So May was a pretty decent month for me in the sense of being a profitable trader but going back and looking at my goals, I really need some work. Profitability came from one trade that I bag held so I do not count May as a win at all. Let’s start with I took way too many trades on the month. I think that really is the lesson I need to focus on. I am hunting for trades and losing on not great setups. Morning spikes had been working late April and early may but as of recently the morning spike is more of a spike that consolidates for a bit before breaking out again to new highs. Unfortunately I was forcing a pattern that was working for a short period of time on pretty much every single stock that I have traded in the morning. That being said, the morning spike has shown me how to trade the HOD breakout in the morning portion of the session. One thing I stayed away from for the most part was midday trading and I think that saved me on some big losses by not trading illiquid crap.

That being said, I am happy (for the most part..) with cutting losses. There were really only two trades that I got stubborn and took some sizable losses on compared to my position size – so cutting losses quickly was something I do feel I did well this month. One thing I noticed on afternoon plays this month was the strongest movers held their highs until about 3:45pm before really getting their volume… This is when the biggest and most lucrative moves came. I also noticed the FGD play is starting to show up a bit more. So this month I will set a couple goals that I know I can achieve. First goal is to take 10%+ less trades than I did in May. This is going to be something I need to really stay the course because my biggest losses happen right after a stupid trade. I need to realize there really is only one, maybe two plays in the morning and one maybe 2 in the afternoon. So if I make a trade and I am wrong, the chances of there being another is extremely low. Same thing with making a trade and being right, chances of there being another trade is extremely low. And still the same probability if I make a mediocre trade… Likely not another in that portion of the session. So I really need to focus on taking less trades. My losses would have been less and my gains would not have been wiped clean on certain days. So big goal is less trades. My second goal I am setting for myself is to really do better with my risk to reward setups. I haven’t been taking the best risk reward setups recently so this is something I really want to continue to focus on. There were a handful of setups I saw that I didn’t react fast enough that were good trade setups but because I chased they turned into losses or tiny wins; making the process so much more stressful.

All in all, another month down in my journey and +$674.14 on the month with 53% win rate on 49 trades. +$1,237.49 on the year so far – Nothing big but making some headway with this.