So some time has passed since my last journal. This wont be as concise as I'd like it to be, but I'll try.

In an even more sincere effort to advance my life and trading, I asked for the night shift. I was afraid to take it because the last guy we had ended up leaving the company because he couldn't get enough hours to pay his bills. As things in my life often do, the universe made it clear to me that it was the thing to do. My former dispatcher whom I have a wonderful working relationship with (who had also left the company) came back and has really been helping me to get the hours I need to survive. He's been burned in the OTC markets and warned me not to trade them, and then I spent the next 45 minutes opening his eyes as to why he lost his ass and owns stock he can't sell anymore. He was totally on board to help me.

Shortly after taking night shift, I got a call from my wife, which is unusual. She told me she got let go. I actually felt relief and further confidence that this was all alright and how it should be. I've been wanting her to not have to work for awhile, but didn't want to straight up ask her to just not work or tell her she couldn't. I found it rather great that my hearts desire manifested without me having to do a thing about it. She was pretty down about it at first, but then I said "Why don't you just take this time to learn to trade?". It's the perfect opportunity. All the training is there, all the time and all the money as well. She told me she thought about that but didn't want to encroach on my passion, and I said "I don't give a shit if you're the one to become successful trading, I have no ego that needs to be this great sole trader."

So now, we both study our butts off and are present at the market open each morning, watching and learning, after having made a watchlist each night before. I have volunteered to also work weekends when I can to offset as much as possible the loss of a second income. We are willing to make sacrifices because we see the big picture. As far as I see it, two heads are better than one.

Anyways, that's the brief update on life events to some degree, now here are my thoughts about trading based on my limited experience the last few months.

I'm happy to report that even with $13,000 in trading accounts, I am no more tempted to trade than when I was only paper trading. Keyword, tempted. When I was paper trading, I was still not tempted to trade, but took trades simply to follow the rules when they showed up according to the teachings. I have been quite successful paper trading, but that success never influenced my thoughts about real money trading. 

First let me say this: I was paper trading on a tradingview account and was shorting things that in real life there were no shares available to borrow. I was also getting executed at any time I pressed the button, market closed or open. 

In my first few months of live trading I've discovered some things with Interactive brokers and E-trade. First of all, even if you're debt free (Minus my house) and in a great financial position like me, you basically gotta lie and say your net worth is a certain level to even gain access to certain types of trading. So, I lied. No one has said a damn thing or even hinted at looking into it, so I'm rolling with it. You also want to make sure all your trading permissions are handled and signed off before you go to trade. I missed out on a trade because I went to buy premarket and I was told I wasn't allowed. 

Secondly, finding shares of these stocks to short has been routinely difficult, but here are my thoughts on that: When everyone want's to short something the shares obviously dry up, so seemingly the best opportunities are the worst times to access the stock. However, another thing to consider is that if everyone is short and they get squeezed, then the shares become available again at what could be an even better or optimal time to short the stock. I believe this is probably how I was able to get my shares on $DAC as it spiked up into the low $3s.  

I haven't even bothered shorting with E-trade because they don't have a borrow/availability list and I don't feel like paying literally 500% higher commission than I currently am with my small trades at IB. I think I am going to go with Roland Wolf's strategy and open more IB accounts, one with my wife and one joint account. No, it won't take 30k to do it, just move some money around as necessary. Speaking of 30k, the secret broker no longer has that "Low" of a minimum, it's now 50k... so yeah. It's all good because in the end it doesn't matter too much what the minimum is because if you can be consistently profitable you can compound your account in enough time. It is all about consistency.

So aside from the borrowing shares thing, the other thing I am struggling with is simply paying attention to all the stocks on our watchlist at the same time. You have to watch the price action of each of them with serious focus and judge which one is telling you by its behavior which is the best opportunity.

While I am extremely grateful not to struggle at all with over trading, or the desperation for opportunity, I do see myself pass up dip buys that quickly confirm my instincts to trade them. It is something I need to work on. Also, I need to get better at not being distracted with my order entry. I've missed a great short on $JMEI by literally 2 seconds and did not want to chase. I was later happy to find out that Roland had gotten short just moments before I was going to. I also missed a dip buy on $MGTI when it tanked recently. I had my price in a few cents from the bottom and got distracted by one of my kids home from work that day. It left without me and I did not want to chase it. I later called the top based on the level II. That is my responsibility and I failed to execute. I need to do better. 

My initial thoughts about all of this remain: The market is just a big oscillator. The bigger you risk, the more right you have to be. My shorts have been very small and not anxiety inducing at all. I wanted to see if it could actually be done. I have 20 trades under my belt as of now in the last few months. I will upload them when I have the energy. I have learned some very important things and I feel so much better since I am able to be at the open each morning. ALL of my shorts have been in profit to some degree.

The last thing I really have the energy for right now is to talk about how I intend to handle shorting pumps. I managed to short $LBUY from $2.60 and covered at $2.42, which was nice, but shares were hard to find. Here is my strategy to test going forward for pretty much pumps only. As pumps are basically going to fail, I will look to acquire shares at any time possible. If I get filled I will immediately go long in another account to hedge (or box as Tim says). As the price rises and I am losing in my short, I am gaining in my long. This is not some pie in the sky, "fool-proof plan to always win". Not at all. It is a synthetic way to essentially have shares to short for the opportunity you would normally have like anyone else that has them at the price they want them. When I am hedged I will set an alert of either a specific price or a % drop, at which point I will look to exit my long, essentially positioning me net short at whatever price I exit my long. 

Will I get filled at a decent price? Remains to be seen. Will be testing very small. I realize scalability will likely effect execution as shares increase, but that's down the line if this even works at all. I am reluctant to even share my thoughts on this idea, but, what the hell. No one's going to read this and if they do and it helps them, good. 

Time for dinner and to rest my mind. I hope to share more in the future.