11/13/2020 – Retrospective

Ending the week on a green day. While I was doing the dishes this evening I was going over the day in my head and started to think about what I was going to write about in today’s retro. There were a few things that came to mind that I’d like to put on paper.

Concept #1:

When it comes to this trading thing, I have to remember that I am a nobody. This isn’t to put myself down, but more so to face reality. It’s easy to think that you know a bunch of stuff and get ahead of yourself and it’s at those moments that mother market will humble you in the worst of ways. I’m not interested in trying to prove to myself or to other people that I’m some kind of guru or some notable entity that needs to be listened to. I need to keep this in mind so that I don’t try to get to ahead and/or cocky about whatever amount of success that I may have achieved as it’s in those moments that you get all loose and you get jacked in the face.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 16:18

In my opinion it’s critical that I find a proper balance between understanding that I’m improving and doing well vs. getting cocky and thinking that I have this thing all figured out, because that’s just not the truth. There are plenty of gaps in my game that need to be addressed and I’m in for the long haul, so I need to take this thing seriously and approach all aspects of it with the highest level or respect.

Concept #2

It’s good to celebrate other peoples victories. Often times we see other people making killer plays and it’s easy to get jealous of them and in a way have some resentment towards them because they got the shiny new toy that you didn’t get.

In a society where it’s all about me, it’s good to step back and be genuinely happy for those around you that have success when you don’t. To me their success gives me another source of inspiration. Don’t get so caught up in yourself that you forget to celebrate those around you! I see far to often people hating on others because they aren’t posting a P/L, but they are posting absolutely GORGEOUS charts that show a high level of awareness and caution balanced with killer execution. I want to celebrate these people. That is the kind of stuff that gives me further insight into what can be achieved and where I can improve.

I want to surround myself with people that are better than me and celebrate them I want to be able to draw from their well of experience and knowledge.

Concept #3

The market is an incredible opportunity and it is an honor to be able to be able to participate. Since this is such a grand opportunity I need to do my best to take full advantage of it and that means that I have to put in the work.

I remember when I was really just starting I heard all these people talking about how the market is something that you need to take serious and all this talk (at the time I thought it was mumbo jumbo) about psychology and how I pretty much brushed it off thinking it’s not that deep…you just buy/sell then profit. That mentality left me in a state of confusion and brokenness when it came to trading. It wasn’t until I started to look at things like everyone had been saying, that I realized that it really IS that deep.

Eric Thomas had an absolutely incredible piece that I want to daily reflect on. I can’t be upset if I haven’t put in the work, so this blog, and my constant obsession with trying to find the little things and get 1% better on the daily is my effort to put in the work.

If you don’t like the results – don’t whine – WORK!!!! pic.twitter.com/nnORoVwH7W

— Eric Thomas (@Ericthomasbtc) November 4, 2020

ok, onto the trades…

CBAT

I was actually up a decent bit on this at one point and even though to myself that I might want to cover at the bottom of the channel to pay myself out, but as you can see it rebounded rather quick and I started thinking we were going to stay heavy to get down to that 4.70-4.80 range. Not locking in had me take a little paper-cut on the trade overall, BUT this very well might be the trade of the year for me. Let me explain why.

Typically if I’m going to get spanked on a play it’s because I was up, got over confident, then it started to go against them, I’m then offered some opportunities to get out for near break even, I don’t take them, and then I add add and then get crushed. Here you can see that it started to look like I was headed down that path, BUT GOD! I was able to zoom out and notice that the trend was changing and I had enough sense to get out for a small paper cut and then watched it run another $1.20 to up around $6.80.

That is the type of situation that usually would have left me like a deer in headlights, but today we have a different story. I took what the market gave me and I was able to steer clear of issues. Even though slightly red on this name on the day, I’m extremely happy with my exits. My entrances could definitely has used a bit more refinement to stay closer to the top end of the channel, but I was still averaged on the higher end of the channel, which helped me not get tunnel vision into wanting to make the play into something it wasn’t. Very happy about my exit here!

