As 2022 came around and my first call with Joel for the year was on the 13th, I told myself I had to pick up the slack and this new year was a reset for me to hone in on my own discipline. After a rough end to 2021 and a bumpy start the first week and a half in January, I implemented a new strategy at the advisement of Joel. He said I likely wouldn't follow it (considering we have been speaking for about 10 months now and he knows my weaknesses) but let's see. The idea was to continue with only trading 3 patterns but also to not make any additional trades after I have a loss greater than 1% on the day. I started this on 1/13 and I have absolutely crushed my goals of reaching a 60% win percentage. Below shows a 50% winning percentage but thats because of trades made prior to the 13th before I started this new strategy. I have gone 9-0 (not counting one loss I had that was under 1% which isn't a loss as part of our tracking methods) from the 13th to the 31st. I've been trying to trade less for several months now and while each month my trade count was getting smaller, I was still struggling with the winning percentage. Knowing I can't trade after taking a loss, I was far more selective in my trades and it clearly shows an improvement. I'm so proud of this achievement and I'm looking forward to continuing this strategy. On a side note, I cut my position sizes in half from what I usually trade because the market has been on the downside as we all know. 32 months into my journey, and 2022 could be my year but I won't get ahead of myself. After my call today with Joel, it's time to start sizing up. My January trades have been around $500-$600 position sizes and thats because of the market downtrend as well as my need to focus on process and dollars. Let's see what February holds for me.

Totally forgot to update my December recap here with all the New Year celebrations and such so better late than never. December was tough as the market started to shift. I along with the rest of the challenge group and guru's were hoping for December to really heat up but not this time. I'm still green on the month but just barely. Win % is still down, not looking good. I started to size down somewhere in December since things weren't heating up and my trades just wasn't panning out. I also cancelled my breakouts and breakdowns chatroom on STT this month to eliminate a lot of the extra noise. I find it too much of a distraction seeing what all the guru's trade so decided to just close it out and re-center myself as we approach 2022. Overall, I made $11k in profits but I also paid about $11k in commissions but I don't mind that. Commissions are fixed, and my profits are scalable. I look at my $11k profit and % return of 67.72% on the year as a win. My stats are all below, as transparent as can be. Its been a long journey and the marathon continues. My call with my advisor Joel on the 15th gave me instructions to only trade 3 patterns and see where we get from there. On our next call on the 30th, things were perking up as you can see in the stats and I was to continue with the same strategy, and collect more data. I'm a little disappointed with how I ended the last few months to be honest but on the macro level, looking at the overall year, I have a 67% return so thats my silver lining.

November started off really well the first 2 weeks and then I struggled that 3rd week quite a bit. I'm still being selective with my trades, with a total of only 70 compared to 68 last month. My winning % dropped down to only 40% which isn't good so I'll need to focus on that aspect. That is one of the most important if not the most important stat to focus on. I'm barely just keeping my 2 to 1 gain/loss ratio which is decent, but it could be better. 2 to 1 is the minimum but I don't think I"ll be able to get much better with it until I master my bread and butter patterns and learn to let my winners run. I'm green on the month and I'm trending int he right direction, just need to tighten up some of these loose ends that I repeatedly struggle with.

October was much better than September. I'm back in the green and hit a 50% winning percent. My goal is to hit 60% while maintaining a minimum of 2:1 gain/loss ratio. My revenge trading has been reduced from approximately 20 per month down to under 5. Revenge trades do not work, they simply don't and the stats show that. I need to stay disciplined in this aspect. I also traded way less, just 65 trades for the month compared to 94, 83, and 86 in the prior months. Cutting back on my trades was also one of my goals. What I see is that I traded less overall by being more selective, lowered my revenge trades significantly, and this clearly shows better results in my stats.

This month was really tough as it has turned out to be the worst month of the year thus far. My winning % is down big time to only 34%. I sized down towards the end of the month but probably should have done so sooner. My advisor tells me I have a discipline issue and that I think I'm more disciplined than I really am. I'm posting this kind of late in December so I can't recall all of the lessons from September I've learned so I'll just leave it here. Tough month for many trades.

I continued working with Joel through bi-weekly calls this month. I did a better job with managing my discipline but still let my emotions get the better of me a few times. I lowered my revenge trades from 22 in June to only 10 in July. My average % loss for the month is the lowest ever at only 1.78% with my average % gain is at 5.68%. I'm maintaining pretty much a 3 to 1 on my win/loss ratio and increased my overall win/loss ratio to 46.51% after averaging in the mid 30%'s range the last few months of 2021. I'm trending in the right direction by working with Joel but it can be better if I can still breaking discipline. I'm looking forward to continue the trend in increasing my overall win/loss ratio and bringing my revenge trades down to zero. I also traded a few listed stocks which I shouldn't have done since its not part of my strategies so I need to stop adding those variables into my stats. The biggest change in July trading was that I eliminated most of my smaller trades. I've only been taking position sizes of $1000. I still had a few trades under $1000 position size and Joel wasn't happy about it because I didn't follow instructions but I'll do better next month in completely eliminating them. Very happy with my improvements overall since starting the bi-weekly calls.

June 2021 - I started bi weekly calls with Joel from profit.ly from 5/20. After several weeks of data researching, we've determined that I'm overtrading and obtaining too many paper cuts on my smaller trades versus my larger trades. I need to increase my win/loss percentage moving forward while maintaining by average gain/loss ratios. I'll be making adjustments in July accordingly given our new findings and looking forward to really increase my win/loss percentage to above 50 and perhaps even 60 percent which is the ultimate goal. June has been another scratch month for me, just losing out to commissions but not losing in terms of gains/losses via trades.

May 2021 - Another green month, but just barely. Still continuing to struggle but according to all the mentors in the Tim Challenge, this is the 'normal' market cycle. 2020 was my first full trading year so I really had nothing to compare it to but 2020 was outside the norm. I'm grateful to be able to now experience a more realistic and practical market and not lose like many traders are. I started speaking with Joel from Tim Challenge with weekly calls as of May 20 to help me because I feel like I have plateaued and need some guidance on getting up on my next leg. He has been helpful with some very informative tasks and information. I'm eager to see what June will bring, but the last week of my May after speaking with Joel was superb in terms of my win/loss trading percentage as well as my revenge trading stats. I'd like to see my positive trend continue into June along with my weekly calls with Joel.

April 2021 - I reduced the number of trades by about 40% which is a drastic change. This is a must because the market shifted and I was slow to react. The important thing is that I caught myself, I cut losses quickly so there was minimal pain, and now I've adjusted. Back to a green month here, but still was quite a struggle. Market is tough right now for me, not a lot of plays. I still need to be more selective I think. Even though I'm not losing in terms of trading gains, my positions are small and I'm getting chipped away with commissions. I need to trade even less to bring up my win percentage and be more selective.

March 2021 - The market completely shifted this month - not just for me, but for a lot of traders. I think this is the first time I've experienced such a sudden shift in the markets and I didn't recognize it so I didn't slow down. I actually had more trades in March then I did in February, even though the market was slower in March. Big mistake but I recognized it by the end of the month and told myself I would need to slow it down big time and adjust to the changing market if I want to be successful. For what it's worth, this is my first losing month since February of 2020, and even with the major market shift, only lost about $200.