Welcome

I think this is blog number 3, but each offers something new, and an opportunity for me to fall behind in posting and lose all my non-existent readers. Anyways, this blog will chronical in great, gory detail my foray into day trading. Profit, losses, charts, humility, and maybe a monster bank roll will greet me and you day in and day out.

So, the setup. I have a whopping 3k available for trading. It is in an IRA account with MB Trading. Yes, I'm trading retirement money, I'm crazy, but I'm young. 3k won't make or break me, so here we go. I am going to plot my weekly account balance coupled with details concerning each trade I make. It won't be too many trades as pattern day trading rules are in full effect.

Trading system, weakly defined. I am attempting to trade intraday reversals signaled by doji, hammers, and bullish engulfings using 10min candles.

Trades for today, 2:

LEAP:
Bought at 9am engulfing.
30 shares entered at $36.50,
targeting $37.00,
with a weakly defined stop-loss at $36.15.
Gives a reward/risk of 1.43 (weak at best).
Exited at $36.47 after the stock chopped for 30min or so. Did not wait for stop loss, but stock just missed my target by 2c and reversed hard. Ouch.
Gross P/L: -$0.90, net -$2.90.

CSUN: Poor trade taken while still working LEAP.
Bought 9:20am engulfing.
90 shares entered at $11.02,
target $11.30,
stop-loss at $10.85.
R/R of 1.65.
Exited at $10.90 after I made super newbie mistake of entering $10.85 limit sell order instead of stop market order. Dope, but it did save me 5c/shr or $4.50.
Gross P/L: -$10.80, net -$12.80.

So, for the day, 0 of 2, for a total net loss of -$15.70 or roughly -0.52%. Not worried about the losses, this is a learning experience. I'll sit on my hands and watch the markets for a few days and allow my trades to expire (wrt pattern day trader rules), and will start trading again on Thursday or Friday.

Weekend balance: $3008.59, down -$15.70, -0.52%

Always another day,
Masterjaz out