Poor Discipline Today

I broke just about every rule there was to break today at the market and I paid for it.

$CODX is a low float that ran up a bunch yesterday on no news, so naturally it was on my watchlist for this morning. It closed strongly end of day yesterday and then proceeded to rally after hours. Here are my mistakes from today.

1. Having a long bias on a stock with NO NEWS. I even said this in my watchlist for today to be careful because it had no news and it was a choppy stock. If you don't know why something is running, stay away from it, and if you can't help it, at least trade it very small. I did not stay away, and I should have traded smaller.
2. I bought at the open after it was already up a ton, in anticipation of a morning spike. It very quickly turned around which led to...
3. Averaging down instead of cutting the loss immediately! I averaged in for a total of 3 positions, each time hoping it would get me back to break even. What was I thinking?!?! In all honesty, the whole time I was thinking "You have done this before and you know you should not be doing this, why are you doing this?" 
4. The next mistake was somewhat revenge trading, or at least, trading when I was emotional. You know you should not be trading when as soon as you are in a position you want to be out of it. I took 2 more trades, one for a controlled small loss, and one that basically made that small loss up.

The conclusion is that I just completely ignored the price action that I was watching. The price is always the truth! 

THE PRICE IS ALWAYS THE TRUTH.

I saw it all happening, and I just hoped. Planning on a dip buy down to support is one thing, buying at the open before a breakout has even occurred and then adding to your obviously losing position is just horrible. I lost 5% of the value of the trading account today. Something I at least did right, was not going in with more than 20% of the account size. 

Today was just a slow market, and I should not have traded that stock, except to the downside. Of course there were no shares to short. It turns out to have been a chatroom pump... Some fake guru got his followers to buy the stock and he tanked it at the open. Had there actually been a real catalyst behind this stock, it could have really had a second day of squeezing. Really, that's what it did premarket. It squeezed shorts who didn't respect the first green day of a low float stock. I just didn't play the RIGHT play and buy it at the close yesterday.

Current thoughts and update on Sugar trade.

Not much time to report this morning, but I felt compelled to write a little.
My Sugar trade looks like it's taking off a little bit, so that's nice. You should be able to click on the images to view them full size.

I'm long the March 2019 contract from $.1273 (that's 12.73 cents/lb) and up a little over $800 at the moment. Because the contract is for 112,000 lbs, every one cent it goes up equals $1,120 profit. It could still be in an overall downtrend, and if that's the case I'll just add more when it comes down a bit, but it would be nice to ride it up a few cents, as it looks like there is going to be resistance in the low to mid 14's.

On the stock trading front, I am still pretty consistently profitable. Here is my current cumulated % gain and my % win/loss distributions. Up 486% at the moment. Keep in mind this is not representative of the % my account would be up, because I would not be utilizing 100% of my account on each trade, and therefor not be realizing these percent gains exactly. If I were to use 20% of my account on each trade that would put the account up roughly 97%, which in 5 months is pretty damn crazy. That would be risking 20% of only the initial account size as well, it does not include any compounding.

As I have been going through this experience, things have been (naturally) becoming clearer to me. The funny thing is that in the beginning I felt like I would never get it, that it would never be clear to me. I have had so many days of feeling like a total loser, confused about the whole thing even though theoretically I understood some things. I have been speaking into my phone here and there describing what is become clear to me. So far I have a few hours of talking that I feel I will eventually put in writing for others to benefit from. To sum it all up though only takes a few sentences, maybe less. 

Go where the money is. which means follow the stocks that are actually moving big, on big volume. They are usually moving for reason, which helps very much to understand so that you can gain an insight as to the future potential of the stock. Learn the patterns, understand why the patterns play out like they do. There are psychological reasons these patterns happen, and you need to operate on a level of awareness that makes them clear to you.  The price is always the truth. That means if a stock is not doing exactly what you want it to do, don't be fooled into stubbornly holding because you are convinced it will eventually do what you want it to. Even if it does, if it isn't right now, you're wrong. And lastly, Cut losses quickly. Cutting losses in my opinion is imperative to success. Unless you are trying to short a hard to borrow stock you can always get back in. Averaging in consciously and carefully can be done, but you must still respect your overall risk and be willing to cut it like any other trade. Another way to say cut losses quickly, is to say It's okay to be wrong, just don't stay wrong. 

