Eeyore's trading journal

[Sejit]

After nuking my account all year long with the final bomb shell last week dropping me under margin requirements for PDT, enough was enough.
I started today with a $3,000 cash account on TD and my objective, for now, is quite simple: Try and hit 2% green a day.
The plan is to build up to $5,000 so I have more ammunition, as it were, and at that point start sweeping half the profits into my ‘shares’ account that has a handful of AMZN, GOOG, and misc shares like HGEN. The ultimate goal is to rebuild back to the point I can resume ‘normal’ margin account day-trading operations. If I can get there and build-up some sorely lacking skills, I ought to be that much better off.

Today was one of those days where I had a bit of regret with ‘money left on the table,’ but I reminded myself I did well and tomorrow is always another day. No need to take stupid risks.

First trade of the day was a pair of SPY calls at 10:05 and sold at 10:16 a few seconds before that big green followed right after. Had seen them go up over 10% profit, wound up cutting fearing a decline for 4%. Bit of a pain when later in the day they were well over 50%, but oh well. Felt I made a good decision in the moment.

Next up was a lone NVDA call I timed well, held an hour, and cashed out for about 25% profit.

Funny enough, the next trade is the one I’m happiest with in the day despite the fact I lost $22 on it. Was another pair of SPY calls at 12:44 I held onto for all of 90 seconds. Price started moving against me, something felt off about it, cut very early. Turns out that was the right, smart play. I think last week me, me with more buying power would’ve just gone full stupid and tried to average it down to success. So, glad with how that turned out, all things considered.

Bought one more SPY call about 1:30 on that bounce off the bottom, watched it dip a little, but felt it was still in a nice uptrend–and sure enough it was, but I was still pretty skittish and bailed on a 7% gain after it’d been bumping its head against 396 for a few minutes.

Goal today was 2% and hit 6%. So, all told, a great start and looking forward to a solid rest of the week! Tomorrow I’ll be looking at another NVDA call or two to ride IV/hopefully more bullish action after the SNAP guh for earnings. Otherwise just the usual quick SPY/QQQ plays. Maybe ‘green’ energy depending on how it looks at open. XME was strong today as well, so I’ll keep on eye on that one, though I’ve had more success with overnight/weekly holds there than intraday and I’m not sure I want to overnight hold anything for a while here.

[Sven]

Glad to see it brother, seems like you’re breaking some old habits (averaging down vs cutting) which is essential. May we win a little and learn a lot

[rexxxar]

Great start indeed. Great job!
Let’s all learn from one another and keep securing gains.

[Sejit]

Today was kind of odd. Ended +6.93% for the day, but I don’t feel good about it. Some distractions with life weren’t helping either.

No puts today, just calls. One day I’ll figure out puts, but more often than not they just fuck me over since it feels like the tiniest green shreds them.

Bought an NVDA call a little after 10am, watched it sink a little. Avoided the urge to cut or average down since it was fairly otm and 6/3 expiration. It start coming back, and as it did, grabbed some SPY calls. Wound up cutting those for 5% profit just before SPY had its first pop.
Kept the NVDA call for a bit, then got sidelined into a meeting and came back to discover there’d been a second pop and subsequent collapse. The call was still over 10% but I didn’t take profit. Wound up watching this damn thing be red most of the rest of the day and cut for 5% near EoD.
Some more SPY calls, and even a different NVDA call in the middle there, but there was one consistent pattern that was giving me regret/fomo: I was reading the direction right, but getting the timing wrong. I’d wind up entering SPY calls and cut for a sliver of profit (one was break-even, something like 80 cents profit after commission fees) only to watch them run an easy 20% gain not even 15 minutes later. Was frustrating to say the least.
Last thing I did for the day was selling my last NVDA call on the run-up before it fell that one last time before EoD for 20%, so at least I got one of 'em.

