Historically I've been a buy and hold INVESTOR - which is perfectly fine. I've had a couple decent years of buying and holding for 30/60/90 days on large cap companies. Household names like $VZ, $GS, $AAPL, $CMG were all at some point part of my portfolio. Recently I came to realization that making 10-15% in 3 months is great but at the end of the day I felt like I could do much better TRADING penny stocks. So I starting doing some research and found Tim Sykes and Profit.ly. At first I was skeptical like most. I started with baby steps, just following, doing research and paper trading. Learning the lingo in day trading is MUCH different than what I had historically looked at for investing. I sat in the chat room just watching and learning for a couple of weeks before I made my first trade. The chat rooms have been extremely insightful - just to hear what others are looking at and thinking has truly been eye opening. 

After a couple of trials in March, April was my first full month at this. My first trade I made 6.2% in 15 minutes with $DWRI on 4/6. I had some nice plays and some real tough mistakes that I need to learn from. Starting out I'm only trading in sizes of $1,500 to $3,000 to test the waters and my strategy. So far I have that my biggest challenge is myself! I need to get more disciplined and learn to cut losses quicker.

High Point: 4/22 $EBIO 15.4%

Low Point: 4/29 $PRGN -11.1%

Total April Gain = $341

So why am I writing this, $341 is nothing for the pros on profit.ly. The truth is I like the mentality of what Tim and the other gurus on Profit.ly preach - Homework, Execution, Discipline, Reflection. When I look back on my mistakes for the month they are all correctable and I hope to look back on the $341 and laugh soon, but for now consider this my rehab.

Here's what I've learned so far - I consider this to be more valuable than the $341.

My rules to stick by going forward:

1) A gain is better than a loss - Green is green. So far I've had trades where I made $50 and where I've made almost $400. At the end of the day that's all that matters.

2) Cut losses quickly - I need to do a better job of knowing how much I am willing to risk in a trade before I enter the position. I caught myself a few times deep in the red and holding and praying it would come back. Dumb. I plan to use more stop orders in April to get out quicker.

3) You don't have to trade - I travel for work and I caught myself trading from my phone when I knew I didn't have much time to research or I made a dumb trade from my phone in a meeting. Lost a lot of money doing this in April and it's no ones fault but my own.

4) Dont force a trade - I chased a few trades late this month and it cost me. 

5) There will be more SUPERNOVAS - $PRGN was amazing. I was in at .52 VERY early on. If I would have just used a trailing stop I would have made about 450% or about $16k in one day. I ended up bailing way too early with a limit order to go to a meeting. The next day I tried chasing and got burned and lost my previous gain and then some.

In conclusion, I'm hooked and I'm here to stay. There's just too much opportunity here to go back to investing in blue chips. Special thanks to Tim Sykes, Tim Grittani, Michael Goode and the other gurus for taking the time to pass on the knowledge to others. I plan to pay it forward and bring others along on the ride.

 

Have a great week everyone!