So... I Thought I’d share my journey so far, as I feel it may help some people that are feeling a little lost after maybe making money earlier this year. Keep those motivated that are maybe yet to become profitable and, for MYSELF... a turning point that is documented, that I can express my current situation and look back on in due course. 

 

Where I started...

 

After finding Timothy Sykes on Instagram, when he had around 50k followers, back when Instagram was relatively new... I was instantly intrigued. Ever since I was young, if someone asked me what I wanted to be, I would reply "a stockbroker and a millionaire”. Why? Only reason, I think, is that I knew that's where money was being made, and to become a millionaire this was a definite, potential situation, that could create this for me... Anyway, after being told numerous time by people that it’s not possible, including those closest to me, due to not knowing anyone in that industry and being told "it’s not what you know, it’s who you know" and as a working class family, this was near on impossible, although it remained in my mind I strayed from trying. Skip forward a few years to early twenties, and after trying multiple things I decided to join my parent’s business, that at the time was a small independent builder’s merchant called "Small Loads". Me and my brother had always had entrepreneurial spirit installed in us from young, I think from seeing my parents working for themselves since I can remember, so managed to accumulate some decent money at a young age from various business ventures whilst working at this business. As we grew older and wiser and decided to knuckle down and stop spending lots of money on wild weekends partying and drinking Friday to Sunday, we invested into the family business to help with growth as well as some other ideas..  One being for myself, day trading & Timothy Sykes. On the 06/02/2016 I purchased 3 DVDs, PennyStocking Part Deux, Tim Fundamentals Part Deux, ShortStocking and set out to get studying. I knew NOTHING about short selling, pennystocks or anything about the US stock market and tbh at first watching these DVD’s was like learning a foreign language... but it was something I knew I had passion for and stuck with it… After messing with the UK stock market and having a few investments where I had gone all in every time, and lost money, I decided to get educated. During this time we was growing the business and had big plans for this, which meant 6 days a week, 12 hours a day working hard.. Sundays were my study days… I put in as much time as I could and grew my knowledge account for around 18 months before I decided it was time to join a service to continue this education. After learning from Tim’s DVDs to stay with Tim was to obvious choice, and so, signed up initially for Tim Alerts and opened a Suretrader account, as allowed me to trade here from the UK, with no PDT and I could locate shares for shorting. After a couple of months trying some things, losing money and getting alerts from Tim to see what he was trading along with the watchlists to compare to my own.. I still had no clue what I was doing and decided to fully invest, joining the Challenge. At this point I started my profitly account and took things more seriously. I spent the next 12-18 months studying, watching video lessons, webinars and trading when I could whilst working full time.. Had some wins and would being to see my profit chart move then it would slam down again.. so back to the studying I would go!!! I was on and off trading whilst studying when I could, as growing a business, which now at this point, had moved to a new site that was triple the size and also quadrupled the turnover, was the main focus, and a large time consumer.

Until April this year..

Early 2020 I had some big plans, as this year in April I would turn 30. The business had become the focus and tbh I had not traded much for the past 4/5months whilst focusing on the business but was studying when I could. Looking at trades, other traders had taken, like Huddie, Grittani, Dux and now the new guys on the block, Jack Kellog and Kyle Williams, and trying to assess why and what made them take that trade. As you can see, the bias of most, these guys are generally short, something I had come to feel more comfortable with and had some success with.

So, then this whole Covid 19 situation hit, put a complete hold on life in general, no big celebration for my 30^th and no month long trip to Bali me and my girlfriend had been planning for a year +. Terrible news came followed my lots of doom and gloom and unfortunate deaths including one of a very close family friend. Something in me changed, no matter how long I left trading alone something would always pull me back to the markets.. weather it be my phone pinging from a buy alert from Tim, a Twitter notification of a successful trader I followed, showing the amazing profits and lifestyle you can achieve with huge freedom if your willing to put in the hard work. So, with the time I had planned to take off to visit Bali, I decided to take this time off work and give trading one last attempt, I have not looked back since. After this month, I decided to leave the business I had help grow, day to day stuff anyway, and focus full time on trading taking the leap of faith as this was something I really loved and had huge passion for.

It’s like everything I had been studying just clicked and everything made sense, the market was on fire due to the unfortunate Covid 19 situation and the plays I liked and had good success with previously, o/e gap downs & OTC FRD’s mainly, just seemed to keep appearing. Whereas before I had struggled to find consistency, mainly due to patience and waiting for the best plays, But now here they were, literally every/every other day!!

