Osama Bin Fuckin AKA h4sh Trading Journal

h4sh · February 4, 2022, 2:48pm

Some Lessons I Learned Before Starting Journal

Setting reasonable stop losses can make a trade. I’ve only started trading a few months ago and one bad habit I’ve had was not setting stop losses. I always thought yeah I can just sell if it doesn’t go my way, but that doesn’t always work out. It’s sometimes best to just set a stop loss that your risk tolerance allows for.
Using a profit-taker order and setting it to a reasonable amount can also make sure you are green. I learned this the hard way after being more than 20-30% up multiple times and not taking profit, only to have a quick reversal and lose it all, and end up red on the trade because of it.
Conqueror does in fact love Canadians.
I’ve learned to just attach a bracket order to my buy order when buying options and adjust that as needed. I generally set it up with a little more room for upward movement. I’ve found it’s easier to adjust the bracket as the option price moves than it is to keep adjusting the sell levels in my mind and to enter the sell order manually. If I do see an upward movement big enough I then move the whole bracket upwards alongside the price movement, this way even my stop loss is at a profit and I don’t feel too bad for being stopped out of the trade.
I’ve learned some technical analysis through just listening to VC and trying to call out patterns where I see them before or around the same time they’re called out in VC. Also Kryptek’s post on patterns is phenomenal and needs to be read by everyone.

Trades

This post will probably be different than ones that follow because It’s the first entry and I wanted to include my last couple of days of trading in it as a starting point.

2022-02-02T05:00:00Z

This was generally a good day for me. Made a few good scalps, some called by TF, some on my own. Overall, made about 10% of my account value in profit.

2022-02-03T05:00:00Z

Overall I lost (I think) about 1-2% of my account value. I made a bad entry on my SPY call in the morning and even though I was up about $10 on it, I got greedy for more, ended up losing $50. I then saw the struggle SPY was having breaking 453 and thought it would retest 450, but didn’t trust myself and so I cut at $25 per 448 put to recover my loss from earlier. I then entered ESSC 15 calls thinking I clicked 12.5, I was so happy to get a 0.2 fill for them but hey, ADHD doing its thing. I restart my meds for the first time in 3 years next week so that’ll hopefully prevent shit like this. I then made a small trade on PFE and lost out a little to end the day.

I’ll be updating this daily and I will be taking part in the 1K-1M challenge. Cheers.

h4sh · February 4, 2022, 9:12pm

2022-02-04T05:00:00Z

I made two main trades today:

Bought SPY calls at the bull flag early in the morning and it broke down, averaged down nicely so my average price was 0.96, but I limit sold at a loss while I was away, wasn’t quite sure it’ll run up crazy like it did. Ended up with ~$17 loss per call when I could’ve been up about $70 per. Overall not too upset about selling early, but moreso about the bad entry.
I bought a SPY put at what I thought was a head and shoulders, but it ended up being a double top. It also ran down more than I expected, I came out with about $5 profit here, just a smaller trade to offset the earlier trade. One thing I should’ve done was not to make this trade in the first place, since I was a bit emotional because of something personal.

I saw a couple patterns today and called them out which ended up being profitable which is cool, I’ve noticed myself slowly get better at both technical analysis and making entries, so hopefully with the challenge starting and being able to observe more I’ll pick up on more things and become more consistent. Gonna put the stuff I called below for memory.

This double top played out perfectly for a quick scalp, I called it but missed my entry so I sat out.

This was the ascending triangle I called but sadly the break was short lived due to some old man talking about burgers.

This really just ended up being a double top instead of a head and shoulders and ran down pretty hard towards EOD.

h4sh · February 9, 2022, 4:31am

2022-02-08T05:00:00Z

Today wasn’t a bad day at all for me up until the end where I rushed into something I hadn’t been researching.

