March was most certainly a rough month for me adapting to the market environment that we have been in but I have learned a lot. I have never really gone from a fast momentum driven market to a slower choppy market and it really took me almost the entire month to recognize just how pitiful my trading really was. First lets start by looking at the loss amount in March--$-1,186… This was over half of my earnings in February wiped away. So how did this happen. Well half of January of this year and most of February I was playing the FGD afternoon play and holding overnight when literally every OTC had been gapping up. I was starting to size up as my stats show I have a great winning pct on them (up until last week of Feb when the play stopped working and I kept sizing up…) I Also saw people in the chat starting to branch out and play listed stocks like $GME and $AMC—this didn’t help because I got cocky because of my winning percentage in February and thought I had it all figured out. What did I do? I made some options trades. Why would I do that? Because I wanted in on the action and honestly in my brain I was thinking I want to make back these losses faster. Didn’t work. 8 Green days, 10 red days and three days I didn’t trade in. I would say up until March 23rd I was getting stubborn, making trades into setups I am not good at/don’t really even understand the thesis behind them and flat out overtrading. March 19th I changed my account to a cash account and turned off options trading on my account because of two things. One, I need to practice cutting losses fast. With a margin account I was so worried about the PDT (which was good because it forced me to learn FGD overnight trading—my bread and butter pattern) that when I was in the wrong trade I would hold until the next day and create massive losses for myself. I turned off options because I have no business trading options where I am at in my journey NOR do I actually understand what I am doing with options at all. Changing to a cash account honestly gave me the freedom to learn how to trade panic dip buys as well as morning spikes and HOD breakouts (which have been working really well) Without the cash account I would not be able to really learn how to trade these patterns because of the size of my account right at the moment. Since last Monday things have started to get back under control. I would say one of the biggest things I have done in March was to really start to get a hold of risk and what it is and how to really utilize risk to reward on each trade to focus on the risk to reward (a spot on the chart) instead of a percent gain. This was something that I honestly would not have been focused on if it wasn’t for the beyond the PDT podcast that I have finished entirely. This was my theme for the end of March and I really think it kept me in line.
So for the month of April, I have a bunch of goals. First; I want to have a goal where I stick to my risk all month long—I have sized down massively based on the trade setup and the time of day it is and the win rate I have on that specific setup. For example, I have a solid win rate on morning spikes with news. This is something that if I can continue to see success in the coming week or so I COULD consider to size up as long as I stick to my risk reward. I also want to truly learn a second pattern to add to my strategy. Having one setup (FGD afternoon/afternoon breakout—OTC ONLY) is tough to make money and I really saw that when the market changed. Honestly, the same setup is working but instead of afternoon this is primarily from 9:30am to 1:00. It is really the same as the afternoon overnight hold setup but it can be played on one day runners (for the time being) I also think adding panic dip buy to my strategy (like actually adding it) will be a big improvement. Three trades for my strategy that are OTC biased I think will create very consistent gains. I also want to finish the month green, in any amount to be honest. $1.00 in the green will be a win for me to be honest.
This month I also will be finishing the 30 day bootcamp again as well as going back through the checklist guides and a couple of the DVD’s. I know that watching them was a big help in the beginning but now that I have a solid base and a good understanding on how the market flows right now, I think going back through the DVD’s will give me some pointers I am just not thinking about. So… learn a couple new strategies to trade, finish green on the month all while making a big focus on sticking to risk/reward (and good risk to reward setups…). If I focus on the risk to reward I think the other two follow suit.
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