What's up everyone? Alright, so as you can tell by the lights behind me, you'll get these any brighter. It's another red day recap. Oh why - red days? It's August 3rd trading day of August I've got two red days so this is where I'm at. you know I'm I'm frustrated because it's it's not uncommon for me to start the month in the red the first day of the month is.

it's very common for me to start with a red day and it's I Think it's partly because if I come off a strong month I sort of had this expectation of you know, let's just keep it going. Let's just try to get that cushion started quickly on the month. trying to hit a good trade and you know, get in the driver's seat and that doesn't work. And maybe because traders are a little more apprehensive at the beginning of the month? just you know.

sort of. Let's see what this month is gonna be like. Other people may have the exact opposite instinct that I have. mine is to be aggressive, others people, other people might be like let's take it slow until I have profit on the month and then it can be aggressive mid month.

So for ever reason, the beginning of the month is often a little bit tricky for me. I lost money on Monday or on Wednesday and then I made back 4,000 yesterday and then I lost it today. I'm down five grand on the day so I know it's a one step back. one step forward, another step back and I'm in the hole for the month of August and now I've got to work on digging myself out of the hole.

One of the things that's frustrating is that feeling that to get out of the hole I need to continue to trade with large-sized 10,000 15,000 shares because that's the quickest way to make 10 or 15 grand. But that's not a centered way to approach the market, that's an emotional way to approach it and so on. Monday I'm gonna bring my share size down for the first few trades down to 6,000 shares today. One of the reasons that I lost as much as I did is because I got into a trade with 8,000 shares and when I was down 30 sentence instead just cutting it Loss: I'm cutting it short and taking the loss.

I was looking at a $2,400 loss and I was like and you know let me give it a second to bounce back up that hole. Give me a second to bounce back up. During that time it drops another 30 cents instead of losing just 2,400 I've doubled my loss and so I'm gonna set as a a new rule for the month of August. We're getting a lot of rules here.

This is not a good sign. A new rule for the month of the of August is to try to keep tight stops Now I don't use live stops on any my orders and some people will say Ross that's you know that's really risky. That's why you end up having these trades that occasionally are 50 or 60 cent losses because you're not using live stops and and I Hear that on the other hand I Feel like in order to take an account from $583 and turn it into what is now 700,000 you have to be aggressive. And it's kind of like to me stock losses are sort of like training wheels.

They're really helpful as you're getting started to keep max losses. but as you start to train with bigger and bigger size, they can actually hinder you. You know, matching Putting training wheels on Lance Armstrong's bike in the Tour de France it's gonna like slow down is going to cause issues. It's not going to work when you are at that level.

Training wheels are gonna hold you back. You know when you're really trying to do high level of performance, you got to take the training wheels off and you got to go. And you got to go with your instinct and sometimes you'll be down 20 cents and your instinct is this is a bull flag forming I'm gonna hold through it and you'll trade out of it and it'll end up being a winner. Other times that flag will form and it'll drop and you'll end up taking the loss.

But you get to a point where you need to be able to trust your instincts. The training wheels for me of using stop orders, those are really critical for when you're They're critical for managing risk during the period of time when you're still honing your instincts when you're still learning. But then you get to the point where you're ready to graduate now. Obviously, having a $5,000 red day is certainly disappointing for any trader.

But in the context of where I've come from from 583 to up to 700 thousand, these are. this is a very small pullback. It's almost. It wouldn't even on the chart be very noticeable, you know.

So that's you put it in context. it's like, okay, yeah, it's a red day. But the same strategy that cost me five thousand today is the reason I'm up seven hundred K in the last 18 months. So it's the same reason I'll cross over that million dollar mark whether it's in December January you know is to be determined, but you have to be willing to be aggressive.

And for me, if I put out a stop order on a 15,000 share position and the market suddenly dips for a second and like a hundred shares go through with the bid and then I'm marketing out of 15,000 shares, it's gonna be a bloodbath. It's gonna not be good at all. And so that's for me. Where I need to have the instinct to make the decision of when to stop out, when to start unwinding a position rather than marketing out 15,000 shares selling half on the ask, selling half on the bid, a quarter on the ask or other.

But you know, whatever kind of unwinding a large position. So you know where I'm at right now on the month I need to focus Monday on smaller size. Being green being consistent, it's not about hitting home runs, it's just about, you know, trying to have a couple green days kind of clear the slate a little bit and acknowledge that August historically has been a difficult month for me. It was like five years ago that I was doing my one of my first trader rehabs in the month of August and then I've gone back into tree to rehab multiple August's since then.

my last trader rehab was in May of 2017. but I'm I'm only a couple more red days away from checking myself into Rehab trade to Rehab. So I really need to pull it together here and just get focus. be discipline.