Ultimately I feel like I’m getting okay entries on calls, but it’s either off-timed or I let it go up a bit then come down, cutting in a mild panic at 3-4% gain instead of the 10%+ I had earlier in the trade. I think setting up a well-defined exit plan for every trade will help instead of ‘let’s get this and see what happens.’

The other thing I noticed is that having a second account with just options, no shares, helped me stay focused. My ‘shares’ account was bloody fucking red from the three AMZN and two GOOG shares, and I think if I had to stare that down while trying to make my options trades I would’ve been riskier, more gambly in an attempt to ‘make up’ the red. Food for thought, I suppose.

Since I’ve done well today and yesterday compared to my goals I’ll probably be less aggressive the rest of the week. If I can hold onto the green this week, it’ll be my first green week in literal months. Here’s hoping. If I can keep up a 2% pace, I’ll be on target to hit $5k (my first major goal) by July 1st.

[thots_and_prayers]

Great job. I know what you mean about green days that still don’t feel great - but if you can learn lessons while still being profitable, you’re doing amazing

[Sejit]

Wednesday saw me take a good trade in the morning, hit my daily goal… And then I bored traded before FOMC, lost big, and had to make three more profitable trades just to end the day about breakeven.
Today was nasty, tried to scalp puts three times and got blown out on all of them. SPY just wouldn’t stop climbing. In hindsight, two of the trades had hit about 2-3% gains but I was holding for 5% with the idea learned from Wednesday–just make a slightly bigger gain on a smaller chunk of the port and call it good. One I think even came within a few cents of that 5% mark at one point before retreating to a nasty loss.
Eventually gave up and with the last of my BP, entered calls.
And then SPY reversed trend and went down into close. Sold one at 3.5% gain, rode the other to a 15% loss. Even when SPY pushed above where I’d gotten the call earlier, the damn thing barely broke even.
Right back to where I started the week. Nervous about tomorrow, praying I can hit my green goal and just call it a week. If it’s another red week…

Some food for thought is that I should look at calls with further out expirations so they don’t slide against me so much during price movement–and worse yet, still be at a loss even when the price has moved favorably in my direction above(or below) my buy-in.

The other thing, at least today, is that I was very close to buying calls at open but was 100% sure I’d buy some and everything would just immediately knife. So I waited and waited and after a bit of impatience at various points where SPY seemed to plateau, bought puts. And then not long after SPY would leg up. Even had one moment where I bought a put and before I could even get back to my positions page, SPY threw up a big green candle and I was immediately down 5%.

Here’s hoping I can get in early tomorrow, get out just as fast with some green, and enjoy the long weekend.

[Sejit]

Well, made 3% today, or a little under $95 after fees.
Avoided puts and played calls, but, in all honesty, got way too jumpy expecting a knife at any moment and cut winners on clear uptrends very early from small minute to minute movements. It’s made me realize I’m a rather fearful trader, at least as of late. Gonna have to work on that, maybe.

Missed my weekly goal by a fair bit. On-target would have ended the week at $3,312 and I am at $3,166. So, missed by about half. A real shame considering I was over $3,400 on Tuesday.
Them’s the breaks sometimes, I think–plus I was terrified I’d have yet another red week so that likely played into my fear and anxiety coming into today.
Still, I’ll take a green week and not playing from behind, as it were, can make it easier to give plays a little room to run instead of constantly chopping them off at the knees.
Something else is once I hit that 3% on the day I was looking at what was left of my buying power and thinking “how can I turn this into the rest of my goal for the week?” and realized that with the amount, about $800, I would’ve needed about a 20% play to ‘make it up.’ Only way that’d happen at that point of the day is if I took stupid, risky gambles. And we all know how those wind up.
So, I just sat on it for the rest of the day and didn’t play a thing, riding my 3% gain into close. I’ll take it.

Still looking for $5k at the end of June and I think it’s still a realistic and reasonable goal. We shall see!
+166.16 or +5.5% for the week.

[Sejit]

Nothing terribly interesting today, especially in the face of the folks who regularly turn huge profits a day.