From the beginning of April, I managed to have my first green month ever, followed by a small red month in May, then green for every month since. Taking my small $2500 account, that dwindled to $1800 at one point, to over a 400% gain, at current, on small $500 - $1000 positions grinding my way up. These months were great and although I was still inexperienced, the full-time trading as opposed to part time, was working perfectly and I was loving life. I felt like I was free and what I am now doing I would not even class as work, more a hobby, like going to the gym that I had great passion for but getting paid.

Then came August, after being profitable for the past 4 months and, quite nicely, for a small account, I decided it was time to size up as I had gained the confidence and knew I had found an edge… Well, that edge quickly disappeared as the “summer market” lull, people were talking about suddenly hit home. My plays that I had been having success with literally vanished overnight... and due to this I found myself sticking to my plan of sizing up but on unideal trades... I came out of August green which I was happy about,  but only because the last week I knew I had to adapt, which for me, was learning the long side and focusing mainly on OTC’s after watching a GREAT, Beyond the PDT episode, featuring the one and only Jack Kellogg! (HIGHLY RECOMMEND, can find on YouTube) for the second time, this time it hit home though. Previously to this, whilst I was having my success, I had been welcomed by a great group of supportive traders. All of whom are at different stages, but all very motivated and driven with the same mindset I had. Some, to put it simply, have been doing fucking amazing this year, and are true inspiration!!! Nearly all of which had found, started, their edge in OTC land.

After starting small and finding my feet in September whilst still trying to use larger size as I now had a larger account, I had a bag of mixed results, as was still taking unideal trades as well as ideal ones. Ultimately finishing green and double that of August but having some large loss days in the process, at this point, after reviewing my end of month stats, I knew if I could cut out the large loss days and set a max loss day of say $200, I could have actually doubled my September. With this in mind I started October very well, stuck to my rules and patiently waited for the right patterns and price action to come along and sized up when I knew the p/a had potential to be ideal.. approaching the final 7-10 days of October it is like I lost my focus and began to size into unideal trades, forcing things, pretty much ignoring my $200 max loss. I then, on the last two days of October, took my biggest loss to date - $1136.00 after comms, a swing trade that went badly and then revenge trading, larger size on an unideal short, twice, that I don’t even usually trade, trying to force things. This led to a huge red day, for me, my previous largest red day was around the $500 mark as I have always been disciplined at cutting losses quickly. Somehow in the mix of this I managed to stay some what composed and took a long position in $NWBO as it had the potential to be a A+ FGD/Reversal setup. I stuck to my plan on this trade, swinging o/n and selling into the next day continuation. This turned out to be my biggest gain to date of +$1981.11 after comms. The previous day to these trades, I had also gotten into a -$800 hole, which was my worst red day at time, but thank fully managed to get myself out with another A+ dip buy on $NWBO, ending my day breakeven.

So what am I getting at here?

I’ve spent the past 3 months working on my long game, missing ideal trades due to no locates for FRD OTCs then FOMO trading something less ideal, trying to tinker with larger size and focusing on the profit not the process. I took the last day of October off, as even though I had another profitable month, I had noticed these errors and huge swings in my trading had come from trying to force things and trade my profit not stick to my process and be patient for the profit to follow. So, over this weekend I have analysed all my trades, highlighted A+ setups, assessed everything that isn’t A+ and am ready to start November with a “LESS is MORE” attitude. For me, thankfully, I do still earn income without trading so there is no pressure, but I had become fixated on trying to make more money and even setting $ gain goals, which I knew was wrong.

Sometimes you need to take that large loss, whatever large may mean to you (10% of my main account is large enough for me) to just take your foot off the pedal and analyse what’s changed and where you’re going wrong. If you stay in control and keep your “large” losses, to a certain level of account size, even when things do go wrong, you’re still in the game, and that’s the most important thing! This is a marathon not a sprint, and with this mentality along with dedication and hard work anything is possible.

Ok, at the point I’m writing this, NO I haven’t crossed any of the larger $ goals that some would deem an accomplishment; 100k, 250k, 1 million for example, but I am profitable and to be making money from something I love doing, that every day I get better at, I am extremely grateful for. I know these above $ goals are well within reach for the future, but I will take it step by step, one IDEAL trade at a time, from here on out...

Focus on the process not the profit and less is more is the attitude I will be adapting for the last 2 months of the year. Homing in on A+ setups and not feeling like I HAVE to be doing something every day is something I have struggled with, that hopefully now after writing this blog as a reminder to myself I can move on from. I also hope anyone reading this, that may be in the same situation or similar, can benefit from it in some way.

Thank you to those that have helped me to this point, I hugely appreciate it.

November.. LFG!!!

To be continued…