One Winner and One Loser... transcript

What's up, everyone? Welcome to day 25 of my small account challenge of growing a $2,000 account using Charles Schwab as my broker. Today, more or less, is a break-even day. It's technically a small green day, which is good. I mean, but realistically, whether I was small green or small red wouldn't really matter. I took two trades. The first one was a winner, and the second one I gave back pretty much everything I made on the first one.

So, accuracy today, 50%. Average winner, [music] average loser, about one to one, so I'm break-even. And I'm a little bit bummed out. You know, it it look, it's never fun to be break-even. It's never fun to give back profit. My kind of rule of thumb is that if I give back more than half of my profit on the day, I have to walk away because it's a point where I can get emotionally triggered. You know, I had something, and then I gave it all back.

If I have something and I give back a quarter of it, I still feel pretty good, you know, cup's still half full. If I give back half of it, then I'm like, I'm starting to get frustrated. If I give back all of it, now I just kind of want to get back to where I was, or somewhere somewhere somewhere anywhere better than where I'm at. And that's a problem because now I'm thinking, well, today already is frustrating. So, what's the difference between being frustrated up a teeny bit or potentially red?

Both ways I'm frustrated, right? So, now you justify, well, since I'm already frustrated, I might as well just take another trade cuz if I lose, it feels like there's not as much emotional downside since I'm already emotionally upset, right? And but the up side is that, well, if on that third trade or whatever, I end up being green, then all's well that ends well, and now I feel great. So, now the reward potential isn't just the money.

It's the emotion. And that is now guiding your trading, and that's where things can get really slippery, and you can end up spiraling and just losing more and more and more and more. And I've done that. I know exactly what that's like. I've been there. I'm I'm not immune to it today. I mean, this is something that I still struggle with from time to time. So, if we jump onto the screen share, we'll go over the trades from today.

As you guys know, all the profits from these small account challenges gets donated charity. Not much to contribute today, but we have so far raised over $385,000 and donated $380,000 to children's hospitals across the country. So, today was day 25 and, you know, we really didn't have too much to work with. The scanners were a little bit lighter in terms of opportunities. Yesterday, we didn't have any big moves. I knew this.

I sort of predicted that today was going to be slower and I wish I'd taken my foot off the gas a little bit faster. So, we had EXYN hit the scanner right here with breaking news. It's a US company expands into multi-billion dollar defense sustainment market bringing field proven AI autonomy to the US Air Force aircraft readiness. So, I'm like, "Okay. AI, you know, keyword in there. This seems like this could be good." It starts to pop up.

I look at the daily chart. I see that it's blue sky over 720. So, 720's the all-time high the stock has ever traded at. And it's never had a day with volume over a million shares. And so, suddenly, it squeezes up here and has a ton of volume. So, as it pushes up here, it ends up hitting a high of five. It then pulls back. It pops up. It pulls back. It pops up and it kind of unwinds back down. I jumped in right here for this breakout and was in and was out and locked up a profit.

Nothing crazy, but $766.56. So, my entry here was for the break through the high of day. So, this is a higher day breakout setup. We had pretty good volume coming in on those candles and I was like, you know, looking for this to squeeze up to 720 and then above that, blue sky, no resistance. Unfortunately, it rejects back down as you can see. So, nonetheless, I was in and out of it quickly. That was good. But, it didn't hold up.

And it ends up, you know, kind of coming back down and then finally rolling over here, which was pretty ugly. So, that was EXYN, first trade of the day, 766 bucks. And it didn't really work out that well. It wasn't that great of a trade. But, I proceeded to take another trade, and that was on MSS. MSS hits the scanner here. It's also a US company. They've got a headline also tying in with AI. So, I'm like, "Okay, you know, interesting." It's a very low float stock.

It pops up. It has this first pullback right here. Then, it squeezes higher. It dips down right here. Pops up to 520, pulls back. And right here, tries to do this sort of curl over the volume weighted average price. And I bought 2,000 shares at $4.25. And I was looking for this to curl back to the high of day. And I stopped out as it came back down here. And I gave back, as you could see, $716.45, putting me up $50.11 on the day.

So, this is a day with lower accuracy. Now, [clears throat] I'm up to 56 trades in total, 50 44 winners, 12 losers. 78% accuracy, a 1% decline from yesterday. Well, a decline from 79 to 78%. And yes, the account is technically still growing, which is good. You know, but obviously, today was not the day that I was hoping for. So, it's Friday. It's the end of the week. It's been a good week. You know, I made progress this week.

I have more in my pocket than I had at the beginning of the week. And yet, I finished the week feeling a little bit deflated, a little bit disappointed. And that's because of sort of that recency bias of feeling that I'm only as good as like the last trade. And the last trade was is loser. So, I'm not feeling that great. I'm a little bit bummed out. And it's important to recognize that because that emotion is starting to, you know, creep in, then it creates this feeling of kind of disappointment and frustration.

And then it's like, well, jeez, if I took a trade right now, let's just imagine, you know, we've got stocks that are still moving. It's still early enough in the day. So, how about that? How about, you know, I don't feel so great right now. So, RADX is popping up. How about I just, you know, buy 5,000 shares of this thing? And if this thing goes from 350 to 4, and, you know, 5,000 shares will make 2,500 bucks. Done. Then all of a sudden I I feel good on the day.

But what if it flushes to 250 and I lose 5 grand? Uh-oh. And then I'll think, you know, you went from up $700 down 5 grand. Clearly, like the market wasn't as strong as you thought it was, otherwise you wouldn't have given back the profit in the first place. You pushed it too hard. And why didn't you walk away sooner? You made a big mistake. And I don't want to do that. Uh so, oh, excuse me. Uh maybe I'm a little tired today as well, I don't know, but uh in any case, um you know, you've got stocks moving, but I just I recognize that I'm a little bit emotionally compromised, even even just with a $700 loss.

You know, just it just kind of, you know, gets you this feeling of like, ah, it's just not a great way to finish the week. But uh that's why it's so important just to walk away. So, I'm walking away, and I'll live to trade another day. I'll be back at it bright and early on Monday morning. So, those of you guys that want to watch over my shoulders I'm trading, check out the 2-week trial. Begin it over the weekend if you want.

You can go through some classes over the weekend. You can study up chapters 1 through 6 of Day Trading the Basics. And then uh you'll kind of be up and running bright and early on Monday morning. I'll remind you as always that trading is risky. Easy come, easy go. You guys have seen this in my trading. I'll be up six figures. I'll give back. I mean, it's, you know, I'm generally making progress, of course. That's in my big account.

Um, but it's it's going to be very quick. You know, you have a big winner, a big loser. So, please manage your risk and practice in a simulator before putting real money on the line. I'll see you guys bright and early Monday morning.