Played SPY calls twice and AMD calls twice. Took small profits, about 4.5% on the SPY calls and just under 10% on both AMD calls. (After commission fees, that is.)
Interestingly, only one of my SPY call purchases went red on me for a short while. The other three plays were neutral or green from the get-go until I sold.
Only used about 2/3 of my buying power today. Just not feeling confident in anything, really (especially myself), so I made very safe trades.

SPY 6/3 412C x2, $4.79 > $5.16
AMD 6/10 105C, $3.55 > $3.90
SPY 6/6 416C, $4.61 > $4.83
AMD 6/10 103C, $3.90 > $4.30

$161.35 gain for the day after commissions, or about 5% on the account.

[Sejit]

Nasty day where every trade I entered went >2% red before I could even get back to the positions screen, but I managed to come out ahead overall on the day.

AMD 6/17 104c x2, $4.23 > $4.50

SPY 6/10 410c, $5.84 > $5.78
This one annoyed me since after staring at it red for a solid 30 minutes+ it crept up, went briefly green, then back down and I just said fuck it and snagged a slight loss. Then SPY bounced a bit and would’ve hit my initial limit sell.

AMD 6/10 101c, $3.95 > $4.10
And this trade had me pissed. Same thing, went red soon as I bought it, really red for a while, and started to recover… And I noticed SPY touched 407, an area where I really wanted to buy some calls but since the AMD position was still red I told myself I wouldn’t try to manage two positions at once like that.
SPY then proceeded to rip $3 and the calls I was looking at went an easy 50% profit, meanwhile AMD just sat there shitting and pissing all over itself and I barely managed to get the sale I did. Granted, it caught some momentum later and shot up, but dang did it annoy me to see SPY take off and AMD did fuck all.

At any rate, up 2.2% on the day or so after commissions. Another day where I left about a third of my BP untouched. Nothing at EoD looked safe, even for a quick scalp, and I’m getting more in the mindset of guarding my gains rather than ‘lol house money.’

Here’s hoping for better entries tomorrow so I don’t have to stare down red most of the time I’m holding a position. Also prepped to buy an additional two AMZN shares so I’ll have five total for the split next week. I have a feeling the increased liquidity/perceived accessibility will draw in a lot of retail and give a bit of a pump that’ll make writing CCs lucrative.

[Sejit]

Early entry since I’m done for the day.

3/4 green trades on the day with the red one being a whole $7 loss. Though that one wound up being an easy 10% gain, but had my stop way too tight

+3.14% on the day utilizing half my BP.

Another day where despite being green I’m annoyed at myself. I actually had beautiful entries across the board and a little patience (and not being so afraid) would’ve resulted in some impressive gains, same as every day this week so far.

Yes, this is the ole ‘if I sold at x I would’ve had y!’ we’re all tired of hearing of, but it’s especially on my mind because I’ve pinned down that, frankly, every time I enter a trade, the moment it twitches against me I get afraid and lizard brain tries to take over. Think I’ve got a bit of the beaten dog syndrome where I’m so accustomed to losing and just being shit I’ve come to expect it and react accordingly.

When, after the trade, just looking at the points I entered it was clear things were moving positively for me, but it sure didn’t look like that at the moment. Food for thought.

I hit my 10% weekly goal already despite being a four day week, so I think I’ll just take a break tomorrow and try to decompress a bit. We’ll see.

[Sejit]

Not much to add today. Did a few little scalps, that unfortunately, all went against me for a bit and I honestly got a bit lucky with coming out of them green.
The one exception was a 6/17 110C AMD I picked up about noon… And then it just traded sideways the rest of the day. Think I saw 15 green on it at the ‘peak’ and wound up selling at close for a $20 loss. Funny thing is AMD was the same price I bought at when I sold. Goes to show how IV and theta can fuck you good.

