Week in Review

Well this was technically Week 2 (Yeeha!) of my participation in Tim's Challenge.  I have been high on the excitement of the Chat room. It's great being part of the community. I'm dreaming of charts.

In Week 1 I had a solid trade: I bought $INVO after seeing PM activity on the back of solid news. I bought 500 shares @ $5.499 and sold in 100-200 lot batches on the way up with an average exit of $10.49. Netted ~$2500 gains. Almost nailed the top. INVO then faded for days, so I played that right. This is easy! (foreshadowing!)

I got more aggressive this week hoping to repeat the success. I overtraded. Lost track of my positions, looked away and had suffered heavy losses. $HUGE had some good aftermarket activity and I could have sold at a profit, but it faded fast.

I had a solid loss on Wednesday, but Thursday I took it to a whole different league of lousy. Chasing NFT plays like a rapid dog. Gave back $3500 to the market and realized I really need to slow down. I lost money almost any time I followed Tim's trades.  I had to deal with a family issue for 30 minutes and when I came back I was down $1450 on YVR. I bought $TKAT minutes before it went on news halt and panic sold. Waited around trying to close the rest of my positions as they started to fade. If you think Tim's fees are expensive try trading badly on a medium sized account.

I went to work on Friday and just gave some thought to what I would do when the market opened (I am overseas, so market open is 9:30pm). Sit it out? Try to play more conservative? I was far more disciplined this time. Making smaller moves. Taking my initial quantity and cutting it in half; smaller positions. I added only when I verified an uptrend, and only then on dips. I realized I let small mistakes on Thursday turn into big ones, exactly as Tim warned against. This time I defined my risk more clearly: Small positions I would be willing to risk up to $100, larger positions, up to $200. This resulted in cuts smaller losses on the plays that didn't work. In general I tried to find reasons to not make the play. If I couldn't see an immediate reason I played it. I closed out the week on a more reasonable note, with a determination to study, to watch more DVDs, and to acknowledge I need to be careful and calm.

My Friday trades (Being the only day I traded carefully):

$WKEY Cut at $68.56 Loss, under my $100 risk (but I still didn't cut early enough)

$PRPM Cut at $185.9 Loss, close to my $200 risk.

$AURI Sold at $691 Gain (Small gains compared to others who played it)

$HOFV Sold at $502.47 Gain. This is going in my Monday watch list for sure.

$CLVS Sold at $111.97 Gain (could have sold at my goal of $200 but got greedy)

 

In summary, My losses for the week are investment in my education as long as I learn from them. This is only week 2, and I'm almost through the first Pennystocking DVD. Once I have more knowledge and experience under belt I'll size up, but for now, my target is $200-$300 gains per trade and if I don't see how I can get there I'll pass on the trade.

I have a big enough starter account that I can easily recover from the materialized losses, but I can see why most traders lose.

Trade Summary:

Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri
↓ ($114)	↓ ($346)	↓ ($430)	↓ ($3582)	↑ $1051