop up, they jump in and it goes higher and will be short Sellers do.

Who are holding that position short? they cover and immediately you get this big squeeze where you know all of a sudden that know where these stocks go from. You know, whatever, $5 to $6 or $7 And we've seen that happen again and again again now. obviously I did incredibly well in the first quarter of 2017. Trading momentum, stocks and capitalizing on.

you know, maybe this collective fear of missing out The traders have you know, the fear that short sellers have when they're in a position and suddenly it's squeezing up 20 30 percent? But there's been a shift in the market and I've seen this happen before where we've had these shifts and during the lull, during kind of a slow period you we usually do have to, you know, step back a little bit and trade less just simply because we're not seeing the same level of follow-through What I haven't seen in the last two years of trading is a low that lasted as long as this one has lasted or that we've seen such consistency in false breakouts. The breakouts are just so consistently false that they pop up and then they fade. And so you know after those four trades and you know I was like, alright. Well I you know that's it for me.

I guess I'll come back tomorrow, but it's certainly not the way I wanted to. You know it's not how I wanted this day to end up. I was hoping to have a another good day just like yesterday and I ended up jumping into the market. two losses right in a row and then the third loss trying to recover the first two and then the fourth loss again trying to recover.

And I think all of them were good quality setups, but you know the end of the day I was aggressive and it didn't pay off. So you know I've definitely been. You know I've been talking quite a bit about how I need to adjust my my expectation of the market a little bit and start to trade with smaller size. I Think the two things that really got me frustrated this morning was number one taking.

well, number one taking SS KN which was a perfectly decent trade and then just you know, suddenly getting stopped out. that was annoying. What was even worse was Nov n following the rules and then just getting smoked on it right? I followed the rules I got in, there's a good quality set up and then all of a sudden I was down 50 cents and so between those two losses suddenly I was sort of like okay well you know this is you know this is not good and I need to find something you know. really good quality that I can jump on and I thought sigh no was good quality especially because of the daily chart.

So that's why I looked at and I was like you know what, this has parabolic potential. It has that potential because look at these other days these days where it's gone from $3 to $5 We've seen that happen on this stock many times. So when I saw it curling up here and squeezing, this is the type that last month would have easily gone to. four for fifty or five, I'm een absolutely easily we would have seen this big squeeze you know, up into this level or maybe even six dollars where we had resistance 550 unfortunately.

Today we hit 354 and then rolled over our oka. not quite as strong but still pretty decent. I Thought this one would move at least up towards the 200 moving average again being a former run or stock that has a history of making big moves and that just didn't happen. So you know this is definitely these last you know.

three or four weeks or whatever it's been have been really hard for me because you know number one. I've been stepping up to the plate each day trying to take a quality set ups and I continually been coming up short. you know, not hitting my personal benchmarks and you know, not seeing the type of returns that I'd like. And then of course you know I end up inevitably doing my mid-day recap where I talk about the trades and so it's certainly.

it's obviously a lot more fun to talk about the trades when you take five hundred dollars and turn it into a hundred grand in 44 days. Those 44 days were fun, but what you're seeing here is the you know the reality of trading that you will absolutely have months where you kill it. you do Fantastic. You, you know have the best month ever.

Literally in the last four months I had two of my best months ever ever as a trader. 41,000 in January in 68,000 in February now in January I was up 55,000 and then I lost 14,000 on the last day of the month which was ridiculous. So I finished with 41,000 and I wasn't happy about it. the next month that came back even stronger 68,000 in February And as it stands right now, I'm going to close the month of April Probably read by, you know, a thousand or two thousand dollars? so you know this is kind of, you know, a little bit a little ridiculous, but for the first I mean I'm still up a hundred and thirty thousand dollar.

One hundred, thirty-five thousand dollars or so on the year. So it's it's just kind of the way it is now. I think one of the other things I'm suffering from, you know I think I'm personally suffering from fear of missing out a little bit of FOMO because and this is one of the things that I was saying the other day that's so hard about trading is that in January and February I was probably breaking rules, being way too aggressive, but it was working out I was in a strong market where I was able to get away with doing that. Now that may have kind of enforced or reinforced some bad habits making sixty eight thousand dollars in one month, you know, chasing stocks and being super aggressive.

