Friday, October 27, 2017

Funded TD Ameritrade for Charts

Called TD Ameritrade this morning because I wanted to know if my first deposit had to be 3K to qualify for the 60 days commission free trading. Turns out no, but you have only 60 days to fund the account to that level to qualify. As long as you make any deposit you can have the live chart prices on the paper trading account side of the platform. So, for now I deposited $50 and Stacey and I can trade from the same platform on two different computers. It's not supposed to be allowed but I think we are getting away with it because we are both on the Same IP address. If I want the commission free thing I need to have the account balance to 3K around the firsts week of december.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Free charts are shit on Tradingview.com

They are basically un-fucking-tradable. The way the charts are formed is only by trades that go through this one route: BATS. It is not a cumulation of all the exchanges like you get when you have good charts. Here is a comparison of the charts I am currently paper trading from, with the Think or Swim platform I also use that has all the data, just delayed.
























How the fuck is anyone supposed to paper trade with this shit information? Anyhow, I guess if I want to trade good data I'll have to deposit 3k into my broker to access the real time data in the demo account. It's not something I wanted to do, as when you deposit 3K they give you 60 days of commission free trading. I only wanted to do that when I was feeling like taking advantage of it.

Work has been getting on my nerves. It continues to be tough. I got home at 11pm tonight and still have shit to do and I am tired as fuck... Still got to wake up pretty early tomorrow to trade. and it's not even real money.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

$ATOS Follow up

I was dead on thinking the stock would fail. The news was positive and it tanked out the gate. Stacey and I were wondering why the stock wasn't moving this morning at the open, and I'm guessing there was a halt on the stock. Sometimes there are halts when news is pending. Maybe it wasn't a halt and there were no trades taking place at all?

Anyhow The stock opened way up, and started to fail. In my last post I said it was a potential dip buy, which it could have been that as well at $1.28 level, however I was watching other stocks. When I saw it perk up and pause, I thought about shorting but didn't take it. Then it dipped down to previous days support and I bought 2k shares @ $1.11. It quickly failed that support and I should have cut for a small loss, because it ended up moving against me a lot. The only thing that kept me in the trade was feeling like it was too much panic for good news and that the stock would rebound a bit before continuing lower.

It dipped far enough below support in my opinion, for that support to now become resistance, so I had to take a loss as I was not convinced I would get a break even opportunity. It turned out to only make it back up to $1.10 so I was right. I reversed my position and rode it down for a profit. Still was down on the day and made some mistakes, but I am glad I am seeing things before they happen better.




Tuesday, October 24, 2017

October 24th Missing an awesome breakout

On my watchlist last night for $ATOS I said: "ATOS: Looks primed for multi day breakout."

It actually started breaking out premarket while I was still asleep. Stacey had an order in for $.64 cents and cancelled it. When it spiked up at the open I waited for some pullback and consolidation. That's exactly what happened so I went long @ $.77... well, it tested $.80 and rejected for the second time so I exited the trade at break even. I was already up on the day with a few winners under my belt and felt like hanging it up.

Not even 10 minutes after I exited, it took off. It even came right back down to support perfectly for a second opportunity to dip buy. One reason I wanted out was because I was watching the free charts on Trading view and it looked very thin. Let me show you the difference between the free charts that only show the trades through one exchange, versus the pro charts that show every trade.






















Anyhow, the bottom line must be this: That I got my chunk out of the market and walked away. I have to accept that this situation is likely to happen all the time and that it is expected.

Anyhow. $ATOS has a conference call tomorrow morning and I have a feeling that even if the news is good, the stock is going to plummet as a result, which could make a good dip buy. We'll see. 

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Ego is resistance, Surrender is Flow.

"Ego is resistance, surrender is flow".

Jed Mckenna succinctly stated that, and while it is easy to forget, today was a reminder for me. As I wrote the most recent blog post I was in a state of surrendering, and determining that I must find a way to adapt because I did not see things changing by force. Tonight I happened to have found out that one of our local drivers actually requested the graveyard shift, which would allow me to have a more preferable window of hours in theory, because I would not be getting home so early in the morning. We'll see how that goes. Pretty interesting though, as the confrontational, emotional reaction I staved off the other day (in regards to a phone call about all of this) would have been absolute ego, and absolute resistance... which in hindsight would have basically ensured the opposite effect I desired. I let go, and what I want seems to be flowing to me.

