May 21 is the day I began my journey with all things Tim Sykes.  I've watched his blogs/marketing for several years but couldn't wrap my head around these types of trading instruments.  I've been an Options trader since 1995 and a futures trader since early 2000.  I really never thought much about stocks due to the high amount of captial for a trade that might move one or two points.

My futures trading took a turn when I started with a mentor who's background was prop trading firms, UBS, and his own captial mgmt company.  I started to learn how to work with the DOM directly and volume profiles rather than candle sticks or Renko charts.  Totally different world but it got me to see inside the candle and where the bid/ask volume was coming from.  A lot of the world of Jesse Livermore as now I was looking at the raw market.  I was able to get in and out of trades with much better visibility and capture more of the move.  Waiting on EMA crossovers or fib retracements had me way to late to the move.  

Fast forward to 2020.  I find myself wanting to do more full time trading and less competing with my main business (I own a data security company and do govt. contracting).  It's extremely hard to focus on futures trading from 0930 to around 1230 every day and actually do the contracting work.  I mostly only traded 2-3 days a week when I didn't have morning meeting commitments.  I've worked on the current project fulltime from home since the beginning of last summer.  Prior to that It was an ugly 1.5 to 2hr commute each way. Iv'e done that for the last 3 years up until last summer.  Now the entire project is WFH due to COVID-19.  I started getting increasingly frustrated with the current state of the project and my wanting to finally break free and focus more on the trading.  I had one year in 2012 where I was full time trading due to layoffs at the time where I started to really excel but fell back into the work force for some reason or another and trading then took a back seat.  So here I am again at a crossroads. Time for the left turn this time rather than stay the course.  I've come to the conclusion that the lifestyle I seek will not happen by growing the current business.  I have plenty of opportunities calling on me and can easily start hiring.  But that will just increase what I call the "Time Suck".

So here I am beginning a new look into trading Pennystocks the Tim Sykes way.  I'm all open to understanding this particular instrument and it's querks and features.  
Since May 21, I've worked through the following material:

1. completed the 14 Orientation Videos

2. Completed PennyStocking DVD

3. On Disk 3 of Pennystocking Part Deux

4. Watched M. Goode's videos on watch list building and have been doing exercises for finding stocks based on that material in FinViz / OTCMarket and my TOS platform.

5. Picked up the kindle verison of "The Complete Pennystocking Course" because like Jamil, the author, I also have a masters in computer science and come from a very structured background.  And also, Like Jamil, my focus is security, specifically data security and encryption methodologies.  So I'm looking forward to putting a framework using Jamil's book around all the material Tim Sykes has produced over the years.

6. Watching past interviews with Tim Grittani (Starting from the Bottom, Grew 1500 to 4m, Speech at 2013 summit before Tim Crossed 1m.)

I've managed to restructure my work day at home to allow more study time each day  (approx 6 hours) and still maintain the proper presence with my current business project and get deliverables to the client on time.  At some point this project will go away, but until then, I'll pack as much time as ZI can into the Challenge and hopefully see profits come in soon.

So what about my other trading instruments (/ES and Selling options).  Time commitment right now and focus time which I don't have with standing 9:30am meetings and ad hoc phone conferences throughout the day.  So in order to keep structure in my life, i"m focused on the challenge material and keeping the invoicing flowing with my Gov. client.

What do I do for fun?  We'e avid boaters and keep our boat in Annapolis MD.  Now that the Govenor of MD has opened up recreational boating, we got ours back in the slip for the season over Memorial weekend.  This is our staycation if you will, over the summer each weekend.  It's a nice break from the workweek and gets us away from emails and phone calls.

OK. back to studying.

 

Cheers,

James