You know that's a huge reward and I don't mind being flat this month in exchange for sixty eight thousand dollar month when it works. But you know the fact is, I may have been pushing it a little too hard and I allowed myself to get a little complacent thinking that I can jump in stocks at high a day and they'll continue to run because. well, that's what they've done for the whole first quarter. But obviously in April something has changed and we have not seen those setups continue to work and I keep coming up against this same wall where I keep trying to do you know the same type of same type of trades expecting that they'll work the way they worked in the spring or in the late winter and then they keep not working and I get frustrated and so you know I think for me if I had waited on Nov M for a clean one minute pullback.

Now this is sort of me looking at what triggered the beginning of you know, kind of, you know, a less-than-ideal day of trading. So if I look at Nov n the let's see. this thing popped up to 590 and when it popped up to 590, I decided just to get in at 590 because we were breaking the pre-market level. However, it was extended and I didn't wait for one minute pullback I just jumped in and I think that I should have waited for one minute pullback instead of just jumping in our oka.

I look at that one and you know I I just jumped into the half-dollar which again, this is something that's worked really well taking and this is how I usually would do it well, certainly in January/february but also now is I would take my first position at 450 at the half-dollar and then I would add on the first micro pullback. That's what I would do I would add on the first micro pullback. The problem is that I take my first position here and then when it drops 50 cents I just get stopped out. So obviously that hasn't been working but that this is the approach that I was taking and the reason I was doing that so much in in the early part of the year is because we had so many stocks and actually I know Vienna is a perfect example of one and this is a stock.

If I scroll back here and that wants to see where was the day it did this and go back a little further. This is a stock that went I mean just it completely exploded. It was on. Let's see.

February 15th I think it was and it didn't pull back. You had no pull back entry on this. It basically just exploded. So your best opportunity was that was to enter at half dollars or whole dollars.

look at this. This is a stock that literally went from $5 to $8 right? So when you see this now you can understand why I've been so aggressive entering these stocks at half dollars in whole dollars. This is a stock that went up 50% in about 15 minutes. That's why I was aggressive on it today.

It has a history of making these big moves and you know it's just. it's interesting right now that it kind of goes to like you know here and then drops all the way back down to 460 and goes red on the day we don't see that continuation. That continuation is a result of collective trading mentality. and so the collective trading mentality right now is more cautious, you know.

and and so that's that's something to be mindful of when we have momentum back in the market. You know we will certainly see these types of moves again and we will see a stock. You know, whatever it might be, you know? Obviously, with the Ebola outbreak, we had a lot of bio hazmat suit companies manufacturers of those blue hazmat suits. Their stocks were going crazy, you know, shootings in Ferguson the digital Allied police body camera stocks were going crazy.

We had the shipper stocks going crazy just last week and the week before we had some activity with the China stocks. so you know we will see something. but it's been you know, a little while since we saw a stock that went just totally bonkers. You know that just went from five dollars to ten and then the next day went from ten to twenty.

We need one of those to get traders excited again. so you know I'm what I'm deciding to do is you know of course continue to be in trader Rehab where I work to reduce my risk. But then the second thing that I'm doing is I think that I'm struggling with the fact that I have so much money in this account that taking a loss just doesn't really matter because the account is so big and I think that makes me a little sloppy which is not necessarily good. And I think that for most traders in this community you know you guys don't have you know six-figure accounts number one and number two.

You know when you have a little bit of profit, you want to take it. and of course number three. when you're having a bad day, you need to be able to just walk away and not compound it by continuing to trade. and I talk about this all the time.

My best days: I'm green on all four names. my worst days: I'm red on all four names like it's pretty consistent and such name of the day whereas rather than all four names which balances out yesterday where I was Green on all four names. but my goal during this self-imposed trader rehab is to reduce risk and to get myself back into this kind of calm composed state of mind. And so what I'm going to do is why you're out Money: I'm going to take money out of this account and drop the balance back down.