I Remember, trade the market I'm in, not the market I Want to be in? Yeah, I want to be in the market where I can hit eight thousand or fifteen thousand dollars a day. but if we're not in that market, you know I can't be swinging for the fences with this type of size I can't be holding and expecting really good follow-through for in choppy market I got to bring the size down. take the ten fifteen cents when I have it, make a thousand dollars and just grind on these smaller numbers until things open up because I know when we have a strong market I can make thirty thousand or even forty thousand one morning, but in a weak market that same strategy. it's just gonna cost me money.

You can't let it ride, you can't hold for the bigger move because you don't see bigger moves. So anyways, this has have been a long intro but hopefully helps give you a little bit of a sense of what. I've been going through the last couple days I've been thinking about and what my plans are for Monday Morning Alright so hope you guys have a great weekend. Enjoy the recap from today.

Any questions, any comments, leave them below I'll come back through an answer this weekend and we'll be back at first thing Monday Morning All right, let's see. all right everyone. So we're gonna break down the trades from today and this is a sad Friday It is a red day Recap: It's the second red day of the month of August and it's only the third day. so this is this is not looking good.

I'm disappointed to start the month in the red I started in the red on Wednesday made back $4,000 yesterday and then lost 5,000 today. So that's frustrating, you know, basically sitting down right around. I don't know 9 or 10 thousand on the month so it's not as bad of a start to the month as I had in July or in June. It's always good to keep things in perspective, but no doubt about it, it's disappointing and a bit frustrating.

So you know today's a day where I kept my $2,000 max loss. my $2,000 that was. that's my max loss I Didn't take another train when I was down more than 2 grand. but I had this one trade on N Sys that got me for $5,000 so one small trade on WM LP Basically, today's a day where our leading gapper was WM LP gapping up a hundred and fifty six percent which is crazy.

What was really strange about it was that when the bell rang, it did something really unusual, which I haven't really seen before. So the bell rang and in the first minute there was only nine thousand, seven hundred shares of volume. In the second minute, only 52 thousand shares. It's like they're It's like the bell rang, but nothing happened.

No one really started trading it and what I noticed was that NY Icy Nicey had a ninety nine thousand share order to sell at five fifty and a ninety nine thousand share order to buy at four fifty. So it's kind of like pegged right there with a buy big buy order and a big sell order and I think I know. For me, that made me sort of skeptical I was like what's going on with this stock This is weird and it started to pop up so I tried to get in at 5:50 as I saw the 99 thousand shares seller what looked like it was going to move and then it popped up 258. the seller came back and it it dropped back down so it was very strange and then from there it volume came in kind of maybe more as it sold off.

so just really weird price action. I lost $17 on it which is no big deal so whatever. So that was that and then someone in the room called out nsy Yes it's always kind of risky when I trade things that people call in the room because if they're not on my scanners they're not on my scanners for a reason and this was not on my scanners. it started to pop up but not being on the scanners you know it was because the relative volume was so low compared to the really high volume on Wednesday and Thursday so I don't know.

but anyways I see it popping up to 5:20 and when I looked at that I was like okay this thing has just squeezed up from 452 5 20 is showing strength. so what? I look at that I see that as a sign of strength. This thing is moving quickly so I jumped in at 5:22 So let's see I was in this at 5:15 Yeah, 5:15 I got a partial fill 5:18 5:19 5:25 24 and 525 I got like weird fills on this one. you could see just like even 5 shares on that fill I don't know just getting weird fills.

but anyways jumped in at 5:20 at 5:23 average with 8,000 shares. So I'm in with 8,000 shares and it pops up to 535 and I'm like okay, that looks good I'm thinking 5 50s next target and see if it maybe gets a little short squeeze from the sell-off yesterday. so you know I jump into it and it pulls back first second on a 1-minute pullback and it drops to 497 and I was like that's not good I'm down 2,000 bucks on the bid, it pops back up to 525 and I'm like alright, see this through. Let's wait for the first candle to make a new high and this is always risky because if if I used a automatic 20 cent stop, let's say I would have stopped out right here.

But the reality is this is a perfectly valid one-minute micro pullback and if it made a new high then Boom! we would have expected to move up to 560. So I don't like to get stopped out during this type of consolidation. but on the break of this candle I have to stop out and you can see it dropped down to 71 and I held it for a second and then I actually stopped out on this candle here I could have I could have minimized my loss a little bit more I I kind of held and hoped and stopped at 60 and 55, you know I I guess I was thinking well, this is a very volatile stock. As quickly as it popped up or as quickly as it dropped down, it could pop back up I'll give it a second and you know, so that's that.

