Being in high school, I haven't had the money to start trading on my own (it's extremely hard to get a job at where I live, I've tried). Thankfully my dad has given me $5000 to trade with for 2016! I see many others on profit.ly starting off with only one or two thousand and doing okay for themselves. I've been paper trading for the past couple of months (mostly from school), but in the last couple of weeks I've had some time to trade at home and I've had the chance to use the chat room as well. Admittedly I've restarted my account a couple of times. The only reason for this is making a stupid mistake at the market open and putting in an order right at 9:30 when I think that a stock will do well (it's stupid I know). I've only done this three times and every time my impatience has cost me. Firstly, I can't change my mind and cancel my order since in thinkorswim's paper trading accounts, it won't let you cancel until 9:33 and your order will go through regardless. Thankfully I've learned my mistakes and never did such a thing again. I've learned to wait a few minutes and see the price action before going in. I've even thought in my head that I should buy/short right at the market open without going through with the order and most times the stock did not go the way I would've liked. Learning something new every time!

This Christmas break has given me a chance to clear up my mind and focus on trading. Trading on my computer is way better since I can monitor multiple stocks on the same screen as well. Since I created my latest paper trading account (3 weeks ago), I've been taking smaller positions in anticipation of an actual trading account. So far I'm up 11K on my 100K account (very little trading on the first week). Most of my positions have been less than 10K. Can't wait to see what's in store for me in 2016. Good luck to everyone and Happy New Year!!

P.S. I'm going to hate the PDT rule. How has it been going for you guys with less than the minimum PDT amount?