I had forgotten my WEBR puts sell order was still active, someone bought the ask and they sold for 0.05 each, not bad considering they’ve been worthless a week or so now, so I profited off them for the day but actually ended up with a ~50% loss on them overall.

I made a SPY put callout around 10:20 AM today and made a small 7% profit off it, two other people made some good profits off my callout and I’m actually really happy about that. It feels good to be helping others make money for once and not the other way around.

I looked for an entry around the head and shoulders which were forming at about 1:40 PM but entered too early, made about 30% profit on my two puts there but that could have been much higher with the right entry and a bit more risk tolerance. After I entered the price dipped to about .60, .20 less than I paid for each. I also couldn’t really move my profit-taker/stop-loss bracket up due to being in a 1-1 meeting at work, so I just set the profit-taker to a price I felt confident the put would reach.

I did take an Uber call to play the LYFT earnings but that’s gonna be worth a whole lot less tomorrow. oh well.

I’m back on Vyvanse for the first time in 3 years and holy shit I was productive today. Between actually doing shit at work, actively keeping up with my trading, and working on my resume + coding challenges, it felt good to get so much done. Hopefully I can keep up with my current (healthier than last time I was on it) lifestyle so it doesn’t fuck me up.

Love you valalalla!

h4sh · February 10, 2022, 3:37am

2022-02-09T05:00:00Z

Today was a rollercoaster ride! Started out with SPY 458c FD scalp at a not-so-great entry as pointed out by JB and Brummel, but I made the best I could out of it and averaged down twice, which then let me take $24 or ~8.6% profit on them.

Made an entry for a quick scalp on SPY 455p FD and came out with a $10 profit there. Then I entered into the same put again for another scalp and came out with $22 profit off two of them. So far so good.

I saw a big resistance called on SQ and didn’t really do any research myself but still entered it for some reason - which baffles me - and got trapped, didn’t really get a good chance to sell it and ended up holding overnight, hope it sees a nice dip in the morning

Last thing was selling the UBER call I bought yesterday, which I could’ve sold for more if I held towards EOD or even through earnings possibly, but I didn’t want to risk it.

My key takeaway from today is to keep my ears open and listen to the better traders, I can only learn from them as I slowly become better at this myself. Another thing is to do my own research no matter what’s being called, could’ve avoided the SQ trade entirely as I wasn’t really prepared for it. Which brings me to the last one: Stop trading when I’m already good for the day. I was up $55 on the day off my SPY scalps which covered the loss I had on Uber and then some, but I decided to overtrade.

Slowly but surely I’m getting into better habits, this is just another bad one for me to get rid of.

And remember, Conqueror loves Canadians

h4sh · February 11, 2022, 3:05am

2022-02-10T05:00:00Z

I don’t even know where to start. Today was a complete mess from the start. My mental was bad since the morning because of my SQ put that wasn’t panning out yesterday and carried into today, where I had 2 mins of profitability but was speaking in a work meeting and didn’t get to sell in time then watched it bleed all day.

I got an IRNT scalp off JB’s call which was nice but I entered very quickly on a single call, made 75% profit on a 30 sec trade, and this actually made me a little upset that I didn’t enter a bit heavier.

SO, I stupidly look for something to trade instead of just sitting on what I’ve got, I enter a couple SENS calls which are fine, they’re red but that was SPY correlated. I enter an UBER put way too late and hold long enough to come out with $1 profit. lol.

This is where I’m beating myself up, I don’t know why I entered the SPY call I did, I thought it’d recover and looked for confirmation a little too hard, that wasn’t the case and I held it too long trying to find more confirmation, so I lost a lot on that too.

Overall a shitty day, but I’ve made it back before and I’ll do it again, just gotta drill what I’ve been saying on here and what everyone’s been saying into my head.

h4sh · February 16, 2022, 3:05am

2022-02-15T05:00:00Z

Today was my first day back after a small break and went well, but I ended up too focused on SPY 444p for some reason, where I could have made some good money more than once playing calls. Need to not focus too hard on playing one way only, which burned me once today.

