Lol, I was so ready to get my feet wet yesterday. I've lost 17 times and won twice for the past couple of weeks. Granted, I have been using smaller size and battled commissions in different strategies, but kind of getting numb to the punches in the gut and accepting losses as a part of it. Have only lost $172.14 and had $172.83 of those in commissions, but this week I lost $155.09 w/ $98.67 as commissions.

I’ve really been trying to get a feel for how to manage risk in different areas and have diversified my ideas to and fro to get a flow, but it was not a go the way I intended to show. There were certainly some shiny setups that turned out to be sharp and worth staying from, and a little bit of attained insight vs. cost. Nonetheless, putting money on the line gives you insight to what opportunities lie ahead for clicking with the nuance of attaining that edge if you’ve put in the work to learn how to systematically think and have your trading experience close in on the learning curve. It’s a hunt in different directions where some group of factors &/ indicators may prove to be more significant than others and becoming a participant of letting it continue to work until it doesn’t, and eventually knowing how to trade them the next time it comes to you.

Last month I had a great opportunity with panics. (Unfortunately, it’s been pretty dry this month compared to last month.) It took me around 4 months to get the edge, but I ended up with more than what I put in, so it made it well worth it. Not that the money matters until it compounds into financial freedom, but the taste of consistency that can get you there is all I feel I need to recall to have hope of lasting until I find another edge.

I don’t know what to say because I’m not there yet, but not many consistently profitable traders can recall a certain moment it all clicked. I think a lot of it has become implicit and gets a little hazy in the unconscious realm. I don’t know what I can do to communicate my present awareness of an opportunity, to later recall it and intersect it with both my past experience and foresight (with the history of the chart and charts, current market trend w/ signals of direction, resistance and support, time of the day, recent pattern trends, and other factors).

There’s some code that can signal the correct sequence of entering and exiting positions with good risk management, and hopefully, thankfully, have a rewarding outcome every once and a while that makes you enjoy the journey a little more because you can last a little longer and luckily thrive one day. You gotta have a love for game and go for the throat of the king, but also react to the consequences.

I don’t know. Anyways, I initially started with $2,000 and just deposited $2,200 from E-Trade to an Interactive Brokers account, which also helps reduce my size and limit my buying power until I find something consistent. But I mostly opened an IB account because I want to start shorting. I honestly feel like I’ve been wanting to do this for months now, but always think of what Tim Sykes says about newbies and shorting. He says you want to learn how to long first, and though I can’t long what is working, I can kind of get a feel for when there’s too little or too much work at a price level that may show it’s exhausted, extended, or heavy.

I am already a coward and will be under PDT, so this is going to be interesting. I’ll have to learn the basics of shorting and the basics of browsing the IB account first, then I’ll look into sizing as I find comfort through consistency of shorting consolidations and fails. I have some other ideas, but we’ll see.