This is more for my personal benefit, and I don't expect anyone to read this, but if you do I hope it provides insight and some sort of perspective. I am a beginning trader who is very serious about systematic learning, and I am hoping to chronicle my moves and evolution in order to create a journal of applicable lessons and reference points for my future.

Currently my account is a small one, and thus I am held within certain rules. Many people see rules as a deferment or a hindrance, I personally don't see the use for a negative perspective so I figure I could at the very least approach those rules in a positive light and figure how to use them to my advantage, either financially or educationally - I consider education a personal investment in my own financial future, so, while hard to quantify, the financial implications for a serious approach to education are in my estimate astronomical.

Due to these rules, I am forcing myself to focus on positons that I think are strong going into the end of the day/extended hours/overnight, in order to avoid spending my day-trades promiscuously. I want these trades to be in reserve should I see a home run building.

While I foresee myself moving towards full time trading in the future, currently I am also employed and thus need to balance my positional situations with my work schedule; this is a lesson learned today specifically in a trade I will outline below.

These restrictions are actually a positive thing. It forces me to be deliberate in the positions I choose to take as specific day trades, and is allowing me to ease education into my daily life while moving towards self-sufficiency when I choose to make the move towards finally being self-employed.

I took one overnight position in $HIMX last night, anyone familiar with knows they had an earnings release today, which was also expected to be underwhelming. I believed the momentum and volume of the stock heading into overnight would overshadow; this did occur but in an odd way; initially this morning the stock dropped significantly, but was immediately supported and the volume seemed to support an upward trend, which continued until approximately 9:15 AM, when I sold as it seemed to have lost momentum. I entered last night at 6.30$, and was able to exit at $6.85, over 265 shares, for a decent profit of 127.20$. I was happy with this result.

The other position I took today was a decided day trade, when the momentum of $SCON and the news of a patent win led the stock to break out. Firstly, I did end up profiting from the trade; this is somewhat inconsequential though, because I handled the trade terribly. Firstly, I entered the trade at 9:15 or so, knowing that I had to leave to go to work at 9:30, which was a piss-poor decision; I attempted to rush a trade and make the market bend to my will; I had set a target entry for myself at 1.53$, which seemed like the reasonable support area for the morning, and due to my personal time restraints entered significantly higher than I wanted to (meaning I SHOULDNT have entered) at $1.60. Secondly, I should have sold when it spiked around 9:30, but due to being unfamiliar with software missed two opportunities and saw the stock fall precipitously once again below my entry point.

I had set a profit/loss scenario in my mind of %20/%10, and broke that rule as well. I watched the stock fall to 13% below my entry and did not sell, partly due to personal hesitation and partly due to being busy at work. Again, I should NOT have put myself in this position.

I was lucky in that the stock spiked back in the PM and was able to sell at $1.67. The positives that I have gained from the experience are the perspective of personal restraints on entry timing, meaning if I can't stay for the game don't step in the box; I learned that I must become much more familiar with the software I use, as it is the first high-stress and high-speed interaction that I needed to succeed at and failed at. I also need to continue to hold myself to a hard stop, and in entering this boneheaded scenario I wasted a day-trade for the next five days - put myself in the penalty box, so to speak.

So at least, on a positive ROI day I also learning things much more valuable than ~$160. Hopefully I can continue to apply these lessons to create exponential gains in the future.