So I think I'm going to take out you know, like seven? probably drop it down to like $30,000 more or less. I need to be above the PDT level because I still have the PT rule and obviously that's you know I'm not going to go back to trading with sure trader I Don't want to do that I already did that up to 100k and now I'm in speed trader. So I'm going to drop this down to about thirty thousand and I'll take out 70 grand and that's seventy thousand or seventy five thousand. Whatever it is, you know.

I can just plug in my pocket and I can pay myself for the first four months of this year which have been really good. Remember I started with $583 so not only am I paying myself seventy five thousand dollars for the first three months, I also still have thirty thousand plus and equity that I can use to continue to trade. So I think with a smaller account it'll be it just psychologically the attitude will be a little bit different. you know I have people that email me sometimes and ask well Ross what if you had like a ten million dollar account would you be able to make you know proportionally this much more money and I've always said no, you wouldn't be able to I don't think I would be able to do that at least because I think that the scale to how much you can generate is linked not to account size you have, but to you know the psychological aspects related to training, risk management.

You know your emotions when you take a big loss and that type of thing. so you know I Think that for me I've always done really well with smaller account sizes. I'm essentially one of the first times in a long time I've let the account grow to over 100k and I think initially. when I did it I was like well, you know I want to hit the hundred K benchmark because that's a big benchmark and I want to see the hundred thousand line break and then I kind of thought, well maybe I should just keep growing this account indefinitely.

you know, two 250, 300, 350, whatever it is. But as I've been doing that in the you know, 110 to 125 range I've noticed that the way I treat the account has changed instead of taking $200 or $300 winds which for 90 percent of you guys would be a great day for me. With $100,000 account is kind of like meaningless. You know when you've got a hundred thousand dollar account, you're wanting to hit four or five thousand dollar days and that means again that you're looking more for home run trades and you're being more aggressive and you're not taking the small profits when you have them because they don't matter as much.

So I think for me and I didn't know this would happen until of course I gone through this experience but I think for me I've seen my you know my strategy. The way I execute my strategy change in relation to the account size where I've become much more aggressive and less less conservative. Now, obviously it's not helped that I've been aggressive with this large account during what has been, you know, pretty undisputably the worst month in years of Momentum trading. I'm not the only Momentum trader out there who's like the Momentum is tough.

Right now it is tough. but you know you guys know that I watched The Deadliest Catch and they're you know, just finishing a season where their quota count was way down and there's nothing you can do about it. These are there are external factors that you have no control over. You can control how you react to them.

So those guys you know they know they can't catch any more crab than they're allowed to catch. So when they catch their limit, they're going to be done. And for me, you know the markets not strong and I can't be aggressive. going out and being you know pushing it too hard is just.

it's just throwing away money. And even though I have money I can afford to throw away because the accounts so big, it's not really smart. It's not the best way to trade. So you know all of this is to say that.

You know today is a little bit of a step back, but you know tomorrow will be day three of Rehab and my self-imposed trader rehab where I'll trade with smaller size and you know, trying to keep myself focused on taking the small gains when I have them and I think the other side of that is making sure that I take really, really good quality setups because we're in a market right now that you know these kind of micro pull backs and half dollar breaks, they're just not working out super well. and I saw that happen. you know, twice in a row. On to the stocks.

I Traded today, so you know my goal for the next week or so. I'm going to be trading on my you know kind of my laptop and just a little bit of a different setup than usual I Want to make sure that you know I'm not stressing myself out too much. I'm looking for the small gains. Taking the two hundred three hundred dollars when I have it five hundred to a thousand is great and then shutting it down to ten thirty.

and I know that's what ninety percent of you guys are wanting to do as well. So I think that having a smaller account will keep me more in mind with having the same account growth motivation than most of you share. Number one: I think it'll keep me from being sloppy because I have such a big account I can afford losses number two and number three: I think it's capital sort of preservation. I'm taking the seventy-five thousand out of that account and paying myself for the first quarter.

And you know, hopefully we'll have a good second quarter when May and June will pick back up. and you know whatever I've had certainly had years where I've had dips in the middle of the year, I've had spikes in the middle of the year so we're only four months in them. You still got a lot of time and I want to make sure that I trade smart through the rest of 2017 and try to put together a really solid year, despite one month or maybe two months or whatever might be being a little on the slow side. Alright, so um, you know again, this is really my attempt to show you the full picture of what it's like to be a trader.