$5,000 and that sucks. You know I made 4,000 on it yesterday and then lost 5,000 on today. So I am red on this stock and I'm disappointed and frustrated. You know to read trades today.

the month has gotten off to a little bit of a slow start. My accuracies been a little on the poor side, you know Thursday I have or no no's it was Wednesday I had three back-to-back losers on Rxi I remember that one was super frustrating, then took a FOMO trade on N Sys or NS yeah, whatever it is and lost money on that. So it's like just disappointed. But you know the reality today is for the rules I set for the month of August I Didn't break any of those no new trades if you're down more than $2,000 didn't take any new trades.

Three losses and you're done well. I only took two trades. Shut down your charts when you're done trading and you know I'll do that once we're done with this recap. So I didn't break any of those rules.

the NS YS Trey Again, you could say well, geez, Ross you didn't wait for the pullback, you just jumped right into it. and I don't have a rule on this right now because of the fact that in a strong market, what you'll see is stocks go like this and they don't pull back. They'll go straight to 560, they'll get halted, they'll open a $6 625 and then they'll pull back. And so if you sit and wait, sometimes you miss the entire the biggest part of the move.

That's the problem. And so I I like to jump in at half dollars a whole dollars if I see strength I'll jump in. That works for me more often than it doesn't but today it obviously didn't work. so you know we're still in this choppy market.

I would say right now last week I only made about a thousand bucks and this week I'm down like 8,500 So it's this has been my first read week since let's see since June So it's my first read week since June first read weekend. you know, basically two months and it definitely is marking this kind of, you know, shift and momentum just the well. last week was a bad week and I managed to squeak out. you know, a little bit of profit.

So I finished green, but not by a lot and this was a difficult week and I wasn't able to stay on the right side enough times and so I'm finishing this week. Red: You know the goal for next week will just be to close the week. Green: The bar is set very low, just Green is good and I would say that you know probably the right thing to do is to trade with smaller size and this is always the hard thing because I can say the right thing to do is trade with smaller size. but the the instinct is that if I trade with smaller size and I'm down in 10,000 on the month with smaller size, it's gonna take a lot longer to dig myself out of the hole.

You know for me to get out of this hole I need to hit a couple of good winners with 15,000 shares. However, if the market continues to be the way it was this week and I continue to trade with 10 or 15,000 shares, well, I'm gonna continue to lose money and I'm gonna be losing more than I Want you know? Last Tuesday I had a ten thousand dollar winner. you know? So that was kind of one of those examples of even though the market had been choppy for the previous three days, I was still trading with big size and Boom I got that $10,000 winner. So it was like you know out of 8 trades seven were nothing and then I had the one big winner.

The problem is right now or more. in the last week, those seven trades instead of being breakeven have actually been decent-sized losers. and so I would say that probably the thing to do on on Monday is to start the week with smaller size. So I'll put in my trading warnings.

You know, maybe maybe the thing to do is just focus on 5,000 share blocks. Put the or put the max at 5,000 shares for right now I mean it's just so hard because if I get into a stock at 550 like this one or I get into 520 is squeeze is up to 550 and it gets halted or is about to get halted. That's where I always want to add. So if I have this $5,000 max or 5000 share max position size then when I try to add I'm gonna get an error.

it's gonna say no, you can't add and then I'm gonna under leverage the opportunity and the winner won't be as big. So this is that that that struggle of maybe the the right thing to do is to trade with small size. but then I feel like I'll get punished for doing that because I'll miss a really great opportunity right? and I increased my share size here to 3000 shares because I've kept it at 2,500 for like forever and I was like you know what I need to start increasing sheer size a little bit start stepping it up. So maybe I'll put this at 6000 shares I'll put it 6,000 shares for right now and use that as max size.

So I'll start with 3000 if it's strong, I'll double and if not, you know I'll hold tight and I can always. you know I can like down heat while I won't be able do it next. Okay, I'm I'm capped at $5,000 but max loss. But if I if I tried to take a trade now let's just say I tried to buy it 372 it's gonna say can't take any long positions on my account so they're like nope, you can't do it.

If I tried to take a you know whatever 15,000 share order, its gonna say hold up you got a confirm your order because this will exceed your limit. so I can't do it with a hot key if I press enter enter is highlighted on no so I have to manually mouse over and click yes I want to override that Which you know when a stock is about to get halted, its squeezing up really fast. You don't always have time to do that and so that's kind of where it's like yeah, you know this is the struggle that we go through. It's I wanted I need to be aggressive so I can get myself back out of the hole.

But if I'm too aggressive, I'm gonna dig the hole deeper like it did today. So it's like where's the equilibrium, Where's the right spot to be? So I'll keep it as 6,000 shares for Monday if I make money on the first couple trades. if I make a thousand bucks, then maybe on trade three or four. Once we're seeing momentum, I'll be comfortable.

you know, stepping up the size. but if not, I'll have to just keep going small. You know last year George is saying. remember 2017 so you know if I log into my Trader View account here.

if we look at 2017, you know the reality is 2017. I Had you know this, the the summer of 2017 was was not great June July and August they weren't good months for me. I can't remember how to show the calendar on like a when last days by month I know it does somewhere but days and times. performance by month of the year.

