Well, by this time tomorrow after importing my most recent trades, I will be pretty close to a $1,000 total loss. There have been many ups and downs, and some great lessons. I'll outline a couple things I have learned and things that I will want to improve upon until the remainder of this year. Not willing to give up just yet, my aha moment is right around the corner.

Lessons Learned

1. Learning to let runners run without pulling the trigger, this was something that I struggled with because I felt that was the only opportunity, and there weren't going to be any more. That is not the case, there are new opportunities to capitalize on everyday. Learning to just sit back and watch is a good trait to have to avoid major losses and learn what to look for.

2. Sticking to a pattern or two. When starting I fell into the typical random hit or miss trades and did not have a concrete plan to stick by. What I thought was a pattern to test really wasn't, for it to qualify as a pattern it needs to have criteria to meet.

3. Never follow alerts or listen to what people are saying in the chat room. At the end of the day we are all different individuals with different risks, take them only as opinions and trade the charts your own way.

Things I will work to improve on

1. I need to start pulling the trigger more often when I see that the pattern is similar to what I am looking for. These patterns in charts will not always be the exact same, they will for the most part deviate slightly by either developing slower or quicker.

2. Buying in closer to support instead of resistance is what I have felt has caused me more headaches than anything. The idea that if you buy at support, there is a higher chance for it to fall off a cliff is wrong. Situating one's own position in anticipation of a run to a resistance level is ideal, most of the times the second drop down will almost never hit that first support level.

3. Study, Study, Study. I need to start analyzing these charts a lot better. These losses could be avoided by understanding resistance and support levels from days and months past. Understanding news and most recent SEC filings will also help as well.

This journey is far from over, quitting seems like the easiest route to take, but that is why not everyone succeeds. I'll take this one step at a time and for people that are reading this, I hope it helped in some way.