Seven Deadly Sins- Pride, Humility, Conviction

Lust               Chastity

Gluttony        Temperance

Greed             Charity/Generosity

Sloth              Diligence

Wrath             Patience

Envy              Kindness


Obviously some of these don't really pertain to DayTrading but i'll go over the ones that i feel affects my thinking while trading.


Greed -

On hearing a remark from someone and the way she said the remark angered me because i knew for a fact she did not understand what i meant by me being greedy. On a 0-10 scale, i rate my greed at 2or3. Greed so far has affected how much profit i could have potentially gained, i have not lost money because of greed but i have lost potential profits. A much more dangerous greed that i see almost everyone makes is the greed of a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions (Expensive cars, Brand name clothing). This kind of greed i rate a 7 on a 0-10scale. This type of greed is disastrous financially especially when most americans spend more than what they actually can afford/have leading to financial problems/credit card debt. We do need something to motivate us to work hard, it is not greed to reward yourself of material wealth for hard work. However, i believe it is excessive/greed to reward yourself if it is beyond your current capabilities to pay for it causing fights/strained relationships with others. A consequence of greedy activity may be inability to sustain any of the costs or burdens associated with that which has been or is being accumulated, leading to a backfire or destruction, whether of self or more generally.

As far as losses go, due to Syke's/Superman's/InvestorsLive's/successful trader's #1 rule: Cut losses quickly. My losses have been stuck to either the primary plan or the secondary plan i develop to risk a little bit more to see if the trend would change/i.e.. use another support level (which is a bad thing i need to cut out, but this at least gives me an oh shit point. If this point is breached, i get out without hesitation). I only see greed limiting my profit potential atm.


Pride -

My thought's on pride is that you can have pride but you have to acknowledge when you are wrong. Pride is not necessarily a bad thing like most people make it out that it is. Religions have it as a deadly sin but Aristotle and George Bernard Shaw see's pride as a virtue. I believe our thinking needs to be more refined to fully be able to use pride to our advantage. Religions teach humility to counter pride but i think how people were taught by the church tof view humility is also outdated and needs to be refined.

Humility is not a recognition of one's failings, but a rejection of morality. - Ayn Rand

When viewed as a virtue, pride in one's appearance and abilities is known as virtuous pride, greatness of soul or magnanimity, but when viewed as a vice it is often termed vanity or vainglory.

A more refined set of ideas i strong believe in are:

Kaizen (Japanese: means to continuous improvement): For a person to continuously improve themself, they have to acknowledge their faults/mistakes. First step in solving any problem is recognizing that there is one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs

Resilience: Instead of humility. Humility leads to obedience, excessive humility leads to excessive obedience which is prone to abuse. This can severely restrict individualism/free thought in my opinion. Humility as it seems from Christianity/Islam can also be viewed as a surrender/to be subjugated which is horrible when one seeks humility towards another human as it's prone to abuse. I say resiliency is better in times of difficulty because it seeks to be equal to whatever "human" force that is seeking to have you subjugated. You should have humility to GOD, but it does not mean you should have humility to the church or your religion, the church is NOT GOD and are a human organization that has the potential to abuse/subjugate it's followers. Ex: Iglesia ni Cristo in the Philippines practices bloc-voting. Mindless zombies with no brains to think for themselves and vote for the appropriate political candidates that benefits them instead of the church leaders. Cardinal Sin in the People Power Movement, has his mindless followers back up Cory Aquino that has very little political experience other than being married to her husband that was an equal to Ferdinand Marcos. State should have little influence on church, but church themselves should have little influence on state. The filipino masses needs to learn to think a little more in order to help themselves.


to be continued

BLOGS, Twitter

http://averagejoedaytradr.blogspot.jp
Ed Martin - From Warrior Trading





http://nikkoricoo.blogspot.jp/





http://derricktrades.blogspot.jp/

http://tradetheticker.blogspot.jp/

"Trading a ticker just because a setup is there unfortunately won't yield profitable results.