Overall made $40 on my positions today and was fairly afk so I’m not really bothered at all. Not too much to say today. peace

h4sh · February 16, 2022, 2:16pm

2022-02-16T05:00:00Z

I’m gonna try a different format today to keep my thoughts a bit more documented so I can properly look back at them later, so I’m editing this several times in order to really capture them.

SPY

I feel like SPY on technicals is bullish today but at the same time there’s the FOMC minutes today so things can do apeshit. But in terms of the daily chart, it looks like there was a hammer on Monday and confirmation of upward movement yesterday.

I will probably only scalp a little but I do want to see if it ends up closing up for the day around 448. However right now in the premarket it’s hovering around yesterday’s open, so it doesn’t look promising in terms of really confirming an uptrend from the hammer. Obviously this can very likely be the case because of the war possibility and also FOMC minutes.

LMT

I saw Conqueror is in LMT at the moment with a feb 25 390c, so I did a little looking into it and based on his reasoning and the idea of the trade I might be going in. The same call should be cheaper today near open and if it does pop at all I will probably cut, even if it’s not on news of a war or anything.

BKKT

Right now I’m just looking at the thread here BKKT - Short squeeze potential? to see what everyone is thinking and maybe jump in.

Updates

Didn’t end up doing too well today, was up 25% on the day and lost all of it plus more because I fought the trend with FOMC. Not sure why I did that, but I did it and I feel very silly because of that.

h4sh · February 17, 2022, 1:48pm

2022-02-17T05:00:00Z

SPY

My thought is that SPY today is going down due to escalating tensions in the Ukraine crisis. I think it’s probably going to do its thing and pop around open then come down quite hard. I also think this will happen because the US building permits numbers seem bullish but I don’t really think that’s enough to overcome the war FUD. I might look for a quick PUT scalp in the first little while but not quite sure yet.

XOM

Held this overnight along with others including Conqueror of his callout, I’m going to be looking to sell within 15-20 mins of open if we get a similar pop to yesterday around that time.

LMT

I feel like with the tensions escalating this might be a good buy for another call today, we shall see.

Update

Really profitable yesterday even though I was pretty busy, that’s nice. overall +27% which is proper, about $140. Quite happy with these trades.

h4sh · March 2, 2022, 5:02pm

Last week I blew up the account

Between some emotional trading due to really bad medical news and a couple of mistakes the day prior in trading, I blew up my account on Wednesday last week (2022-02-23T05:00:00Z). Let’s dive in and see what I can improve for when I end up funding the account again.

Tuesday

This was when I made my initial bad trades. Firstly I didn’t exit the LMT 400c at open and ended up losing quite a bit on that. Then I entered and exited RSX puts similar to Conq and others, before we figured out it was just an intraday correlation with SPY. Lastly I just lost a few dollars on a SPY scalp that went wrong. LMT was the big loser on this day and it just felt shitty that I didn’t cut early enough at open, but too early as it bounced back during the day.

Wednesday

This is where I really fucked up. I got some test results back; and essentially because I was kept on a specific medication for a longer than typical course, My cholesterol levels are about double that of a regular 25 year old, and it’s caused me MGD, which kinda fucks your eyes up. Now my original plan was to sit out the day cause I didn’t want to be impulsive in my trading, but once I got these news and saw the cost of the procedure they do for MGD I started emotionally trading to make up the losses from the prior day I guess.

I ended up looking for a reversal on the SPY slide in the morning at the areas I highlighted here, one each. I even said in TF that I thought it would tap 430 then go back down, but I guess I was clouded from the news I received and the emotions that came with them and at 430 I was up about $18 after averaging down twice on the calls, which is where it did reverse like I had thought and I got blown out further. I was left with less than 30 on the account after this and tried to make some trades but did far OTMs because they’re cheaper but theta just ate out what was left in the account because the moves weren’t quick enough to offset that.