You have amazing days and days where you do really really well and then you have days where you know everything you trade seems to go the wrong way and it's easy to let yourself get frustrated. It's easy to let you know the fear of missing out, drive you into the next stock or whatever it is and because I've been there and I've done all those things before. but the best thing to do is to slow down. Step back and you know for me, I'm making some adjustments, you know, I'm actively making adjustments, number one, adding the per trade to rehab restrictions and then number two, adding or reducing my account to you know address of the issues related to that.

So anyways, you know that's about it for today and we'll get back at it first thing tomorrow morning. So try to finish the week strong. of course it's Friday So I don't know that there'll be a lot to trade, but we'll see if there's anything out there at this point right now. I'm still going to be just have to be really cautious because we haven't had really good a quality setups with things that we see on the Gap scanner.

Each of the four stocks I traded today were gapping up. They were each on the Gap and Go scanner. Each of them were momentum stocks. Each of them were former runners and this is what happened.

so you know. I I'm not beating myself up for today because I traded the right stocks. The only thing that I did wrong was I trade I held a couple of them a little too long and I didn't follow my share size restriction because I thought are ok. A and Sino both had parabolic potential since they were both former runners.

So you know that was a misjudgment on my part, maybe partly fueled by the frustration of having just lost on an o. VN So you know that's something that I'm going to think about a little bit in terms of how to. You know how what type of rules to set for for the month of May I Feel that if I'm really conservative with the rules I set where I say can never trade more than and yet him it did because that's how and I felt that that was the right thing to do. But if I set the rule for, you know I set this rule for the last couple days that I would be trading what's going on my screen here sorry, my screen is being a little weird I'm not sure where screen share just went, but I'll fix in a second.

But anyways I set the rules for the last couple days that I wouldn't take more than 2500 shares unless I thought a stock had homerun potential because I wanted to allow myself to be aggressive when I saw that potential. but you know that's seeming to be a little more elusive than I was thinking. so maybe I should just simply put a hard cap share size restriction on the month of May. But if I do that, then I am definitely going to cap my potential if we do have a stock that just goes crazy and ultimately you need to be the type of trader who can moderate themselves on your own 100% and I think that for probably a number of reasons I've had a little bit of a harder time doing that in the last month.

Maybe the frustration of having such an amazing first quarter and then kind of the difficulty understanding coming up just flat in April Maybe the pressure of feeling like I need to continue to deliver really good results because you know everyone's watching me. You know there's there's a number of factors that are probably playing into the way I Execute my strategy. The strategy itself is strong and it's a strategy that made me $222,000 last year. and you know, 103 thousand dollars and forty four days this spring.

But then if you change the way you execute the strategy because you've got a larger account or you're you know, dealing with these external forces like the pressure of people watching you, not wanting to have you know trying to continue to deliver big trades which requires home run stock home. I Mean if you ultimately like, you need to continue to deliver home run set ups. Our home run wins in order to have that that good P&L And you'll notice when when I look at my results for the month of April my profit loss ratio has gone down because I haven't had those big homerun trades that would have drawn it up, but instead with big size and an extra 20 cents of slippage on a lot of my exits, my losers this month have been bigger than my winners. So from purely a metric standpoint, you know the first quarter it looks very different from the month of April and so for me I need to look at the reasons why I think that's happened, make some adjustments which we've talked about and you know kind of go from there.

So that's the plan. you know going into the rest of the week but more importantly, really going into the month of May and I will just be so excited when we see a stock like you know this. Nov n go from $5 to $8 and just totally surprise people. This will get traders excited again and I you know we usually don't have to wait very long to see one of these, but for some reason it's been a little bit of a longer way in the last few weeks.

So anyways, that's where we are today. This is the end of day I Believe it's day 79 of the $583 challenge, so I'll be back at it tomorrow morning. Focused, looking for a quality setups and also prepared not to trade if I don't see anything really worth trading. Alright, so I'll see you all first thing tomorrow morning.

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