It's amazing that it breaks down to those 5 sentences, and that I can literally talk for hours about it beyond them. The reason for this is that there is nuance to each trade because the context will always vary, but the overall strategy behind playing the pattern will remain the same. 

Another facet to update on my life is my schedule. Trading and Truck driving don't mingle perfectly, but I am grateful to work for a company that offers enough flexibility that I can have plenty of time in the mornings to trade, and even during work on a delivery I often have time to build a watchlist, study, or archive my trades for the day. The job I currently have provides so much opportunity. Even though that is great, I feel this point in the future coming closer each day. The one in which I will actually start trading live and taking real steps towards the independence from obligations to an employer. 

The funny thing is, in the last few months I have watched myself go from wanting to quit, to finding some success and starting to feel confident that I can do it, and will do it, to in the last few days feeling like this percentage chart I have is too good to be true.

The reality is, it probably is. I do have some long term stocks that I am holding right now that would hurt it a bit if I just took the losses, but I would still be up several hundred percent. I feel that the biggest hurdles before me at the  moment are actually sizing my trades up each and every time so that my account utilization is normalized to maximize my progress. As far as long term trades, I am pretty sure that is something that will need to wait until my account is pretty big. When I go for real I will need to focus on the most volatile plays to maximize the use of my capital. It would not be wise to employ any of it differently.

I recently watched a motivational video with a guy named Darren Hardy, in which he said that when he decided to really be successful and committed, that he made a list of things he was going to give up. He said he gave up body building because it was over 2 hours a day that he wasn't moving forward on what really mattered. I guess I have been leading up to the same decisions for myself. It was a goal of mine to get into the best shape of my life this year, which is completely subjective, but I now know I am committed to being a successful, consistently profitable stock trader at all costs. I want to get into the best financial shape of my life this year. The great news, is that I already am in the best financial shape of my life, but I want to blow it out of the water. I want to get in the best situation for my entire family.

A great point was made in another motivational speech I listened to, which is "If you make your pain about you, you're going to want to quit when it gets painful, but if you make your pain about something outside yourself you can keep going". The moment I start feeling down about trading, not only do I tell myself that if anyone out there is doing it I can also do it, but I tell myself that I am going to give my wife and all those in my family the life they deserve. I'm going to set them free from debt and such crazy obligations of their precious time to making their employers rich. Not that there's anything wrong with work, there isn't. In fact we are made to move and work, but I want to enable them all to put their hearts into something that matters to them, something that will bring fulfillment instead of dread and depression.

That is my reason, and I will not stop trying. I will do this. I have been working up to this for 19 years now, and I am taking it more seriously than ever. I am seeing results, because I am doing the work.

Until next time. 

Monday update

Shitty trading today. Not because I am down, I am actually up 32.9% in the last two trading days, but because I was more emotional today than I have been in awhile. I am pissed because I did not trade $BLNK very well, and it was the play of the day. It had all the signs of a great long trade and I was not patient enough: Low float, Chart that draws in early shorts, great catalyst with Whole foods collab. You really don't need much else, you just wait for a good dip to enter.

Damn... I have not been this angry in awhile, but the catalyst for my anger this morning was initiated by looking into my insurance claims to find out that once again my broker did not input a claim that he said his office did... I've been waiting for this reimbursement check for awhile and it hasn't come. That's why. I have since called the broker and come to understand that everything is looking alright as of now, it's all just surprising.

OJ is just running without me too. I should have just bought it. Also, Sugar is definitely coming back down, so I just bought a small rebound off the longer term trend of sinking prices. This could be a long hold, but that is what I have to be prepared for. This is long term value investing, not trading.

On the psychological and emotional side of things, I am doing much better. It's rare that I go through what I went through yesterday, but damn, when it does I find myself just completely lost. I need to get things in place to help me deal with that, such as just moving my body and getting things out and trying to get distracted instead of meandering in the negativity.

i hate children

I have been having a rough couple of days and just have to admit, it's because I hate children. 

So today I decided to Google the phrase "Children are soul crushing" and there wasn't a Goddamn thing that had to do with it that came up. It was all about children's feelings and protecting them from getting their feelings hurt by shit. Then I Googled "i hate children" and found out there is a whole group of people out there that refer to themselves as "CF" or "Child Free". 