What now?

It’s been a week now since this went down. I’ve been taking the time to learn a lot more and listen in VC to confirm things I’ve been seeing. I’m still going to be doing this for a week at the very least, and most likely a month or so.

Another thing I’ve really gotta do is to just sell when there is profit, I’ve become better at doing this since watching Conq’s streams but there’s clearly a disconnect when I get emotional and I end up trading on those emotions rather than using my brain. I guess composure is what I need to work on here, it’s easy to sell when I’m green and having a good day, but when I’m having a bad day, I should have the composure to either trade logically, or just not trade at all.

I’ve got a set of summer wheels sitting in my locker which should fetch around 800 that I’ve been trying to get rid of, hopefully those sell around the time when I feel ready to restart trading and about 500 of that becomes the capital for it.

If anyone reads this and has any input I do appreciate it, always helpful to hear other perspectives and experiences.

GRIZZLYWINTERS · March 3, 2022, 3:48am

Sorry to hear about your bad week of trading H4sh. It can be a real gut punch to watch trades going against you. A couple things I picked up from this were:
revenge trading - you took a big L and tried to jump right back in agressivly to recoup that. You did the same thing after the L on SPY with some far OTMS. Your emotions got the best of you and you can see how that affected your trading. Next time you have a big loss, maybe just walk away. Hell, even on a big win too. Let that sit in and come back with a plan.
position sizing - Averaging down on SPY may have been a good tactic but it doesnt sound like your account was large enough for this and put all your eggs in one basket. Dedicate a certain portion of your trading account to each play and make sure those match your budget. I am currently using 10-20% of my portfolio per play and trying to keep at least 50% in cash so that gives me 3-5 plays at a time. Say I dedicate 20% to a play. I will start in with a 5% initial and give myself another 15% to use to average up or down depending on how its going. If it gets to 20-25%of my total account and its not going my way, its time to start cutting back or bail.
100% watching your postion sizing will take some emotion out and keep you from blowing up your account. Your wins will be smaller but slow and steady will get you where you want to be.

h4sh · March 3, 2022, 3:59pm

Grizzly my man, appreciate it

I agree with you in that it was revenge trading. I’ve actually been generally better with avoiding that over the past few weeks since starting this journal and more so in the period leading up to this “incident”. This was just something that was fuelled by emotions that I haven’t really gone through before.

Tuesday wasn’t so bad, I obviously lost money because of my bad exit on LMT, but I didn’t make rash decisions when making trades and actually made some money on other trades.

It was really Wednesday with the medical news where I should have just fucked right off and not even looked at a chart all day, because clearly I was too emotional to trade. BUT even when I realized the loss and had $30 in the account, at that point it wasn’t the medical news, it was just me being rash. Can’t blame everything on something outside of my control.

With regards to averaging down, in all honesty it did work and I had what was about 10-15% profit ready to be locked in but I guess I was focused on the number for the eye procedure and got extremely greedy. I do agree with you though, I should be safer in terms of position sizing and lock in smaller profits, it’s something we discussed before and something I’ve been working towards.

Thank you again, my friend. I appreciate your comment

h4sh · March 10, 2022, 3:35am

Paper Challenge ($500-$1500)

Intro

Since I blew up my account I haven’t really trusted myself trading while having made sound analysis for the most part and having been calling things out verbally at home as I see them to force myself into some accountability compared to saying yeah I thought this was going to happen. I missed out several chances to start the recovery without adding funds and today was the nail in the coffin with a SPY put that didn’t go so well, especially since with a blown up account I can only go for far OTMs on anything I play. Now I need to show myself what I’m able to do with $500 before I actually put another $500 in there, it might not seem like a lot but consiedering I’m 2 years into my career, married, and both my wife and I have student debt, this is a good chunk for me to put into an account without knowing I can do well with it. I will be using a paper trading account I have reset to only have 500 in it, and because of the nature of this challenge I will be forced to treat it like real money.