The best way to eliminate this problem is to only trade the stocks in play and keep an eye on them throughout the day. Stocks in play I define as having a catalyst for that particular day as well as valid trigger levels on the daily chart. If you abide by these simple criterion you will find your frequency of trading will drastically decrease and your potential for large winners will increase exponentially. Hence, why you see me trade very infrequently but jump on the big movers when the opportunity presents itself.

One thing to note is I never rely on any single indicator to determine my entry on a trade. However, I will use them all in conjunction to determine the direction of the imminent move. What I'm saying here is that I simply would not rely solely on the 9 EMA cross above Vwap for an entry. I personally prefer the price action to be above both the 9 and 20 EMA as well as the Vwap before entering. - Mike from Warrior Trading

to be continued...

SUNE, CLOW

Did DD on SUNE, 90%+ down off it's high last year.. multiple negative news throughout the years, fundamentals are whack as they have a huge debt blah blah.. on the positive note 30% plus of the float are short so i'll be expecting a good squeeze in the open..

SUNE

Long overnight 1000 SUNE @ 1.71

Plan is to sell half at open, and sell the rest at 3$ if it tests it or sell all within 10mins of the open.

Sold 500 SUNE @ 2.29 08:00:08

Locked in half profits on a lower high in pre-market. I still had doubt's whether i should lock in profits or not but this is another assurance that cutting my risk in half for guaranteed profits is a much much better strategy. Take profits and move on.

Sold 300 SUNE @ 2.4234 09:41:40

Top was at 9:35-9:36 @ 2.77, i shoulda have at least seen the trend change MACD bearish crossover at 9:38 and stopped out at 2.5. I was still a little greedy and should've locked in 1$ per share profits but i wanted it to hit 3. Since i had already locked in half, I was comfortable with seeing if it will hold the spike a bit.

Sold 200 SUNE @ 2.37 09:43:58

Closed myself out completely when it broke below VWAP, sucks that it ended up being the low but I can work on my exits later, there's bigger mistakes to focus on atm.

If I had traded this ideally, I would've
1) Bought full size 2000 shares instead of 1000
2) Sell half at the same point when i did *** +1 did right ***
3) Closed out at 2.7 if was day trading, Closed out at 2.5 if i wanted to let it to test 3.

I missed the top by 30cents... I still had that "hope" mindset and because of it i missed out on locking in 1$/share profits. I AM A TRADER, I need to stop thinking about getting homerun plays and just bat singles.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In comparison to how i traded 2 weeks ago:
I've significantly changed the way how i control my greed, Aiming less for big gains and instead aiming for consistent profits playing ideal setups instead. What coulda, shoulda, woulda been a $700-$800 gain ended up just over $600.

However, the big thing that killed my possible gain today was the fact that i only took half my normal size due to:

Impatience: Forced 2 trades AGAINST my rules during midday, instead of letting the play come to me, i tried to make the play happen instead.. 2-3hrs into it the market humbled/beat me down and was eventually scared out of my position. Due to my impatiience, i developed a fear and caused me not to go full size in the afternoon.

Fear: What coulda, shoulda, woulda been a $1400-$1600 gain on a full size position ended up just over $600. Funny, I've seen the top traders get scared out by being too early and you really have to experience it yourself to fully understand how it feels instead of just hearing/reading/learning it from someone else.. Being too early in a trade is SCARRRYYYY... I really would just either miss potential profits/miss the play completely than to be in early. This fear would easily be more compounded on short positions. I think fear here is a good thing though, the core problem here was the impatience, if i wasn't early on my trade, i wouldn't have been scared out in the first place and only went half my normal size.

On a side note: I called out on Wednesday that CLOW Breaking down past 0.35 cents would send it too test 0.30 and if it broke below that, it'd crash huge.

This pump was a gimme and i'd easily rate it a 4*. To help me with impatience, i will start using LX21's system of rating plays and i would only take 3*+.. I woul'd've rated my ETSY/ENOC/1st SUNE trades as 1*, SUNE o/n 3*, CLOW 4*. This would prevent me from going in useless/stupid plays.


