Castle - I'm Indian American's Trading Journal - $13,500 - $250,000

Trading Journals
1

Hi All,

I wanted to start a Trading Journal with the goal to reach $250,000.
My broker is Merrill Lynch as I bank through BoA.

The goal to $250,000 is to do two things:

  1. Pay off my student loans - roughly $130,000 (originally $191,000)
  2. Have some financial freedom to put in a mortgage for a home.

I am purely playing shares with option to play puts (ML - Level 2).

Account started with $13,500.

With January being overall red, and war news I did not trade until I decided to hit GUSH last week. I also dabbled a bit in CYRN.

P&L - Still learning how to do so in ML but here is my daily activity.

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Ending as of Feb 28th - 15,950.80

Profit - 2,450.80

I will use this as a learning opportunity to understand company financials, momentum swings etc.

Disclaimer: I work in Financial Services and do not have time to consistently trade so I usually play 5 - 10 tickers per month.

I aim to post on a weekly/monthly basis.

Thanks,

7 Likes
2

For March, I am looking into 4 tickers. Might just park my money into a ticker and see how it rides:

  1. Silvergate Capital - SI - One of the few financial institutions that trade/utilize/loan BTC funds/loans funded by BTC. Very risky trade as the stock fluctuates with BTC pricing.

  2. SOFI - Earnings should smash and first news of how their first bank deposits look like.

  3. Lucid - LCID - Update on their manufacturing/car productions.

  4. Nearly all Oil Tickers - NRGU, GUSH, UCO, USO.

3

So for 3/1/2022,

I decided to look into the tickers and we’re not particularly vested into them as much as I thought I would. I wanted to pull the trigger into SoFi and hesitated all day. This made me think, well how are other financials banks doing?

To my surprise, FAS has been taking a beating all month from trading highs of 140+.

With the sell off when Russia invaded, FAS dropped from 130 to a day low of 104.60. This downward movement was reversed with 12 - 20% gains days later.

So today I went into FAS at 149 shares with an avg of 106.58. Seems like a good buy and hoping for a decent payoff.

With Fed meeting in the AM hoping for a strong open so I can take some profits. Will update when I do.

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1 Like
5

Looks like my FAS buy in was awesome!!! I expect to ride this to $135-$140 before I start trimming.

Please note ETF’s are a risky trades. I was confident in FAS and I took my risk.

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6

Dear Trading Journal,

Its a good thing that I trade only in shares. . .

I was pulled into a few meetings at work all day and worried that my FAS holdings weren’t going to move much due to JPow speaking.

FAS took a stumble at 112.60 and I decided to sell my 149 share holdings. I didn’t enter into any other holdings but I am looking to enter/re-enter into below:

SI
FAS
GUSH
UCO
USO
SOXL
FLGT

Here was my holdings for FAS - Avg Cost - 106.58

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So started my Account last week at 13,500, Sitting currently at 16,905.45 - Total Gains 3,405.45 or 20.15% gains, in purely trading from shares.

I need to cover one of my two consolidated Feb’s Student Loans of $1,200 so I will be taking out 905.45 to cover those expenses.

Starting Today’s account at 16,000.00.

The Journey to 250k is hard, times will be tough, I hope I can make it to financial freedom.

7

Dear Trading Journal,

I am super happy that FAS trended downward as I wanted to re-enter badly. Financials will be in a very hot trend with rates etc as it generally helps Banks.

Reentered into FAS with avg price of 106.22 - going to ride this to 118, Aiming for 135 - 140.

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8

Sold out of FAS for a loss.
Bought into Oil during last weeks dip. Today has been bleeding.

Overall for the year, My total cash is 13,845.92

Total gains for the year - 345.92

Work has been on an uptrend as I am working on stock compensation releases, Grants, Etnries… so I might take the week off to chill out for a bit and reassess my trading strategy away from risky ETFs.

9

Finally after working 60+ hours per week, I got some free time to do some trades.

From 13,500:
Took out 1,500 to pay some taxes.

Currently at 12K even in trading account.

Bought TBLT.

Will update on profit.