Hello fellow Penny Farmers!
Today's crops I picked had some pretty big moves with some in the green and others in the red. Either way there was plenty of opportunity to harvest some pennies.
I wanted to end this week with focusing on trading in the last hour of the market but ended up making a trade at the open because I happened to still be up at the open and I saw that $KTOS had won a large government contract. It appeared that it might have gapped in the open and there was plenty of room up before the next resistance, so I went ahead and placed a limit order.
A fellow trader on Twitter did mention that contracts for $KTOS wasn't anything new and that usually it didn't pop with contracts.
Because of the risk reward I decided to continue with the trade and got an entry of $4.02 and set a tight stop loss at $1.95. It then went sideways and failed to get a morning spike, just like my fellow trader said it would. I held it just incase it had a late run but it eventually faded and I was stopped out.
After the loss in $KTOS I stopped watching the market and stuck to my plans of trading the afternoon.
By 11:30 (PST) I was ready to trade and found a nice little breakout setup in $GBR. It was exactly the type of setup I'm looking for with the breakout lining up with the MAC-D and AO nearing their zero line crossovers. The breakout level was at about $2.69 and I was able to fill my limit order with an entry of $2.74. Momentum was picking up at the point and the breakout was well underway. I set a stop loss and walked it up as the price increased.
When the price reached $2.98ish my stop loss was set at $2.90 and would have been a very nice gain of about $.16 a share. For some reason the stop loss didn't execute and I watched the price blow past it. I was pretty frustrated at that point and decided to hold it for a while longer and see if I could recoup some of the losses. Eventually it did climb back to $2.66 and I exited with about a -3% loss.
I'm not sure why the stop loss didn't work. I haven't experienced it with real money, though I'm sure it happens on occasion. It seems to take place quite a bit while paper trading.
About a half hour after entering the trade with $GBR I spotted another setup in $TPLM that fit my strategy. The breakout level was at about $0.40 and the MAC-D and AO indicators were lining up to cross their zero lines right at about the same time as the breakout. My limit order was filled at $0.4173 just above the breakout and I set a stop loss and walked it up with the price.
This time the plan work how it was supposed to and after I set the stop loss I walked it up with the price. When the price peaked and started to fade I ended up with an exit of $0.43 for a win of $364.49.
I'm taking most of the weekend off to spend time with my family but I'll be back at it Sunday night with a new set of Crops to watch and maybe an overview of video 10 in How To Make Millions.
There is a big change in my life that is taking place. I'll be taking some risk but I honestly feel with all my soul that now is my time to take my trading to the next level. I had planned on starting with a couple thousand in an account and slowly grinding and growing my account until I could trade full time.
Apparently "Life" had different plans because not only did we loose my wife's long-term disability check but about a week later I lost my job... So we went from having a reliable pay (all-be-it paycheck to paycheck) to not income. Luckily because of my contract I do have about a 3 month pay window to get something going...
Which brings me to trading fulltime. I've been looking for something to make a career out of other than professional security. Don't get me wrong, being a security specialist at a school has plenty of benefits, like decent pay, holidays, summers, working with kids, etc. But it's a dead-end career. I'm topped out at $22.75 and that is actually pretty high pay for my area in this industry. It's just enough to keep you from switching careers but not enough to not be struggling.
I'm moving some finances around to give me an account of about $20k, its risky because with trading there are NO guarantees. But doing so will allow me to take positions of about $10k and aim for easier 2% to 6% gains which will be more consistent than hitting 10% or 20% gains regularly. It will also put my closer to that $25k level to lift the PDT rule.
I'm not sure what the future holds, but I feel that this is my time and sometimes it takes risk to move forward in life. If you always do the same thing day in and day out... you're going to get the same results day in and day out... and for the average American family that is living paycheck to paycheck with debt and stress.
I'm more excited than scared because I know I can do this, trading is something I love and I'm passionate about. I look forward to the challenges and growth that is soon to take place.
I welcome you to come along with me as I take this journey. Together we'll keep planting the seeds of education so that we can grow our pennies.
Chris
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