Like Jed said as well, to the uninitiated, it seems like magic.

It's been hard to flow lately, because I have been so sucked into the dream. And when you're sucked into a work of fiction, it grips you as if it is as real as anything can be.

On the trading front, today I took the time and spent hours going through Tim Sykes daily trading commentary and adding it to the charts with notes. The idea is not to just read what he is saying about his entries and exits, but to combine them with visuals and digest them on a much deeper level. To see the charts and moves he is seeing and imprint them as a second nature out of pure screen time.

As far as real money trading has gone, it's been very quiet for me. I have got plenty of accounts, so the Pattern Day Trader rule doesn't really need to effect me, but like I said in a previous post, I want to know the numbers or have a way to feel confident I am doing this correctly without wasting real money. So, as depressing and kinda time-wasting as if feels, I am paper trading again. Hopefully with a decent work schedule again I will be present for the market. The following charts are from the Think or Swim Platform offered by TD Ameritrade. We really like them a lot. You can click one button to enter and exit a trade, which is way better than Interactive Brokers, where you have to type in the Ticker, whether you want to buy or sell, then the quantity, then submit, and verify a freaking preview of the order.... ugh... Anyhow, we don't have any real money in the account yet, because there is a promotion going on where if  you deposit $3,000 you get 60 days of trading, up to 500 trades, commission free, so thats cool. So, we now have an Etrade account, an Interactive Brokers account, a Charles Schwab account and a TD Ameritrade account. Not to forget, also the Forex account at Oanda.

Here's what I got today for the examples of Tim's trading and market commentary. these are from Oct 13th - 18th. I still have some catching up to do.

























Friday, October 20, 2017

October 20th Thoughts.

Been working my ass off lately. Basically ignored the markets all week because I needed to get the laundry room shelves in my house constructed so we could wash clothes and such.

My old dispatcher (my favorite) is no longer running the local team and was replaced by a guy who although nice, simply can't handle the position. Instead of knowing what I am going to do the night before or even early that morning, I now don't know anything until around 2-3pm.... It really is becoming an issue because I can't wake up for the markets. The whole point of night shift is to capitalize on the mornings, but I can't be there if I have been up all damn day waiting to hear what the hell my day is going to look like.

I am routinely asking around 10:30-11:00 am what the plan is for the day and I never find out until mid afternoon...

Needless to say, in spite of all my communications and requests for earlier information nothing has come of it. I am realizing that I will probably have to adapt even further somehow to actually trade the markets...

I am so tired right now. I got up at 6am yesterday and got home at 5:10am this morning... I got a couple short naps in during the day, but I just couldn't pull through to make the open this morning, and it pisses me off every time I fail in that regard.

I don't know what to do, but I must figure it out.

Monday, October 16, 2017

Monday October 16th Thoughts

I haven't made much progress with trading in the last few weeks honestly. My attendance to the market has been ho-hum as my sleep has not been much. I find myself sleeping in while Stacey wakes up and trades the open. I wake up to see what has developed and feel a sense that with the volatility I have seen play out in the morning, that I could have profited to some degree on it.

I haven't been doing my work in the markets really. I have started watching video lessons regularly the past few days, but I have not been really looking into the news of a stock or the SEC filings either to check the financial side of the companies.

I'm a bit divided on this as part of me feels like if I am just going to trade the price action, the stock is going to go up or down, breakout out or hold support, either way... and I will react to the price correctly or not. If I keep my losses small and hold enough winners long enough it will take care of itself.

The other part of me feels that reading the filings and understanding the bigger picture of these companies would tell me which are more likely to do what, and give me the best odds on which stocks to pull the trigger on anyhow. That really requires a critical thinking process that I have not been applying. It's all kinda confusing really, because Tim Sykes seems to be approaching these stocks very simply in his watchlist and at the end of the day it's about price action and volume.

