Things had been going so well! My first month of trading was coming to an end. I had approximately 2 trades left for the week and I was up 30% on my account overall. Bar my first week being red everything was perfect. 

$NVUS and $CRDF worked well week 2 and in week 3 $NAOV and $SUNW came up with the goods. Then $OXBR started the fourth week really well. Got to Wednesday morning and things all changed. The big issue being I decided to get into $ITRM that was up on news and had volume. The previous week I had played a halted stock at the open 9:36am and was very lucky to get away with a red position that turned green.

In my mind I thought okay lets avoid the first 15 minutes and look for the stock to prove that it is moving in the right direction. It got halted and kept gapping up and after the third halt I decided to get in. It halted immediately and when it opened it dropped 20% and halted again. Over the next 15 minutes it bounced around in between halts and then began to come back slowly. It went over VWAP and was continuing on at a steady pace. For some reason it gets halted again and at that point I guess everyone was done because when it opened it complete crashed. I was down 25% or more. 

At this point I was being an asshole. I had "reasoned" with myself that it was close to the low of the day and that I may as well let it get down to there before exiting. It broke through and I exited.... I had lost $1077 which was not only 30% of my position but 30% of my overall portfolio. That shit hurt especially as it wiped out my entire gains from the month. I was truly devastated tbh.

The next 48 hours were pretty tough if i am honest from a psychological point of view. I wake up quite frequently during the night especially after 3am i'll wake up almost every 30 minutes and every time i did my first thought was the loss. During the day i was thinking about it constantly and only could block it out by playing videogames (Half Life 2 completed for the 5th or 6th time).

On Friday morning (my next potential trading day with my settled funds) I woke up to listen to @tbohen on Youtube and heard the news of Donald Trump having Covid. Tim's first words that I hear were "Today might be a day when you don't trade" - that was enough for me. Mentally I wasn't really over my loss and with Tim's words ringing in my ears I decided that Monday would be a better day for me.

The weekend saw continued analysis of the trade. My conclusion was that it was a speculative move but the factors met the move BAR the killing factor which was the Suspension/Halt - I believe that I was unlucky with the trade but the biggest problem with the trade was not the stock nor was it the halt it was the plan behind it.

My goal with any stock currently is to take my small gain of 5% and move on. When getting into a stock that is spiking and halting you need to be looking for a lot more because if all I am ever looking to take is 5% then I can get that on multiple occasions on multiple charts in the morning and in the 2pm time frame so rushing to get 5% on a SUPER risky trade which saw a downfall of 30%+ makes no sense because I am always intending to leave at 5%. For example on SUNW I took a $180 gain - if I had stayed in it 30 minutes more that day I would have had $7000 potentially (realistically I'd never on my best day wait for a 100%+ move on a stock, I'd be out long before that). 

Lesson learned - i'm taking my singles and building my portfolio slowly. Im avoiding halted stocks and trading the first 15 minutes. I'll wait for my VWAP holds and low RSI plays from now on. Sorry about the long post just needed to get this written down - maybe it might help a trader or two avoid my silly mistake