+.79% on the day after commissions. Would’ve been about 2% had I been able to sell the AMD call even a little profitably at like $15 or $20, but oh well.
+10.78% on the week–above goal considering it was a four-day trading week and my second green week in a row. Here’s hoping I can score a third.

Only other news is I’m sitting on 5 AMZN shares with a total profit of $300 so far. Hoping Monday treats me well and I can sell CCs on these for a while. I have a feeling the increased liquidity will give it a boost and the reduced price will attract more retail. We’ll see.

[Sejit]

After a while of silence, mainly because I was ashamed of myself–back at it, I suppose. Plus, looking at the fact it’s been 30 days since I began, what better time to resume?

Had one nasty week followed by a lesser nasty week where I guh’d from $3,500 to $2,500. Most of the guh was related to two specific trades where I broke my rules. Built back up and, after a nice morning today where I made 4% on the account with two tiny trades utilizing a tenth of my BP each, I’m sitting at $3,178. After 30 days, or one month, I’m up 6%. Not quite my goal, but still fantastic in the greater picture, the longer frames.

Funny thing is, my commission fees so far are $220.Thanks, TD. I am strongly considering switching to webull for this to dodge the fees, but we’ll see. These fees are something I was thinking about coming into this, but I hadn’t expected them to accrue so fast. Funny how that works, isn’t it? For the most part this is pushing me towards contracts that are at least $2+ to avoid taking too much of a hit on fees for fast scalps. Also planning on taking my target profit amount and seeing if I can add a dollar to it to make up for the fees.

Considering my journey down to $2,500 and the fees, I think this is good. Certainly a far cry from my original goal of hitting $5k by the end of June, but for me it was really, really important that I bounced back from being down like that. Stuck to my rules and climbed back out of the hole. Just have to stay out of it now.

If I pretend those two god-awful trades never happened, I’d be sitting just under $4k. Still under my goal, but then, 33% profit in a month is quite amazing. In theory, downturn and recession aside, I could not touch the account for three years and still have outperformed the market as a whole. Kinda fun to think about.

For the rest of June I’m just going to keep focusing on my 2% daily goal. Looking into July, however, I’m going to put less weight on daily returns and more of an emphasis on hitting a monthly goal. Depending on where I end June, my goal for July is going to be either $4,500 or $5,000. Here’s hoping!

[internetkings]

I think 2% is a great daily goal and glad your back at it.

Small trades add up fast - try not to beat yourself up too much for the bad ones, we have all done it and we will do it again. Only using a set portion of your bp is a great strategy, there is always going to be a next day.

[Kain]

Getting back on the horse after a hit is always hard but you can do it!
If it makes you feel better I made $6500 last week on my $2k account and then boneheadedly held a put from Sunday through Tuesday and on top of that, revenge traded puts yesterday like an idiot and lost $2k… back on the horse slowly today and made back $200 (missed the wild morning pump helping out one of my techs in the shop and I’m still being skittish on entering your r holding anything)
Hardest part of trading imo is the mental game. I’m slowly starting to stick to my indicators that work (and trying to actually listen to jbs callouts ), and I’ve been working on cutting losers faster for a few months, but it’s a mental struggle.

If you need to try a change up, you can cut bp into 1/2 or 1/3 set a instant trailing stop at 10% or so and only do 2-3 trades per day and take losses as they come and let the winners run a bit when you’re right. I started doing this when I was down below a $1k and needed to change it up… (I did not always set trailers but I was forcing myself to cut at 5-10% loss).
Capitol preservation becomes very important when the balance gets low so breaking the hold till green mentality becomes important.
Of course it takes a while to build good habits so I broke my cut when red over 10% rule this week and paid the price, but my trading is always a work in progress and sometimes it takes multiple smacks to the head for me to learn my lessons.

[Sejit]

Thanks, I’ll give it a shot! I do sometimes set trailing stops soon as I buy. In fact, I ought to do it more often.