So this was last year, this was 2017 so February was the best month a well up until August and you can see these were really sort of difficult months right here. L Actually May was good I had hardly any losses I only had $1,200 in losing days. That was great but these three months were not good. I had some some good size to lose losing days and it was difficult.

So yeah, you know it's It's probably best just to trade with small size and not try to think about August being a month of big profits since historically it's not and wait for things to pick back up. going into the fall, which they typically do. You know that was 2017 so far for 2018, we can look at these metrics. It's nice to have these at your fingertips cuz you kind of get a sense of what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, you know you can see for sure the losses are bigger.

I mean $35,000 in losses on that month 27,000 and April 30 2012 in June 16,000 in losses in July and I've already got like 15,000 dollars in total losses and maybe $5,000 in winners for the month of August. So I'm already basically the same place as I was in July and three days in. So that means this month is shaping up to have a big, you know, a large number of losses unless I can really stay focused on reducing losses for the rest of the month. So you guys have seen me go through this.

You know the ups and downs of trading so many times over the years? I Mean you know it's just more times than you know it can possibly even count. Trying to find my I Do get a little confused to how to navigate this. Let's see. where is my equity curve these times? I Don't think it's there now.

Uh, well. I'm trying to find my equity curve. Just instrument. This is ridiculous.

It's not I'll tell you. it's not the most intuitive overview recent. this is the last 90 days. It's not really that helpful.

What I wanted to find was my equity curve since I started this small challenge. This small account challenge. this is crazy. Yeah I just can't seem to find it.

So anyways, the you guys have seen me go through these ups and downs. It's just so many times here it is that took forever. So you know this is you. Zoom in here and this is where we're at right now.

Now this was the summer here. you know. basically I had this really good surge in my small account from $583 to 100k on this day. right here on March 9th that was a hundred thousand dollars of profit, had a bit of a pullback, dropped down from a hundred down to 93 and then curled back up here to 118.

Alright, and then basically from April through September I was just grinding I made money, but not a lot, and then things really opened up. But look here was a setback. This is a setback that lasted from November 16th until like December 8th. So I was like a three-week pullback.

you know? and then I searched back up and then here was another pullback. This is the whole month of February going into early March So what I'm having up here is sort of the beginning of this little you know pullback and I don't know how long it'll last if it's gonna be look god forbid like this. I hope not, or if it's just a little pullback like this. This is what I'm sort of used to right now is little pull backs like this and this and this where I bounce back fairly click quickly within a matter of weeks, maybe at most a month.

but that's kind of where we're at right now and I still have this goal of 1 million dollars and I'm 300 thousand off that level. I'm at six hundred and ninety nine thousand. you know, plus or minus. So I've got, you know, I'm seventy percent through this marathon I've got a good amount still ahead of me and I need to stay focused.

So we following the rules on Monday and I'm not gonna cap myself to 6000 shares for the whole day, but I will start with 6000 shares until we see good follow through and then I'll bump up the share size. but if we don't see good follow through, I'm gonna just keep it. you know, keep it tight and try to grind on smaller numbers. you know, sometimes just swing it for the fences and stepping up to the plate with big size does not work.

and as much as I'd love to trade with 10,000 15,000, or even 20,000 shares. If this isn't the market for it, it's not the market for it. I have to train at the market I'm in, not the market I Want to be in and it's hard to remember, but it's so important. So anyways that's it for me and we back at it first thing Monday morning and again.

Reminder: Any of you guys that want to come and trade side by side with me in person, we're gonna be doing it in Orlando Florida in September Alright so it would be a couple days of hanging out with me hanging out with a bunch of other traders at Inner Circle Seminar. the the link to join. We've got tickets available. it is in the announcements tab so I'd love for you guys to come join and hopefully we'll have a couple of good days of trading.

We'll make some money. use coupon code coupon code Ross to save 500 bucks. Alright so I want to make sure we get these tickets and sold and then we can focus on the rest of the planning for the event. Alright everyone so that's coming up next month and I will see you all back here bright and early Monday morning Monday is our favorite day of the week.

so you know and why is Monday the favorite day of the week? Because let's look at my day and times, days and times. Mondays are my second biggest profiting day of the week. so that's one hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars I've made on Mondays So I've learned to love Mondays and guess what? I think about Fridays I don't love them but I've still made a hundred thousand dollars so I Don't hate them either. So anyways, we'll be back at it first thing Monday morning.

I'll see you guys there. Alright, enjoy the weekend everyone! 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.