What a 2 weeks of trading for me. It was a confidence booster for a week and a half and a demoralizing roller coaster at the end. All contingent upon my ability to focus and stick to the plan or lack of discipline because I didn’t take the time to do the process the right way.  My green day trades for me had the checklist, technical analysis and thesis behind it along with discipline on entry time and taking profits when goal was met or close to being met. Most importantly they were not stressful at all because I had a game plan on entry and exit. But when I just tried to read the stock from my phone or play off the chat room….boy o boy did I have a headache. Literally made me feel like I was in the beginning of my trading journey 4 months ago. I had a solid 2k profits that dwindled 50% in less then two days because of my shenanigans. Even worse I am still within an o/n weekend trade because of my stubbornness . Now after seeing Mark Croock’s last video lesson http://profit.ly/content/premium/14762, I am even more worried then ever that this stock will turn on me. 

I find it very interesting of how difficult it is to give yourself an hour- hour/half (at most) to review the stock market and set your trades up for the next day. Its something about “just winging” it that’s SOOOOO alluring even when you know the odds are against you. Tim talks about it all the time. Driving a car with no respect for the traffic lights and signs and hoping nothing bad is going to happen. Well 15 times out of ten something bad will happened and has happened to me. Here is a compare and contrast of what good trading and bad trading did for me.

GOOD TRADING

• Percent gainer watchlist (thelion.com finviz.com)
• Review of twitter to see what thoughts were from gurus and other respected traders- (@markcroock, @johnwelsh, @airplanejane, @investorslive.)
• NO ENTRIES prior to 9:50 am- (gave the market time to find a position of up or down and allowed my thesis to process true or false)
• Starter Entries- (500 shares) 
• Pre Alerts set for stop losses and gains-  without much thought behind it I was able to condition myself to act upon the alerts and take profits when they triggered or cut losses to set up for the next trade.
• RINSE & REPEAT- each win gave me the confidence to study harder each night and review my DVDS for more insight. No headaches no worries because I knew what to expect.

BAD TRADING

• No Studying- Whether it was a long day of work elsewhere or me just not wanting to. Even worse I would try to squeeze it in early in the morning 15 minutes prior to open and trick myself into thinking I did the due diligence required. 
• Poor Entries- I would review the market prior to open and get antsy with FOMO (fear of missing the trade). With the stocks not being on my watchlist! ($EXAS ugghhhh)
• Sizing- did not stick to my guns and continue to use 500 shares. I was so amazed what 500 shares did for me because it forced me to find bigger moves within stocks to get the profits I desired. Once I started sizing up I began to lose focus on the meat of the move. Im not ready for that next level yet.
• No Alerts- Probably the worse part. Would try to just continually check my phone every minute or so without any awareness for where the stock currently was. Might as well have lit my money on fire.
• Confidence- Started to second guess myself, revenge trade and over-trade. HEADACHES, HEADACHES, HEADACHES

The silver lining in all is that I know what the mistakes were and all can be corrected. As I continue this journey another solid idea that has helped me is quantifying each trade. 

Example: -$456 loss is money I could have used to pay down my credit card. $1k profits for the week paid for my kid’s daycare for the month. Now obviously this can get overwhelming if you try to think this way every second but the point is to not think that each trade is not real money that you are either winning or losing. The tide has definitely turned for the better and I will continually get better. Gonna get back to the basics and continually put in the work. I hope you do to. Study hard and lets make some money. Have a great Father’s Day and rest of your weekend.