I'm seriously thinking about just focusing on shorting. I've seen so many earnings winners fail so much and this overall market just SUCKS for being long. ClOW is now trading at 12cents from 35cents EASY EASY 66% Gain. My biggest problem right now is that I need that e-trade account open to short, and prolly just use TD Ameritrade for longs / Learn NASDAQ Shorting. This is going to be a huge change in my strategy and prolly be a good idea to take a week or two off from shorting to prepare myself shifting strategies from a long to a short seller.

ENOC, SUNE

Little rant first before i start off... As if i didn't learn enough from wednesday's stupidity.. I entered 2 trades out of boredom in the middle of the day.. Even though my rule is to buy 2-4pm and NEVER go in at lunchtime because it's hard to assess the trend due to the low volume, and you're not certain how the stock's going to react in the afternooon. I ended up getting scared out, one hit my mental stop loss and faked out/recovered. The other bounced off the vwap yet i got scared out anyways like a retard. I was right however in seeing that they were holding their gains, the main problem i felt was that there wasn't enough volume and i have no idea whether it was going to come back in the afternoon.

ENOC

Bought 500 ENOC @ 6.2 10:42:15

Bought it cause i'm a retard and i like to not stick by the rules. Fading volume, entering into midday, not sticking to the plan and buy at 2-4pm on good volume..

Sold 500 ENOC @ 6.052 12:26:41

Got stopped out and still sloppy on executing on my mental loss.


SUNE

Bought 1500 SUNE @ 1.67 11:13:37

Bought it cause i'm a double retard, if one retarded entry midday wasn't enough.. I'll beat it and make two stupid/impatient trades.

Sold 1500 SUNE @ 1.6001 11:46:51

Stupid entry, got scared out cause of low volume midday and unsure of how the afternoon is going to be.

Bought 1000 SUNE @ 1.71 15:47:32

IDEAL TRADE !! Finally My first ***** One this week.... Since i got scared out twice already earlier in teh day i only wen't half the size i normally would've on this trade.

PATIENCE

Rating the setups

• * Tradable
• ** Good
• *** Great
• **** BEST
• ***** BEST OF THE BEST

Why not trade all of the setups?

The lower rated setups woulda take up most of my time/energy/ and buying power. But would add very little to my bottomline. Over time, i began to realize that majority of my profits were coming in from the 4* and 5* trades even though they were a small minority of my trades. And sometimes by trading the 1* and 2* setups, i would completely miss a 4* or 5* setup. The distraction of having so many trades would cause inferior entries and exits.I realized the opportunity cost was so great that I could make more money by trading less. I wanna trade only the best setups.

“My track record had nothing to do with me being smarter than him, or better than him. It was because i was being very selective,You wanna win at trading? Then only bet when when you know you’re right. The lesson here is don’t trade just to keep busy. I have to constantly fight that urge and i struggle constantly with it like everyone else. It’s hard to stare at numbers all day long and not act. It’s hard to watch people post trades in chatrooms, all day long, and not act. But just because everyone else is buying waffles, means its a good idea.” -LX21

“Trading to keep busy costs you money, you need to be patient. Patient to wait for the best opportunities. Patient to wait for the best entries. And patient when your in a trade, to let it work. Think of it this way, as traders, Our job is to be patient. Most of our time should be spent watching and waiting.” -LX21

“ I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all i have to do is go over there and pick it up.” - Jim Rogers

ETSY

Didn't see any plays worth and was gonna open a paper trading account but instead just traded on my real account.. -_- went against my specific rules i laid out 2wks ago..

ETSY
I knew at the buy that this was gonna be a forced trade and away from the sykes strategies.. I was fine with the risk/loss but what i am not fine with was that i didn't even follow my own PERSONAL strategy that i had laid out. Pure speculation play off the charts with a lot of hope. I knew with conviction i shouldn't trade this but i went ahead anyways.

** Next time no ideal plays are in play, I will switch to the paper trading account option to test my strategies from there and instead of my real account.

