This week went by fast! I only made one trade this week, and I only watched the market longer than 15 mins 3/5 days this week. My morning hours at my regular job have thankfully picked up, but that also means I’ll have fewer opportunities to trade in the morning/early afternoon and some full days altogether. That just means I’ll have more time in the aftermarket to study and prepare for the days when I do not go in to work until noonish.
IMTL: On 3/15, about ten to fifteen minutes before 10am EST, I watched the ticker dip down to the mid .0090’s, but I was too nervous about pulling the trigger and missed my opportunity before it started to climb again. There were more opportunities to trade this over the next couple of hours that day, but I had to work, so I was unable to participate. I do not mind when this happens because I am still very new to trading, so my lack of time keeps me from over-trading and will force me to wait for the pattern to come to me.
MINE: Another missed opportunity to make 5-10% on a ticker from 3/15. The only reason I even noticed that anything was happening with MINE, was because I have a watchlist with every stock I’ve purchased so far just so I can check back in every now and then. At around 10:07, I noticed that it was up 15% on the day and climbing from up .0065. If I’m not mistaken, I was the first to say anything about it on the Tim’s Alers chat on profit.ly. Looking back, I guess I was too nervous that I was wrong about the momentum and failed to take action, so I just ended up watching and learning, which I can’t complain too much about. Less than 30 mins later, around 10:40am, it was in the low .0070s. News came out that morning which was the apparent reason for it climbing that day.
MAXD: Wait…Didn’t I just make a bad trade with this ticker last week? Yep…Did I do it again…Yep. At 10:47, I put in a limit order to buy, thinking that it would dip down that low, but it stopped at .0118. I decided to cancel my order and wait for a bigger dip if one presented itself (proud of this move). About two hours later, I got in at .0105, and then it quickly sank to the high .0090’s, then back up to .0102. At that time, I was still confident that I could make at least a 10% profit despite thinking my entry was a little early when I initially thought I was late. Right around 12pm, it was moving a little above and below my entry. At this time, I noticed that I had a wash rule attached to this trade. I have not been able to find any info one way or the other, but for some reason, when the ticker was above .0105 I was still 6-7% down. Is that because of the wash rule? If anyone has any insight, I would love to hear from you!
ICBU: I got to watch this one take off right as the market opened. I saw it at .0175, but I was too scared that I was wrong and failed to execute a trade. Some great dip-buying opportunities presented themselves over the next 30 minutes or so, but I chose not to make a trade because I had to go to work and could not watch the stock. Turns out that it would not have mattered if I was able to watch it or not as it ended the day in the mid .0250’s. Despite that, I am glad I did not take the risk of making a purchase without monitoring its activity.
Takeaways from the week: If the setup looks good, GO FOR IT! If I’m wrong, I need to not be too prideful to admit I’m wrong and cut my losses. Who cares if my percentage of wins keeps decreasing for a while? Eventually, there will be a shift. My losses are beneficial while I am learning, and the market has something to teach me every day!
Deliveries went much better than expected this week! Nearly doubled my earnings from last week and only drove a couple more hours. Due to this success, I was able to add Stockstotrade with SST Breaking News chat room to my learning/trading arsenal over the weekend. I am super thankful this was able to come earlier than expected, and I can not wait to look back in a couple months to see where this takes me. Next week I will be spending the evenings familiarizing myself with the program, so the week after, I will be prepared to use it in action.