I feel like I have understood how simple it is for a long time now, yet I am ironically getting sucked into the complexities of it simply because so much material is out there to divulge in. Distracted by all the available perspectives and nuances. At the end of the day the mass of people either want to buy a stock or sell it.

It's my job to understand where a stock is in relation to others desires to continue to support an idea or leave it for a different idea.

On another note, in spite of all Stacey's studying and note taking, it seems she is missing out on some things as well. Today she had two trades with entries that seemed to be chasing, and she held them all day as an "Experiment". To me it was just holding and hoping. Perhaps we will simply be different traders and she will be successful in a different way than I will be, who knows. She said that those trades were still within her risk levels, so I can understand that a bit more, however to me I think if it's supposed to be a volatile stock it needs to prove itself by doing what you thought it would do. If it's not, you spend a lot of time wasted in it while other stocks are proving themselves. I think it's more efficient to just move on. I understand wanting to be patient, but perhaps patience is best applied when a stock is moving your way instead of sideways or against you?


Friday, October 6, 2017

October 5th update

It's really kinda crazy that so much time has passed! Also kinda crazy I've been so busy that each time I come here, I have so little time I just burst out the details.


  • I opened up a 10k account with Interactive brokers and I love the commissions and shorts available, but the real time data feed costs some money and I don't feel like paying it right now.
  • I started shorting long term with very small positions just to see how that worked, as I was working days and could not be there to short any size and give my positions the attention that size would need/deserve. It worked pretty good, but I took a 1.8% loss on $OPNT and that pretty much scared me out of that for now. I know 1.8% isn't much, but it caused me to rethink what I was doing for a few reasons. The reality is, I was profitable at one point in the trade as I was short from $19.80 and it dipped down to $15ish.

  • My wife, Stacey lost her job and is now diving into trading full force. She is doing really well with her learning curve and it's been freaking unbelievable to be trading with the love of my life. We make watchlists and watch video lessons and trading materials together. We both try to trade the open together, though it has been tough to do it sharing *E-trade charts on one account. To solve this I think we are going to open up multiple accounts at other brokers, namely Schwab and TDAmeritrade. Stacey is still paper trading at this point, but she seems to treat it as real money at the moment, which is great.
  • We actually got married in July and just recently took our honeymoon cruise to Alaska! I'll have to post some pics at some point. 
  • Bitcoin has been soaring and hit nearly $5k, so that's cool. My etherium and Litecoin have all done well also. Too bad I didn't put $10k into THOSE as we would have made 400% on them at one point.
  • I am now working nights! I feared it big time because I wasn't sure I'd be able to pay the bills, and then Stacey got laid off, but I have been making basically the same hours and Stacey is supplementing our income a little by selling things on KSL that we paid very little for or got for free.
  • I have been struggling mentally because of one key reason, and a podcast from millionaire trader Matt Owens (Triforce Trader) helped me put it in words yesterday. The reality is, aside from being tired due to coming home very early in the morning and having to get up very soon afterwards, I am tired because I have been unmotivated. My mental perspective has been extremely challenging because I have a strong desire to know certain statistics about the way these stocks move. Here's what I want to know:

  1. What % of dip buys at visual support actually hold given the catalyst? There are a multitude of other details that are inside that question as well, such as; are areas of support more likely to hold if they have been tested before? how quickly did price come down to that support and was it due to any knowable news?
  2. I also want to know the same type of statistics about Breakouts. 
The point is that without the numbers, I know I am just stabbing in the dark. Even if the odds are in my favor, I want to know how much they are in my favor. I want a way to quantify the setup based on backtesting, and the truth is that to find that out would take forever. And that is really kinda crushing.

Yes, I have paper trade stats of a lot of trades that show I am profitable about 65% of the time or so, but I would have to go back and spend a ton of time searching for the entries and exits to see how much I let it move against me in those situations. This is the same backtesting problem all over again, which really sucked, but at least this time I have a catalyst driven instrument to test. 

One GIANT drawback besides not being able to test with robots, is that I am not even testing a long history of one instrument, it's hundreds or thousands of individual stocks! 

Anyway, I need to head into work now. Later!