Right now my biggest obstacle is going to be cutting losers and avoiding the temptation to average down, to hold and pray it’ll come back. Or, if it does come back, accept it might not be green and cut at a smaller loss.
I’ve had a lot of profitable days turn into breakeven or worse, losses, because I have that one more trade I just ignore my rules on and get beaten up for it.

Sometimes I’m able to just keep level-headed and go ‘okay, this isn’t working, time to cut’ and other times I just can’t accept I’m losing and try to make it a winner… Which, well, we all know how that goes.

[MENoir]

I think that last part is harder than cutting losers early. Watching a position rally back to almost green, setting your sell for breakeven or just above, and watching it slink back down is awful.

Something i know i need to work on.

[Sejit]

Yeah, that’s how both my big losers were.
Averaged down like a fool, watched them absolutely tank my port… Climb back up, so close to green–and then just shit the bed again. And rather than just accept it won’t happen and cut, I hold and pray like the first time.

Admittedly I goofed again EoD and did the same thing. Went from big win to tiny loss. Something like a $5 loss on the day after commission fees. What’s funny is it was green for a short while, but not green enough. I didn’t trust the movement, too choppy, yet I didn’t exit for some reason. Guess I was confident it’d hit my original sell point. Almost did, but almost doesn’t count.

And so assblasted was I that it was the market who was wrong, not me, I did the greatest sin–bought more to average down. Did the same thing, almost went green, came very close with just a tiny loss… And then sank again. At the very least I recognized it for what it was and cut before it got too bloody.

At any rate, tomorrow is a fresh day. I know I can do this, just gotta stick to my rules.

[Sejit]

Well, I’ve typically shied away from playing early morning/open because of IV, even when I felt confident in a direction.
Decided to try it today and it paid off well. Of course, could’ve just as easily fucked me over. Repeatable results are what’ll matter I suppose.
Got 10% on two SPY calls and 20% on an NVDA call. Most likely just going to watch the rest of the day and keep an eye on my KMX puts.

[Sejit]

Started the morning good, then near EoD I decided to try a SPY put. Went against me a bit, so I bought one more and just watched them for a bit.
Came very close to selling for a tiny loss, but… The more I looked at it, the more I was annoyed at SPY’s movement and so very sure it’d come back down. So I bought more.
Sold those for a nasty loss at about two minutes before close and pivoted into 0dte calls, unfortunately only got a partial fill. Managed to make up half the put losses. Had I gotten the full fill, I would’ve even come out a bit ahead. Oh well.

Between those and the KMX losses, this week was a bust for me, but them’s the breaks sometimes. Solidified my resolve to never touch shit for earnings ever again. Challenge account still up 10% overall, so even though those SPY puts were a nasty loss, position sizing ensured it wasn’t something that’d ruin me–and other than those puts, this was an otherwise positive week in the ole’ challenge account.

So, chin up, and I’m looking forward to next week. I think I can hit 20% up on the account.

[Sejit]

Touched over 4k today, 33% on the account

Even more impressive considering I ended June 28th at $2,600.

What’s interesting is for all my trades, two, off the top of my head, account for $1,100 worth of loss. Out of maybe 200-ish trades I’ve done, not having royally fucked up and lost big on those two would put me over $5k.
Definitely highlights of the importance of cutting early if something isn’t going your way; something I have to work on more. I’ve been super lucky this week, I think, and got bailed out of a couple otherwise bad trades that I held too long.

Other downside is this scalping action for 5-20% is having a definite impact on my day job, hah. Going to have to rethink things so I don’t have to spend all day staring at candlesticks.

It may have taken me a month and a half to make my first thousand, but I did it. Just gotta do it again. However, something I also need to change in regards to this is I fuss way the fuck too much over small dollars. I’ve gotten myself twisted into knots over $5, $10. That’s just not gonna fly as my account grows and I start taking larger positions to match. Many lessons still to learn, but I think I can do it.

In any case, I hit my first big milestone so I’m gonna take tomorrow off and focus on work and just try to relax a little. End of July target is $5k.

Here’s hoping