Rules

The following rules are so I can hold myself accountable and to ensure I make the type of trades that I would actually make once I load up the real account:

I will not mirror Conqueror’s challenge plays. I feel like this would be me giving myself an easy way to get past the challenge.
I will log my trades here. Any DD I do I will have to post on the forums unless it’s a scalp or something I’ve picked up off the forums/TF.
I will not hold through earnings, that’s a gamble and I don’t want to be doing that. If I break this rule, then:
1. If it ends up in a loss, I will keep things as they are.
2. If it ends up netting me a gain, I must reset the account back to $500
If this account is blown up, I must wait a month prior to attempting to do the challenge again. This is to ensure that I have the time to actually learn and improve before I attempt it again as opposed to trying again and again in the hopes of getting lucky and succeeding only to then throw away real money.

If I find more rules that help the integrity of this challenge out , I will add them here.

h4sh · March 10, 2022, 10:14pm

First day went well in this challenge. All of the plays were my own, I called out one on TF on the technicals and it went well for someone else as well so that’s cool

The SHOP puts were actually green a couple of times but I overestimated how much of a downtrend it’d go on early in the morning and could have made more doing what I understand better: SPY scalps.

So I did just that, I went much closer ITM and took profits pretty quickly, even though I missed some big run-ups I added up a few small scalps and made some good money there.

Something I’ve noticed is even when my real account had money , IBKR never triggered GFVs for multiple trades a day with money I just used in the same day, so that’s nice until the account gets bigger.

+20% on the day – $99.

h4sh · March 11, 2022, 8:09pm

Today wasn’t bad at all

I won’t write much up since it’s a pretty busy day for me between the notion template I made and a technical interview + prep for more, but here are my trades and account as of now.

Ticker	Security	Quantity	Buy Price	Sell Price	Commission	Trade Total	Time
SPY	SPY 03/14 425c	1		323	1.54	321.46	March 11, 2022 11:41
SPY	SPY 03/14 425c	2		275	0.91	549.09	March 11, 2022 14:25
SPY	SPY 03/14 425c	2	259		0.9	-518.9	March 11, 2022 14:21
SPY	SPY 03/14 425c	1	275		0.8	-275.8	March 11, 2022 12:03
SPY	SPY 03/14 425c	1	315		0.8	-315.8	March 11, 2022 11:43
SPY	SPY 03/14 425c	2		305	2.03	607.97	March 11, 2022 12:20
SPY	SPY 03/14 425c	1	317		1.51	-318.51	March 11, 2022 11:37

h4sh · March 14, 2022, 2:32pm

Probably done for the day, got some job-work to do and wanna take some time to work on the notion thing I’ve put out here, kinda wanna write an integration to make it easier to export to forum friendly format. Also got more interview prep for interviews I haven’t gotten yet . Anyways for trades it’s just been scalps all morning on SPY.

Trades and Portfolio

Ticker	Security	Quantity	Buy Price	Sell Price	Commission	Trade Total	Time
SPY	SPY 03/14 423c	2	$111.00		$1.40	-$223.40	09:43:00
SPY	SPY 03/14 423c	2		$117.00	$2.26	$231.74	09:44:00
SPY	SPY 03/14 420p	1	$215.00		$0.80	-$215.80	09:46:00
SPY	SPY 03/14 420p	1		$242.00	$1.05	$240.95	09:47:00
SPY	SPY 03/14 423c	1	$165.00		$0.80	-$165.80	10:10:00
SPY	SPY 03/14 423c	1		$190.00	$1.53	$188.47	10:11:00
SPY	SPY 03/14 422p	1	$156.00		$1.04	-$157.04	10:14:00
SPY	SPY 03/14 422p	1		$170.00	$1.04	$168.96	10:18:00
Totals	-	-	$647.00	$719.00	$9.92	$68.08	-