A while back I was introduced to Tim Sykes and since then I have been embarking on a life changing journey. For the last 35 years I've been a touring musician, which has been amazing, but I'd like to slow down a bit because TSA lines are about as fun as getting kicked in the dick repeatedly and Motel 6 should not be a place to live. Also, the musician gig is a gig without a retirement plan, the best you can hope for is to drop dead on stage and leave your debt to your kids. There's got to be a way to bring in some extra money.

I heard Tim Sykes on a podcast and it sounded like he had what I was looking for. I had dabbled in stocks in commodities 20 years ago and did pretty good, so what he was saying clicked with me big time. I started watching as many Youtube videos as I could and eventually got HtMM and joined TimAlerts. Naysayers said I would lose all my money, I said I had rules that would prevent even a dipshit like me from losing money, I just had to stick to the plan.

My Etrade account took a while to setup because I was funding it from another brokerage account and there was extra paperwork to file and I had to get 2 brokerages to play nice together. It was torture waiting for the account to fund because I wanted to apply what I'd been learning. I wanted to really TRADE! I'd been paper trading for a few weeks and doing pretty well, however I figured it would be different when the big boy trading started up because getting an order filled is probably not as easy as typing a price on a spreadsheet.

When my Etrade account was finally funded I was a 5 year old on Christmas morning, I HAD to play with my new toy NOW!I started looking through the 40 some stocks I had put on watchlists and they all kind of blurred together. Why did I like that one? Was that a short or long? Did this one have news?or earnings? or a good chart or..... shit! The market opens in 45 minutes, gotta find something!! (you probably already see my first mistake in that I'm WAY over eager, trading just to trade, and not waiting for a great play) A Tim Alert pops up, he's buying INUV. What's INUV? OK. OK. Look up INUV on Yahoo Finance, it's an advertising company...I don't know what that fuck that means or if it's relevant. I swear to God yesterday all these numbers made sense but now I'm like, P/E ratio? PE, PE, PE, suddenly I'm back in high school gym class. Dammit! I'm flipping out a little bit. Focus! Focus! Focus! The market's about to open!

OK, Tim's buying INUV, surely he's done his homework, OK fuck it, I'm buying INUV when the market opens. (Mistake #2, don't blindly follow anyone's alerts) I typed in the order, the market opened, and I went to click the 'buy' button....... and I totally froze. Was this the right thing to do? I don't know anything about this buy, this goes against everything I've learned, but the devil on my shoulder was saying "Do it. Click that shit. You know you want to." BAM! I did it. 100 shares of INUV at $3.51. In the order status window my trade popped up with all the details and it said "LIVE" Uhhhh OK, "LIVE" what the hell does that mean ? Does that mean my trade has been filled and now it's a "LIVE" trade? Or is it a "LIVE" order waiting to be filled? It was my first time, I'd never seen this part. I wait. nothing happens. The price moves a little bit and a window pops up telling me my order is filled. The trade window now says "COMP" Ohhhhhhhh Ok, now I get it.

So I'm in, time to watch and count my money. The bid immediately drops to $3.47. No big deal. 4 cents a share. Whatever. It bounces around that price for a minute then drops a bit more. Fuck. What do I do? Hours worth of jargon floods my head,morning spike, double top, cup and handle, fake out break out, Jesus rollerblading Christ what does all that stuff mean and does it even apply here? I'm desperately scanning my knowledge base trying to make sense of what's happening before my eyes and give it a name and try to figure out what it might do next.

A Tim Alerts window pops up, Tim said screw it to INUV, he's out. Sooooo should I get out?He always says he's super conservative and misses a lot of stuff, maybe it'll bounce back. It's only been 15 minutes, c'mon give it a chance. I wait. It goes down a little more. Shit. The angel on my other shoulder is politely nudging me "Get out"

The price goes a little green. Whew! See? OK just had to wait. I'm feeling good for a minute then BIG RED CANDLE! The angel on my shoulder is now a marching band blasting a song in my ear called "Get Out You Moron!" I say "Piss off! It can come back!", "No it won't you fool, get out!", "Just another minute!"

It continued down. I finally got out at 3.11 for a loss of $60.39. Mistake #3, failed to cut losses quickly, it's lesson 1A fer fucks sake. Whoop de do! Hey world, meet Earths newest loser trader! Fuck me.

I can't honestly explain why everything I learned went straight out the fuckin' window the minute I was able to hit 'buy' button for real, but it did. I did everything wrong, and I KNEW it, but I was so eager I did it anyway.

Learn from my dumbassedness, all that shit I did, don't do that.