I recognized immediately two things. One, as I started reading what people felt about children, I felt better because I was not alone. Not crazy. Secondly, I was well aware that I was just looking for information to feed my already strong bias. 

As with anything, there is a ridiculously strong division, extreme on both sides of the argument, that makes both camps look entitled and off base. It's like an argument from someone in which they want freedom of speech, and freedom from being offended... 

I read several things I completely agree with though, such as I don't wish harm upon children, I just want to avoid them as much as possible. 

The best comment, and one I agree with most so far is this one:

Children can seem pretty horrible. They are not socially adjusted, they are noisy, unreasonable, and unpredictable. If we spend most of our time with adults, (Which I do) we can begin to expect children to behave like mini adults. (Which I also realize, I do) When this happens, they seem to behave just like the adults that we despise the most, and we carry these feeling over to them.

My advice for dealing with children is to tolerate them when necessary, teach them when possible, and be certain to spend as much time away from them as you can.

What I have come to understand in the recurrences of my distress, is that the whiny brats that I live with demonstrate such emotional sensitivity/weakness and relentless entitlement/hypocrisy that all I can see in them is their father, and I fucking hate his guts and wish he were slowly disemboweled by a train. To clarify, I don't actively hate him. I think that word is an exaggeration, because to me, hatred is a soul sucking energy that just won't go away, and is so powerful it eats at you permanently. While I would enjoy hearing the news of his disembowelment, I don't much think of him anymore, except when his children exude his nature to a T.

I fully understand that these children are simply results, like us all, of genetics and upbringing, which, I think their upbringing has been pretty shitty by my standards. If they were solely my children, their asses would have been handed to them at every level of disrespect until they knew who I was and who they weren't. That doesn't mean they would feel unloved, just have a deep sense of what is tolerable/respectful and what is not.

So, why am I searching "Children are soul-crushing"? Because I have just been burnt out giving my all to try and raise these people so that they can face the real world, where shit is actually difficult. They are so disconnected from reality that it drives me nuts to hear them complaining every few minutes about something. The thing that makes it so much harder, is that they go to their dad's house 50% of the time and unlearn everything that matters, because he is a lazy, uninvolved piece of shit that has no emotional development himself. 

For the moment, I have given up. I don't have the energy to care about a single fucking word they say, especially in terms of wanting me to correct their siblings poor behavior. "You don't like what so and so is doing? Join the fucking club and learn to deal with it on your own now." 

I have to find a way to adapt if I am going to make it through this, and if my marriage is going to work, because this shit is truly soul crushing, and relationship crushing. I hate children, and I am not ashamed to admit it. They are fuckers. 

The thing is, if I give up like this, maybe they will just turn out worse. But, my parents raised me pretty horribly and I turned out just fine because in the end, no matter what example they set for me, I could see past it because I had the intelligence to think for my self. I always have had that to a high degree, and it makes me feel fatalistic about it all. You either got it or you don't, and I've always had it, which has actually led me to having more of it as time goes on. 

I don't want to be responsible for these people. If they weren't total assholes to each other, their mother, and me, I would happily be singing a different tune and would welcome them. I read a comment that really resonated with me. I can't find it again, but it was basically this woman had hoped she could come to love her significant other's children, but she never could. She left him because she knew it wouldn't be fair for either of them. 

Thoughts of freedom from this situation regularly enter into both of our heads, and we discuss how much better life will be when they are grown up and taking care of themselves...

Look, I know it can sound like I myself and just a piece of shit because I feel this way. I get that. Don't think that I have not tried desperately to arrive at a place of acceptance for this situation. I did feel like I could come to love these kids as my own, but I don't. I didn't even love my own as my own when I had him. I was, and probably always will be too self centered to raise children the way they need it, but I have put a tremendous effort in this time around. I am just burnt out for now. I hope to be renewed shortly.

I know I am putting in the effort, because I am tired of the effort. I am tired of the effort, because every single thing I do feels like I am a huge asshole because I am repeatedly trying to instill healthy habits in them, so it feels to me like I am constantly judging harshly and complaining no matter how measured I am and tactful when I say it. They just break down and don't want to hear the truth. That chips away at my resolve. 

The paradox of parenting is you want a great healthy relationship, but how do you get that when the children resist vehemently at every thing you try to instill, for their benefit as a future adult? It is soul crushing.