Today was my first day of posting my trades on Profit.ly, and boy do I wish I had a better story to tell. Mistakes were made. Money was lost. Nearly 4K, in fact. My biggest single day loss ever, including my biggest single trade loss ever. I want to focus on my four biggest trades and what I learned. 

It all starts with MARA and ARWR on 1/12. 

$MARA started strong on the 12th, and had some lukewarm news about a company they were acquiring and their intentions to purchase some cryptocurrency mining equipment. So I jumped in on upwards movement at about 4.73. BEWARE of stories involving crypto mining. I know $KODK has had some luck with it as of late, but as I learned today - crypto mining isn't really profitable unless the crypto being mined appreciates in value. So MARA did not spike, and proceeded to slow-bleed over the course of the day, costing me about 1.1k by the end of the day. Did I cut my losses? No. I decided to wait over the holiday weekend for a gap up. Did I get it? No. By the time I decided to sell (at 3.82) on Tuesday 1/16, I had lost 1800. My biggest single trade loss ever.

But did I hold just ONE bad stock over the weekend? No. After some mixed luck with $ARWR, I decided to buy some mid-to-late afternoon at 5.86, on hopes of an eod spike, and a gap-up on Tuesday. Not much movement towards the end of the day. So I figured, "Screw it, Im already holding MARA this weekend, what's another?". So did I get my gap up? No. Well almost, but no. It actually recovered slightly in pre, and said recovery waffled a little in the am, before diving. I panicked, sold, and lost another ~700 @ 5.54.

Some BIG lessons from these

-If you are buying based on news, make sure you understand the news. My fatal flaw with MARA was not understanding crypto mining. Im not basically an expert, but that knowledge would have served me much better Friday morning. 

-CUT LOSSES EARLY!! One of Tim's lessons or maybe DVD's asks us to establish 3 levels of loss tolerance. What losses make you uncomfortable, What losses freak you out, and What losses would affect your ability to sustain your cost of living. I flirted with the line between the last two today. 

-Dont hold over a holiday weekend unless you have a rock-solid play. News doesn't carry through the weekend quite the same when there is an extra day for people to read and forget. 

-If part of your setup doesn't pan out, GET OUT. Part of my play for ARWR involved an afternoon uptrend that never happened. That should have been my indicator. Don't hold and hope. Another one of Tim's lessons wisely quotes "Hope is not a strategy". 

My day didnt end there. I purchased a chunk of $RCON on some of the buzz being generated in the chat room at 3.20 in the first 30 min of trading. It dipped and spooked me so I got out in the 2.70s, taking a roughly $700 loss. Thats right. I somehow managed to lose money on RCON today. If anyone has any advice on how I could have played RCON differently, or managed my expectations with the loss when it dipped, please chime in. I am upset, although not defeated by the fact that I did not make money on RCON where there was so obviously so much to be made. There is a lesson in there, and I am determined to figure out what that lesson is. 

Which brings us to today's silver lining. 

Yesterday evening I made a post regarding $MDR. MDR has been on a steady but modest climb for the past 10 trading days or so, with a peppering of fairly positive news here and there. I laid out a plan, stated my intentions, and Im happy to say I... mostly stuck to the plan. My intention was to look for a point of entry around 7.70 and hang in for a few days for 50 cents per share. I didn't catch 7.70, but I did catch a small dip to 7.78, and held. There was actually a fairly decent spike to about 7.94, confirming my suspicion that this one still has some room to grow, but it tapered off finishing the day around 7.80.

We shall see where this one ends up.