ADDED 25 Feb 2016:
... I fell asleep before the market open and woke up at around 1pm market time.. felt like no plays were in the day. WATT was a good one cept i was asleep for it, nothing in the PM looked good and ETSY is failing throughout the day as a possible play. I was too antsy, felt like i needed to trade, was without internet for more than a week and was away from the market for 2wks. I was out of touch of the market yet i forced a trade, a trade i normally wouldn't have made. More mistakes yet again and again it was more emotional than the strategy itself.. I can finally see why some of sykes students had gradually shifted to other plays/strategies to keep them preoccupied. Impatience was my top downfall today and slightly less of a greediness.

Things to work on:

- IMPATIENCE- Today's #1 downfall; If i want to test out my own strategies, it will be using a paper trading account. Forced a trade i normally wouldn't have done since it was not an ideal play.

- HOPE/Greed- Even though i technically chased by a ton and almost bought the top, there was 3 opportunities where i could have sold for a small profit/breakeven. After I entered the trade, I found out that my personal strategy using RSI/MACD told me the trend was already broken after I entered, I still ignored my Personal strategy/checklist and "hoped" the stock would maintain the uptrend, After it failing twice, I still "hoped" it would uptrend when in fact it was clearly in a downtrend/support had broken..

- Preparation- I don't think you can ever prepare enough for the market day. However, i'm nowhere near where i want to be as far as preparedness prior to the opening bell. I still have yet to run my own scans and still using sykes/grittani's watchlist to look at stocks.

2/9-2/10 TRXC,THST Recap

My last posts were mostly ranting/summarizing. Ideally, i'd like to give a rundown of the trades on a trade by trade basis but it really depends on how much time i really want to give to the blog. I'll be keeping a diary of it off the blog to keep track of it but as far as the blog, i'll post it if i have time.

TRXC

2/9/2016 10:12:02 Bought 175 TRXC @ 3.85

2/9/2016 10:16:15 Bought 825 TRXC @ 3.8995

Bought into it, felt i was chasing and i almost got scared out of the trade when it started to downtrend. However, using RSI gave me the conviction that it was just correcting itself/finding support of a higher low. After i waited out the correction and the higher low was confirmed, The stock kept uptrending.

2/9/2016 13:13:27 Sold 400 TRXC @ 4.3301

Lower high, locked in some profits, in the future i would lock in at least half.

2/9/2016 17:43:46 Sold 600 TRXC @ 3.43

Was headed to bed when i thought i’d open twitter for the first time in months. Saw a dilution deal news come out and i frantically looked through my broker’s manuals on how to do extended hours trading. Was out for a small loss, I would do the trade over again though. If i held on o/n i’d be up but 1)Cut losses quickly here was good discipline.

2/10/2016 08:49:26 Bought 500 TRXC @ 4.01

Cool, bought pre-market ;) .. solid uptrend will sell at 4.4 resistance or 4.8 retest

2/10/2016 9:57:32 Sold 400 TRXC @ 4.3595

Instead of selling at 4.8 retest as planned, got greedy and held on hoping for a breakout. I ignored the Dilution news and obviously the trend failed and started to crack. I was out once my mental stop loss of 4.4 was hit.. Still profitable but greed caused me to deviate from the plan which is a big nono. Stick to the rules…

2/11/2016 9:32:09 Sold 100 TRXC @ 4.09

Due to fat fingers, I did not sell all my shares the previous day like i woulda have liked. Closed out my position at market open and called it a day.

THST

2/9/2016 15:51:36 Bought 500 THST @ 1.68

Bought the dip from 1.93, Felt good on my entry. Plan was to hold o/n and sell at open if no volume or into a morning spike.

2/10/2016 10:02:16 Sold 500 THST @ 1.48

Got greedy and ignored the fact that there was no volume/interest pre-market so i did not sell at market open as planned. Hoped the stock would gain attention and push higher but i got humbled down and it faded like i thought it would. ***HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY*** I missed some good exits to be slightly up/breakeven cuz i was too focused on TRXC/Hoping it THST would still break out. I got out once it hit my mental stop loss of 1.5