HOFV

This was a clean setup. I was trying to get locates a little bit before 7am to take part in the bigger move, but no dice, so I stuck to the opening range here and had a very nice trade. I was trying like crazy to get some fills in the 3.10’s off the open, but that darn SSR and opening volatility just made it extremely hard to get filled like I wanted. Like I mentioned above on $CBAT I want to be toward the higher end of the channel. I did what I could and sometimes that’s just how it shakes out. In the grand scheme of things I still stuck to my guns and had a nice average, which allowed me to let this thing work. I think my biggest take away here is that I STILL need to work on sticking to my guns on the covers. You can see that I covered around 2.60, but my original goal was to cover for 2.50. I know you could argue that I’m still green so that’s good (which it is), but I want to be more in touch with my big picture ideas and allow them to work as necessary.

SOLO

Nice reactive trade here. Given that we had so much “artificial” volume due to a news letter I want to start capitalizing more with size when that backside move comes in. I wanted to be a little cautious here because there wasn’t example a blow off top candle no high volume compared to the prior action. You can see I was pretty cautious in my adds. I ended up with decent size, but I’m going to continue to work on my aggression vs the situation. I made out nice on it, but there’s still room to improve those ads IMHO. Once it came into VWAP I definitely had a case of “Coveritis”. It’s like once I start covering I can’t stop, and so you see the arrows at vwap going off, but then look what happens 1 minute after my last cover….flush out (HOW FRUSTRATING…lol). I had a big picture goal of 5.90 for this trade and it also hit that, so I definitely need some more patience for my targets just like I mentioned with $HOFV. Pretty happy with this play.

NIO

I didn’t trade this one at all and to be honest I’m conflicted here as to how to feel.

The Pro’s

I’m happy that I didn’t trade it because I personally wasn’t seeing the setup on the daily nor in premarket (the 50.43 reject is a different story). To me this is good because I don’t want to be a sheep. I don’t want to jump into a name just because someone of notoriety is taking a move.

What I’ve found with myself is that me just trading off of someones alerts just because they alerted about it brings out the absolute worst in me. Some people may like that kind of a thing, but for me it’s possibly the worst scenario for me to be in. My brain needs to put the puzzle together in order for my conviction to kick in and thus it gives me the confidence to take on a play and develop proper r/r for a given trade. I need to be able to see the setup as well as I need to be able to create my own trading plan. Yes I listen to input from others about setups/plays, but at the end of the day I need to be able to hold myself accountable. I’m not into the finger pointing thing as that gets you absolutely nowhere. Let me see where I screwed up and then I will create an action plan to address the issues. That’s how I want to roll.

I can honestly say that up until now I hadn’t truly connected the dots on what made this a A++++ setup, but now that we’re here and I didn’t participate in it at all I see why the setup was so great. Being able to see a great setup is a great thing, now it’s time to put that into action.

The Con’s

I mentioned in the pros area how I now see why this was a A++++ setup, but the con is that I didn’t capitalize on the situation (much like how I missed the $JKS trade as well).

When you look at this chart the range is HUUUUGGEEEE. Overall it felt like the entire EV sector was squeezing out, but I just didn’t have the vision to be able to truly confirm in my brain that things were squeezing out vs real buying. This lack of vision means that I missed a $13 a share opportunity that could’ve been hit with MAX BP and these are the kind of days that can make your year.

Opportunity

Since I didn’t get in it makes me understand that I need to work on being able to identify the overextended short squeeze mode stocks that are looking for a capitulation day, so this weekend I will task myself by investing gating the daily’s and intra-day price action to find some anomalies.

I also thinks I could also look into the whole “first red day” setup that I’ve heard over and over again in the past, but never really connected the dots. Looking back at the chart it’s apparent that if you mix in a first red day with an overextended parabolic short setup there is CRAZY opportunity. I think this is just the kind of stuff that starts to make sense with more screen/seat time in the markets. Plenty of room to grow and capitalize on setups. I’m excited to take part in the next one. It’s a continual process that I’m really enjoying to be a part of.